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Richard Runyararo Mahomva
The introductory instalment of this analysis focused on the contradictions grounding belonging in Zimbabwe.
Contemporary power struggles have influenced the manifestation of the nation — making contradictions which emerge from the plethora of thoughts on the national pledge. On the other hand, the role of religion, politics and ethnicity in prompting the widening the rifts of national difference cannot go unnoticed. Last week, my emphasis was on the need to reconstruct the idea of a nation from an Afrocentric perspective, contrary to the present Eurocentric terms and definitions framing our present thinking. I wish to be pardoned for omitting the analysis on the constitutional validity of the national pledge as I had promised.
This is immediately responsive to the pressing need to address some pertinent issues raised from reviews of the past week’s issue. This week’s focus is on the historical significance of the national pledge. The idea is to locate the national pledge’s role in the construction of issues of national memory to enhance patriotic thinking relevant for the future.
This position is not ignorant to the current governance inadequacies and political differences which have been used to dismiss the national pledge. As an affirmative proponent of this debate I think challenges of a government cannot be a reason for dismissing its mandate for promoting patriotism. The contents of the vilified pledge have a long bearing term on the country’s political culture. This analysis further acknowledges other raised sentiments about the ruling government’s arrogation of the national pledge. This position falls short of understanding that Zanu-PF may have its self-interests, but the pledge will live beyond Zanu-PF interests.
By dismissing the pledge we deprive ourselves of embracing an opportunity of rebranding our national pride. This is the reason why this pledge is to be recited by the children who are the future of this country. The pledge bears the optimism for the future which will soon be in the hands of a new generation. It is important that this new generation is oriented in a manner that will not find it repeating the governance challenges which are used by some sections of our population to dismiss the national pledge.
Therefore, dismissing the national pledge on the pretext of our current failures as a nation is a guarantee to a catastrophic future. I say “our failures” because when history speaks next generations would directly ask each one of us what we were doing now to address the issues we are using to dismiss the national pledge. Each one of us at some point will be asked: What was your contribution in building Zimbabwe and on which side were you on? As we wait, each one his day for trial, we have respective mandates to be continuously correct as we await to be questioned by the future on our diverse contributions to the present.
This week’s analysis is complimented by academic views of Dr Samukele Hadebe and Thabani Nyoni. Dr Samukele Hadebe is the Executive Director of the Public Policy Research Institute of Zimbabwe (PRIZ). Thabani Nyoni is a Master Candidate in the area of Social Welfare at the University of California. He also works as a Planning, Research & Evaluation Intern at Alameda County Social Services Agency. I consulted the two discussants to tackle Zimbabwe’s history and the contestations of nationhood in a bid to cross-examine how the introduction of the national pledge is a welcome development.
A pledge to history, the present and the future
History is an integral part of humanity as it helps in the manufacturing of socio-political identities of all nations. Even the most “sophisticated” of the world’s nation-states still define their existence in the global ecosystem on the basis of their past using reminiscent facets of self-definition. It is then saddening that when our schoolchildren are supposed to pay tribute to the heroes of yesterday who constructed the present the process is described as necromancy. Surprisingly the countries that finance our civic societies which peddle this falsehood pay homage to their own heroes. Their bank notes are adorned by faces of their national heroes.
In the United States of America children recite their national pledge. Ironically, some civic society groups whose financial nerve centre is the USA dismiss the introduction of a national pledge in Zimbabwean schools. This form of misrepresented thinking in shaping the national discourse is disastrous. It is in itself a perilous reflection of the current dilemma of national belonging. It is a case of reference to serve as a warning to those who dismiss history since in the process they deconstruct their legitimacy to contribute meaningfully in uniting Zimbabwe.
This ignorance to history is the reason behind the country’s opposition parties’ failure to remain relevant to what unifies a majority of Zimbabweans. The people of this country are unified by a shared experience of fighting colonial rule. It is the countless pledges of those who gave their lives to liberate this country which unifies its people. Fighting coloniality strongholds which dehumanised the African is what largely defines the process of constructing the idea of being Zimbabwean. This makes it impossible to imagine Zimbabwe’s destiny with no reflections on the past. In fact the birth of this very Zimbabwe and the past are correlated.
Unfortunately, those with no ideological alignment to the past find pleasure in dismissing any account and initiative borrowing its existence from the past. As a result it has become fashionable that any reference to the past is now criminalised and is linked to the ruling Zanu-PF. Those who visit the founding values of this country in attempting to explain the present are labelled Zanu-PF loyalists. Thabani Nyoni summarises this view in his response to the previous article:
“I am rather disappointed by the way you handled this very serious matter. My disappointment comes from the expectation that your article would offer a balanced intellectual discussion of the national pledge debate. There are merits to supporting the national pledge but the way glorifies the national pledge and vilifies those who challenge it, who are against it. In your argument you sound like a party spokesperson than a sober intellectual.”
This same common thinking attaches everything linked to the liberation struggle to Zanu-PF. Nyoni did not also consider that the article is one of the few views competing with private media coverage of the matter. This thought inclination is justified by the popular blame on Zanu-PF for arrogating the anti-colonial narrative in the interest of political realism. This is also captured in Thabani Nyoni’s contribution:
“. . . numerous supposedly national symbols, events, and icons, shrines are being appropriated and used for a divisive power consolidation agenda. Our recent and not so recent past tell us that the current national leadership in Government does not inspire the necessary confidence and consensus to drive nation building process.”
Democracy endows us with the mandate to respect dissent and as a result I appreciate that view. However, my problem is that this opinion only problematises Zanu-PF’s attachment to the liberation legacy in shaping the present.
This constitutes the misrepresented ideas of national belonging which are stagnating progressive thinking on issues of nationhood in Zimbabwe. The anti-establishment discourse scholarship is in a crisis of not thinking beyond the source of the “absolutism” it intends to challenge. On another note Dr Samukele Hadebe argues:
“At this juncture of the national debate on the pledge it would be unwise to say the introduction of the national pledge is welcome or not. Remember that as a nation we have not yet matured to see and hear things as they are said but in terms of the regional, racial, ethnic and political affiliation of the person advancing a position. When the dust settles on this debate, and it will eventually settle, then we can contribute meaningfully to this very important debate without the labelling that has become characteristic of most Zimbabwean debates. Suffice to say, the national pledge has evoked religious arguments as well as its constitutionality among a plethora of factors, real or imagined.”
Beyond Zanu-PF these same anti-Zanu-PF history monopoly narrative has no other point of reference or an alternative to challenge Zanu-PF in that regard.
As a result, this calls for the acknowledgement of Zanu-PF’s contribution in nation-building guided by values of the past. The anti-Zanu-PF history monopoly proponents acknowledge that history cannot be pocketed to gratify selfish interests of those not attached to it. It then becomes clear that the fight is against Zanu-PF and not that the history of this country is not important. As a result, their role to undermine the history of this country is to construct an artificial “nothingness” of the significance of the past to the country’s populace not to pay due tribute to the past which works for the political legitimacy of Zanu-PF. Due to that when the past is revoked it is instantly dismissed by those who cannot trace their space in the history that forges the values of nationhood upheld by Zanu-PF both as a political party and government in power.
The anti-national pledge movement: A criminalisation of remembrance
The dismissal of the national pledge’s introduction in primary and secondary schools by political stakeholders is a fight against the history of this country. As highlighted above, the fight against history is a fight against its custodians.
Those fighting history are doing so in the interest of only building their credentials on the present not because they do not acknowledge the nationalist legacy. They acknowledge the founding legacies of this land, but their fear and hatred of this legacy is transferred to their mandate by interests of Western powers to kill the memory of the West’s sadistic plunder of the country and the continent at large.
Revoking the past is always suicidal to the image of neo-coloniality and the interests it serves through its attempt to service colonial mindset continuity. Revisiting the foundations of this nation held together by the past is a dangerous ammunition to neo-colonial agendas of suppressing Africa’s full decolonisation process. Giving enabling space to remembrance is unwanted in the course what is defined as modern political thinking.
The national pledge and the battle for ideological supremacy
Thabani Nyoni as an epitome of the anti-national pledge initiative provides a plausible analysis coinciding with my view on martyrdom pledges of some Zimbabweans for the love of this country:
“When you write, do not forget the citizens of Zimbabwe, some of them lost more lives, limbs and loved ones more than those who wine and dine in the name of patriotism and nationalism.
These people called Zimbabweans loved their country even if they hate the national pledge. They know that this is a Zanu-PF national pledge.”
The above comment by Nyoni acknowledges that there are others who have pledged to die for this country.
However, the missed point is that the pledge remembers those lost to political sacrifices too.
This makes Nyoni’s case fall short of consistency. If others could pledge their love for this country with their lives what is wrong with remembering them? When the same pledge is read 50 years from now the context of celebrated heroes will remain the same.
In my forthcoming book I argue that we are in a new and endless Chimurenga. As such our generation represents the heroes that will be commemorated as enshrined in the national pledge a 100 more years from now.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is an independent academic researcher, Founder of Leaders for Africa Network — LAN. Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the Reading Pan-Africa Symposium (REPS) and can be contacted on [email protected]
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