adminLiterature rethink with Richard Runyararo Mahomva
As we proceed with the discussion on colonial residues and their influence in outlining the knowledge space of Africa and mainly Zimbabwe it is essential to embrace the “truth” as a model of knowledge exchange. Orature, written records and archeology remain important devices of conveying the truths of one generation to another, one race and ethnic group to another. This is why it is essential to safeguard historical truth and constantly interrogate the philanthropy of those responsible for producing the history of our societies.
Through history we name and rename episodes of self-definition and in the same course we give life to our individual notions of truth or reality. Truth affirms the culture of difference in world-views and social orientation of one group to another. For that reason, what is truth to me may not be to another individual. However, this does not dismiss the universal consent on the meaning of “truth” and its opposite. Universally truth speaks of actuality, certainty, practicality and factuality. As such “truth” may imply a subjective or a relative matter of debate depending on one’s affirmative and non-affirmative proclivity. This is why we have to debate issues embracing our respectively held “truths” for validation in any given space of engagement. Of note, engagement is not always an anticipation for agreement, it may provide clarification for ideological difference. This way we are forced into tolerating each other in the context of our realistic differences. When we walk away, each on the route of their roots (truths) we gain our being shaped by our lived realities. The process of seeking intellectual growth perpetual debate is the inevitable.
Through incessantly debating humanity is gained as exchange of knowledge(s) that defines human plurality. As a result, learning ceases to be a process of banking thoughts without rigorous contestation to their intake. This is different from the pedagogic knowledge banking concept which does not promote reciprocity of ideas. This unlike when we decide to live the dictated maxim characterised by living to satisfy the tall order of borrowed mindsets. Dissimilar to the opposite of truth, there is pleasure in the truth because with it one is not obliged to involuntary remembrance of a particular narrative. This way embracing dissent becomes a naturalised yardstick of engagement. This series on Ranger has helped me to appreciate that even those who embrace what in my truth is tagged “coloniality” are justified to assume that as their truth which in my epistemic orientation calls the need for decoloniality criticism. Likewise, it is my hope that the on-going debate on this matter will help Zimbabweans to locate the residing place of truth concerning post-land reform literature in Zimbabwe. The debate around this subject has been discussed in the two previous articles citing Professor Terence Ranger’s Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe. Leaders for Africa Network (LAN) will prolong this debate in a forthcoming publication titled; Remembering Terence Ranger: The Third-Chimurenga and Re-writing the Nation in Zimbabwe. The book will be edited by Dr Samukele Hadebe, Dr Vongai Z Nyawo-Viriri and Doctor Advice Viriri.
This project may appear highly ambitious, but what is important is that it will be celebrating a life dedicated to knowledge contribution. It is celebrating a truth which is relative and subjective to one’s area of interest. The intention of this venture is to interrogate what was “truth” to Ranger in the early years of the radical land reform exercise. As indicated in other articles I have stated that the land reform programme arguably provided an opportunity for the rise of white literary hegemony in reshaping the national discourse. Following up on last week’s article, White academic liberals like Terence Ranger openly became anti-establishment intellectuals as opposed to their erstwhile epistemic alignment to the nationalist ideas heralded in Zanu-PF since 1980. Ranger’s first fame was gained as a White Rhodesian scholar with intellectual empathy to the African awakening against colonial domination. He belonged to a remnant breed of whites largely referred to as “liberals” in racist colonial Africa and specifically in Rhodesia. As stated in the previous articles of this column, Ranger’s shift in loyalties of his ideas makes him to be perceived as a betrayer of his anti-colonial generation.
This pitfall does not confiscate his role as one of the fathers of Zimbabwe’s nationalist historiography. This is why he has continued to be an important centre of reference even through his post-independence writing. The problem is that there has been less spirited attempts to publicly converse with the legacy of Ranger with its “truth” which stands opposed to other existing ‘truths’. One of his “truths” patterns to his views on the Third-Chimurenga as an era punctuated by Zanu-PF’s abuse of history patronage in post-independence Zimbabwe. Ranger makes it clear that history has been used in servicing partisan interests. Tragically, this simplistic “truth” ignores the fact that Zanu-PF is a political party founded on the past because it has its ideological base from the same past. The past will remain its rallying point of affirming longevity. Ranger’s article is set during the early days of the regime change project linked to the opposition which represents a divorce from the past and immediate interests’ political realism. Contrary, the past becomes the unifying factor of the war veterans regardless of their past affiliation to different military wings during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle:
So we need to examine how the war veterans have processed this new history . . . ex-Zipra fighters have remade their own very distinctive history, as it was defiantly expressed in the 1980s, so as to fit with the combined “patriotic history” of today (Ranger 2004:221).
There are clear indications that the past forms an essential base of political relevance in Zimbabwe. This is why parties aligned (former Zipra and Zanla cadres) to the past are unified by this particular common interest. This is an element alien to opposition politics and in the context of Zanu-PF or anti-colonial rhetoric Ranger’s argument becomes gullible to dismissal as it is linked to the service of those with no place in the past and the favour of the masses. On another note, Ranger can be justified for condemning the “abuse” of the past by Zanu-PF, but what lacks in his critic is embracing the truth of realism in conceptualising what he terms “patriotic history.” All politics is fuelled by realism which implies use of numerous manipulative apparatuses to capture and consolidate power sustained through crushing any opposition. The process of realism is not unique to Zimbabwe nor is it unique to Zanu-PF. It is a facet of absolute power control in any given political environment and any political party including the opposition which is portrayed as the protagonist throughout his analysis. Realism is by principle crude and brutal to achieve political favour for the entity or source of power instigating its function. Coloniality represents realism and the end of physical colonisation marked an escalation of realism through globalisation and neo-colonisation. Neo-colonialism and globalisation represent the truth of Western power capturing aspirations towards Africa and the rest of the third-world. Realism is the very essence of stratifying the world into the first, second and third dimensions of superiority. Now realism should be the illuminating truth of the hypocrisy of modernism and post-modernism masked as global oneness. This is where logic must prevail to question narratives that trivialise the past of the African especially if it serves as a reminder of what modernity and ‘moving on’ commands us to forget. As part of the forgetfulness project the agents of that remembrance process (Zanu-PF’s nationalist background) are also trivialised and those with no password to the faculty of remembrance (Opposition parties’ link to neo-coloniality) are credited. This is because another side of truth which is not compatible with Zimbabwe claims that the past is not progressive. The challenge of over-dependence on selective amnesia oriented knowledge is that it supports one truth and excludes other “truths”.
This is why I find it hard to accept Ranger as the centre of truth when it comes to appreciating the Zimbabwean reality he explains as the advent of “patriotic history.” This concept is problematic because it narrows what is reflective of partisan realism as an absolute description of the thought process of a people. It is as if those subjected to “patriotic history” could not reject it, moreover one is made to think that the people of Zimbabwe “forced” into state propaganda as Ranger would want to convince us have no capacity to distill what he solely considers as the abuse of history:
Now, therefore, the revolutionary spirit would skip a generation . . . The youth were recruited as warriors into the “Third Chimurenga” — the First Chimurenga having been the 1896–1897 uprisings and the second having been the guerrilla war of the 1970s. They became a militia available to discipline their own parents; to attack the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters; and to intimidate teachers and other educated civil servants in the rural areas (Ranger 2004: 219).
This loose truth of the role of the youth service in deconstructing history negates the fact that diverse sections of the country’s population find logic in the revival of the liberation narratives to make sense of the present. Yet the omitted fact is that a section of the population can relate with Nehanda, Chaminuka, Lobhengula and the spirits of the modern nationalists such as Joshua Nkomo, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo and of course Josiah Tongogara. It is not entirely true that all Zimbabweans were and are still being forced to accept the past as a model of claiming their share to nationhood. This is why scholars like Alois Mlambo, Brain Raftopolous, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Brilliant Mhlanga and many others have established a constituency different from what Ranger calls “patriots.” This means that the narrative by Ranger deprives the reader another important truth on Zimbabwe as a country with dissenting projections of nationhood and hence the abundance of democracy. Using Ranger’s truth of understanding Zimbabwe makes it difficult for one to know that the country has also produced “truths” that service opposition politics too. It would then be misleading to only think of Zimbabwe as a “patriotic history” space narrowed to a particular party. Therefore, can we not also think of what will fit well into Ranger’s analysis as “unpatriotic” knowledge banks? #Borrowedmindsetsmustfall
n 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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