adminObi Egbuna Jr Simunye
ON December 1st African people at home and abroad were granted the opportunity not only to celebrate an epic moment in our history of struggle, when Sister Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to surrender her seat at the height of segregation 60 years ago, we also reaffirmed our commitment to eradicate the deadly pandemic on World Aids Day which ironically falls on the same day Mrs Parks made an indelible mark on our people’s movement.
Because our struggle for liberation and human dignity has always been mass in scope and character, we have accepted the fact that great contributions in our movement will come from not only those among us who genuinely strive to be meek and humble but those who are troubled and scorned, the common ingredients both groups share is their courage and a yearning to be free of all forms of oppression.
As Mrs Parks became a household name in every corner, Africans everywhere must also remember Sisters Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, who were arrested months before Mrs Parks for resisting segregation. They, however, did not meet the conservative and elitist criteria of the established Civil Rights leadership at that time. The fact that Sister Colvin was a high school student who became pregnant by a married man and Sister Smith’s father was an alcoholic, were the reasons given why our community might have been reluctant to rally around them.
This explains why during Zimbabwe’s Second Chimurenga when the year 1979 was declared the year of the people’s storm, President Mugabe was deliberate in prefacing his words when delivering his New Year’s message.
“Revolutionary Greetings and New Year regards to all you, our brave and courageous, ever-advancing and ever victorious Zanla forces. And to you all whom settler racist rule has rendered homeless and jobless, to you all maimed and physically incapacitated by enemy bombs and napalm, to all you hundreds of thousands forced to flee your homes into the bush or as refugees because of the barbarous rule of the rebel regime, to the thousands of gallant youth and all students who are courageously resisting oppressive military conscription, revolutionary greetings and New Year regards. To you the exploited toiling workers in industries, commerce, on mines and on white settler farms, revolutionary greetings and New Year regards.”
Those powerful words reveal that if Sisters Colvin and Smith were part of the Second Chimurenga instead of the movement in Montgomery, Zanu’s leadership in particular and Zimbabweans in general, would not only have fully embraced them but strategically utilised their defiance and militancy to intensify our genuine resistance.
While the entire human race marvelled at the ability of astronauts to travel from the planet earth to the moon, Mother Africa’s children both on the continent and Diaspora have demonstrated that when it comes to fighting on the battlefield, that we too will never grow weary and are not the least bit deterred by time or distance.
When Dr King and SCLC marched from Selma to Montgomery which is 50 miles, they were invoking the spirit of Sister Harriet Tubman and our ancestors escaped chattel slavery on the Underground Railroad, who escaped to Canada from slave states like Annapolis, Maryland, Columbia, South Carolina and Jackson, Mississippi. The Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee travelled this same route after Dr King due to potential danger decided to turn around on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 48 hours after the Bloody Sunday massacre known as Turn Around Tuesday and took over Montgomery where they were brutally ambushed by the police at the behest of Governor George Wallace. The distance from Selma to Loundes County is 28 miles where SNCC created the Loundes County Freedom Organisation the 1st Black Panther Party.
The Zanu and Zapu membership can certainly relate to this aspect of struggle as they travelled 415 miles to Zambia or 418 miles to Mozambique for guerilla training, in the case of Zanu this included 941 miles to Tanzania and 6 190 miles to China. One of the defining moments in the Second Chimurenga was when President Mugabe and national hero Edgar Tekere, escaped from Harare to Maputo, for the purpose of successfully directing the final phase of the armed struggle. On December 26, 1979, that same route robbed Zimbabwe of its bravest guerilla fighter General Josiah Magama Tongogara.
In the case of President Mugabe and the late National Hero and First Lady Amai Sally Mugabe we have to include the 2 777 miles from Zimbabwe to Ghana, which highlights not only President Mugabe having the opportunity to have his feet firmly planted on independent African soil, but Amai Sally following Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s dictum “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the entire African continent”.
On a Pan African scale we connect this the 3 176 miles the Osagyefo travelled from UK back to Ghana to establish the Convention People’s Party, The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s 1 725 sojourn from Jamaica to the US in search of Booker T. Washington after reading Up from Slavery, or Frantz Fanon traveling 4 096 miles from Martinique to Algeria to join the FLN in liberating Algeria from France.
The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey Dr King visited his grave site while in Jamaica which in the context of freedom riding, is connected to Bob Marley coming to Zimbabwe to dazzle the African world with his dazzling performance on April 18, 1980. Another obstacle that both Africans in Zimbabwe and the Civil Rights Movement can relate to is deceitful and reactionary men of the cloth,the longest serving President Reverend Joseph Jackson came up with the concept Civil Rights through law and order in order to derail Civil Disobedience as practiced by Dr King and SCLC. When Zimbabweans learn of Reverend Jackson the images of Bishop Muzorewa and Reverend Sithole will come to mind due to their efforts to sabotage the Second Chimurenga, after realising the mass of Zimbabweans declared them unfit to lead the liberation struggle.
Since social media appears to be on the verge of surpassing conventional outlets as people’s main source of information, we must remember that due to Frelimo and Zanu’s ability to intercept Rhodesian airwaves, that Voice of the Revolution was created and those broadcasts resulted in thousands of Zimbabweans crossing the border into Mozambique to give their lives for the liberation of their people and country.
There are two extremely interesting historical points of reference that connect the struggle to liberate Zimbabwe from colonial rule and the movement for civil and human rights inside US borders, the first is the accused assassin of Dr King, James Earl Ray wanted to live in colonial Rhodesia where due to the fascist and racist policies of the Smith Regime he felt right at home, the second is that President Mugabe’s initial political influence were the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.
We wonder of the distinguished alum of SCLC, CORE, SNCC and the NAACP who when it comes to the Zimbabwe question have opted to serve as extended mouthpieces of both the Bush and Obama administration, are aware that President Mugabe has an acute understanding of the man who served as their philosophical guide during their early days in struggle.
These Civil rights alum are well aware that Dr King met with Zambia’s 1st President Dr Kenneth Kaunda in Atlanta in 1960, which clearly demonstrates Dr King saw parallels between the struggle against segregation in the deep south and the struggle against Settler Colonialism in Northern and Southern Rhodesia. During Zimbabwe’s 25th independence celebration Dr Kaunda received the Royal Order of Munhumutapa Zimbabwe’s highest honour.
The warriors who fought in Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham or Harare were no strangers to prison, the discipline that is considered President Mugabe’s best attribute was developed during his incarceration, Dr King fearlessness was tested under these challenging circumstances.
The trail to freedom from Montgomery and Harare reinforce that the fight to lift US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe and the struggle for human rights and dignity in the diaspora are one.
Obi Egbuna Jr is the US Correspondent to the Herald and the External Relations Officer of the Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association his email is [email protected]
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