adminThe Herald, 3 November 1980
IN May this year, an idea to record, preserve and disseminate the experiences of the Zimbabwe revolution was conceived.
At that time, nobody thought it would come to much, but it has since become a reality, marking a new poetic era in this country.
The two people involved in this project to record “the wealth of cultural experiences which stemmed from the war”, Mr Musaemura Zimunya and Mr Mudereri Kadhani, were at first doubtful whether they would amass enough material to compile two volumes.
But they were mistaken. They now have more than 1 500 submissions — enough to compile four volumes of an anthology of poems on the revolution.
The idea to record the war experiences spread like veld fire. Submissions have come from Britain, the United States, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa. They have come from blacks and whites, all recording the different aspects of the revolution.
The submissions have come in English, Shona and Ndebele. They are still coming despite the September 30 deadline, some of them from unlikely contributors.
Revolutionary poems have come from a factory worker in Umtali, people aged about 14 and from a 19-year-old blind student at Gokomere, who sent poems in Braille.
An “abundant harvest” is how Mr Kadhani describes the response. But he pointed out that this was only the first stage of a bid to record part of Zimbabwe’s history. An attempt would be made to see if the war could be interpreted in the form of short stories.
Mr Zimunya said the move had been made to enable Zimbabweans to preserve part of their history before some anthropologist came and collected material on the revolution “just for his own interest.”
Mr Zimunya and some of his colleagues recently staged a cultural festival at the University of Zimbabwe. Its aim was to prove the existence of African culture through art, poetry and paintings as well as cultural dances.
The search for revolutionary poems proved one thing – that there is a dire need for a forum. The contributions will not be halted simply because Mr Zimunya and Mr Kadhani had set a deadline.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
Stolen land, stolen culture, economy and resources meant a stolen identity. Reconstructing and correcting that stolen identity in a sustainable manner, requires visionary thinking; huge capital injection and commitment to ensure that the reconstruction programme is a continuous process.
Malcolm X said, “You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself.”
The importance of recording, organising and carefully preserving the national collective such as the struggle to attain sovereignty and self-determination in various multi-media formats is not an event but a process that requires careful planning and implementation. It must have a national buy-in at all levels.
Projects of this nature if done inclusively, become building blocks for decolonising the mind — making people understand their identities as Zimbabweans and Africanists as well.
Apart from the revolutionary poetry project spearheaded by Zimunya and Kadhani in 1980, the past four decades have seen other players, doing their part as well.
Newspapers titles in the Zimpapers stable and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation have over the past four decades recorded substantial liberation struggle content, covering various aspects of the First, Second and Third Chimurengas.
This rich content can be used by researchers and academics to write and tell Zimbabwe’s history accurately.
Online Reporter