admin Literature rethink with Richard Runyararo Mahomva
Last Friday, Cephas Msipa a veteran nationalist, launched his memoir titled In Pursuit of Justice and Freedom at the Bulawayo Club. I have started reading it and I hope next Sunday the column will feature a review of that book. The stories of our nation are continuously being churned out by our nationalists with direct experiences of their architecture of our revolutionary course.
Equally competing to such contributions are the narratives of former Rhodesians that have also emerged, most notable David Coltart’s recently published auto-biography. Coltart revisits issues of the Gukurahundi which it links to the Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The subject of Gukurahundi seems to be more externally handled in influencing our people’s perceptions towards their leaders in the ruling party. This explains why most narratives on this subject have been championed by former Rhodesians and other white writers like Peter Stiff, Jocelyn Alexander, Norma J Kriger and JoAnn McGregor.
There is nothing wrong with remembering good and bad moments of our nationhood, it is only problematic when the processes of remembering become dismembering. Moreover, if such narratives are constructs of the colonial descendants such as David Coltart who pose as a human rights activist for the people of Matabeleland. This explains why through their publications the cabal qualifys itself as a spokesperson of the plight of the people of Matabeleland more than the victims they claim to represent.
Such writing is not only disturbing, but suggests the magnitude of challenges we have in defence of national interests through literature. Probably this is why we need more narratives of our nation coming from our nationalists and not individuals who were dogmatised against nationalism as they were servicemen of the aspirations of Rhodesian segregation and unjust capitalism subjugating the Black.
For instance, David Coltart was a UDI/British South African Police officer apart from having undergone military conscription of Rhodesia. The BSAP was instrumental in Cecil’s John Rhodes’ adventure to manifest his dream of Iron Rule from Cape to Cairo following his failure as a competitive man in his own race country.
It was used to unleash an institutionalised reign of terror on Blacks who were gunless whom after realising the botchery of Moffat and Rhodes after the settling of the ruthless Pioneer Column (elementary social studies substantiates this matter of historical importance. To be precise we were taught that in Grade 3 general paper). It is important that before his book is considered for review in this column we remember Coltart from the perspective of a colonial service man.
Professor Jonas Rungano Zvobgo in the preface of Cephas Msipa’s book argues “history is an essential process that should be analysed and understood in order to make sense of the present and future”. This is why we need to look at the history of those producing our narratives to see if they are worth to do so especially if their agenda serves a remembering that dismembers.
If I may take you back to the first series of this column I talked about the missed racial factor which was interrogating White arrogation of our post-independence political landmarks. Such contributions substantiate the reality of what we are discussing here as coloniality hangovers in our knowledge banks and the missed racial factor.
However, I do not intend to fully recognise Coltart as an important missed racial factor proponent considering that the analysis focused on profound academics with disciplined intellectual specialism unlike Coltart’s remembering that dismembers.
This is contrary to President Robert Mugabe’s expectations of multi-racial national building processes he had called him to help execute after our independence. However, we cannot use such history to blame his contribution to the body of knowledge, instead we need to accept that such is the dilemma of white liberalism, anyway all knowledge is important for analysis huge or trivial lest we forget the historical importance it entails.
We appreciate that this is a manifestation of the values of the white spirit in Coltart which was responsible for dismembering our people as part of his duties in the Rhodesian police force and the army. This is the same dismembering spirit of our nationhood which saw him becoming a leading front in opposition politics in defence of the disenfranchised White population.
What is missed in such narratives purposed to defend White dismemberment after the land reform is that the scissors used to tear down African wealth is the same scissors that found itself in Black hands to tear down ill-gotten wealth. Nevertheless, we cannot blame such narratives which are patriotic to where they belong. It is their place of use where it is wrong and Zimbabwe is not ready for further dismemberment as envisioned by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe in 1987 through the Unity Accord.
As we conclude
This past week has exposed the contesting narratives of the colonial hangover and the nationalist paradigm. On the other hand, veteran nationalists like the Doctor of Commerce, our very own Cephas Msipa are also helping us to revisit the narratives of our nation and how it came to being through sacrifices made by individuals like Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, James Chikerema and Benjamin Burombo.
This is what separates Dr Msipa’s auto-biography from that of David Coltart. There is striking coincidences in the lives led by these men in Rhodesia and independent Zimbabwe. One was a UDI law enforcement agent and the other was a proponent of nationalism both replicating institutional ideologies divorced from each other.
As such when these two men put their lives on public tablets for our generation’s judgement can we not conclude that they are both in defence of what they stood for in the colonial era and the conflicting perspectives of nationhood inherited then? The same blemish of nationalist leaders in Coltart’s narrative is also apparent in Ranger’s publication Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe.
The publication discredits war-vets’ narratives in making Zimbabwe’s history as part of the colonial hangover which perceives Eurocentric hegemony in knowledge making:
The history instructors in the youth militia camps are war veterans and it has been suggested that “patriotic history”, with its focus on violent resistance, is the result of the re-emergence of the ex-guerrillas at the centre of Zimbabwean politics (Ranger 2004:20).
The war veterans’ role in the process of history remaking is criminalised as Ranger argues that they had no academic licence to do so. This is a colonial understanding of knowledge production especially if that particular knowledge involves recollecting Africa’s past.
However, such criticism seems to apply less to white civilian writings especially works which polarises Zimbabwe in favour of white land disenfranchisement interests. This is suggestive of the need for Black narratives, lest the stories of nationhood are hijacked to service colonial hangovers. Next week I will be giving a detailed review of Dr Msipa’s memoir before moving to Coltart’s book.
- 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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