adminThe patriotic motion of this pen
It’s permanently invigorating to get critical evaluations when one writes. An apprehensive and pale hearted columnist would certainly get angry when readers reject a particular line of thought they would be delivering for public consumption. During such vigorous exchanges it’s astonishing how some Africans would get angry when inadequacies of Eurocentricity are exposed. Of course, it’s an established fact that some of them are paid to be angry on behalf of the colonialists. They are entitled to this venting because their monthly housing and office rentals are incentivised by the crumbs of imperialism.
Coloniality puts food on their tables. However, it’s so pleasant to find the African alternative intellectual thought reaching out to their false comfort zones. In fact that is a sign that the ideas posited through this column genuinely communicate to a wide spectrum of thinkers, readers, truth-seekers and those in the wage-bill of neo-colonial projects.
Consequently, the decolonial thrust of this section of the paper serves its intended motive if its debate horizon is extended that far. The first instalment on Welshman Mabhena’s recently released biography got me all messaged via WhatsApp, Facebook and email. I remember having a very hard exchange with some friends from the arts sector since the article also offered a critical objection to Intwasa’s celebration of Shakespeare. Part of the article condemned the exclusion of other significant Black thinkers in cultural forums, especially our festivals. However, Jane Morris of AmaBooks Publishers brought to the surface some key issues I had deliberately omitted in the article. For instance, how bygone Intwasa festival editions have celebrated some black literary icons like Yvonne Vera and Ndabezinhle Sigogo:
“Intwasa have celebrated three of the renowned Zimbabwean writers you mention in your article. One year Intwasa Literary Arts organised a tribute to Yvonne Vera, academic papers were delivered by Dr Violet Lunga and Dr JM Lunga and the event was chaired by Dr Lawton Hikwa. A celebration of Marechera was held in the courtyard, arranged by Tswarelo Mothobi and Brian Mukabeta with many contributing and a very large audience. A tribute was also organised to celebrate the work of Sigogo. All these events took place at the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo.”
Jane Morris’ intervention identified what seemed to be a gap in my article, yet in actual sense it was a selective omission. The pressing justification for my deliberate omission being that the imperishability of knowledge coloniality through cultural exchange outlets must die. There is no justification for continuing cultural marginality of Africans in a platform of cultural expression because the concerned space celebrated a few of our local icons.
What is wrong with celebrating more of our icons than importing and appropriating traditional vanguards of knowledge coloniality like Shakespeare, Hegel and Kant to define our parameters of cultural diversity? This is not different from the thinking of Rhodesians like David Coltart (2016) who celebrates Garfield Todd’s philanthropy which functioned at the expense of imposing Christianity on Africans through the Dadaya Mission. On the other hand, Coltart (2016) exalts Todd for being an educationist par-excellent.
However, what Coltart’s auto-biography omits is that whites like Todd posed as philanthropists to gain political favour from the black majority. It’s obvious that individuals like Todd had a false mission of civilising the colonised. Instead Todd’s interest was to overtake Smith’s UDI. Therefore, the whole project was more political than it was philanthropist. Their mission schools were meant to educate African children to be tools of labour for a white-owned economy. As a consequence, doesn’t the same apply with the British Council when it generously pours funds to Zimbabwean cultural initiatives for cultural diplomacy? Therefore, if a festival pays tribute to a remnant of black icons it does not mean that it must be exempted criticism from decolonial pro-active pan-Africanists like me.
As a proponent of knowledge decoloniality, I will incessantly anticipate the need for African cultural spaces to endlessly celebrate their own than conforming to Eurocentric knowledge prejudice peddling the myth that Africans are indebted to celebrating global northerners. It’s clear that part of celebrating Shakespeare is a Western cultural hegemony agenda. Indeed, a remnant of our own have been celebrated through that particular festival, but what is wrong with continuously celebrating other African thinkers? Have we exhaustively celebrated Musaemura Zimunya, Charles Mungoshi, Clement Chihota, Robert Muponde, Ignatius Mabasa, Kizito Muchemwa, and Alexander Kanengoni not to mention the classical Shona novelist John W Marangwanda? If we have not, what then makes Shakespeare so special and so worth of our city’s attention?
Zimbabwe inoyera
These are some of the many questions we need to confront as we unpack the mandate of writing the memories of our great icons. Therefore, we need not to be apologetic in our approach to sharing African experiences. I am aware that such ideas might draw away a significant number of this column’s readers. However, it is always imperative for the few loyal followers of this section of the Sunday read to take note of my loyalty to the cause of African identity preservation.
I remain resolute as I write from the perspective of the culturally dispossessed. I write from the position of seeking authentic epistemic blackness/Africanness and nothing more. I write from a decolonial Zimbabwean perspective. I expect to be understood by those with the same position of “being” which coloniality has repressed since the birth of European expansionism. I do not write so that I am recommended for a writer’s fellowship in some European or American university.
Marechera paid the price, I will not write to shamelessly live in countries where Africans are not wanted. Evan Mawarire is a good example, I won’t insult the dignity of my country through the pen to be awarded a visa.
A word to mwana wevhu
On the other hand, a few revolutionary thinkers expressed their unease about ethnic essentialism associated with the biography under review. This is because the book emphasises Welshman Mabhena’s role as a Matabeleland essentialist. As such, one may interpret this position as regionalising a national figure. This position is justified considering how biographies and auto-biographies have been used to pursue nation dismembering narratives. For example David Coltart (2016: 11-12) uses expressions that misinform readers about Zimbabwean colonialism as a blessing in disguise:
“One stark fact, however, is that most of the construction was for the benefit of the white minority . . . although most black citizens of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) had more rights and better living conditions than those who lived under the increasingly authoritarian and harsh apartheid regime south of the Limpopo.”
Here we see the juxtapositioning of self-narratives and the nation as a medium of what I called the good makhiwa mentality in one of my articles. Therefore, Coltart advances the myth that Rhodesian rule was justified and better than other forms of colonial enterprises in the continent. This can be better understood as a coloniality praise of a pretentious system which justifies the good makhiwa tag to Rhodesia as a colonial institution. In a similar manner, this insinuates the “good makhiwa” attribute to Rhodesia’s image as it is used to describe individual colonial righteousness which needs to be understood with less certainty. As such, Coltart advances modern allegiance to Rhodesia as a good makhiwa nation.
However, considering that the country Rhodesia was named after a man glorifying it is synonymous with glorifying the grotesque person of Cecil John Rhodes in the face of Africa’s humanity, glorifying Rhodes is glorifying African ontological plunder and the disfiguring of Africa’s political-economy. Therefore, Coltart (2016) celebrates a hated form of capitalism due to its effect of displacing the Africans for the betterment of the white race since the birth of the colonial project until this very day.
The above extract from Coltart’s book further offers a historical reflection of the hostile competition that existed among different colonisers of Africa. Each one of them viewed themselves as better than their other continental plunder counterpart.
Probably Coltart’s submission could have worked better as a tourist marketing statement during the days of Rhodesia. It would be a good marketing statement on the habitable aspects of Rhodesia than any colony in Africa to invite more white looters and exploiters to the good makhiwa nation.
This is because white occupation of Africa was based on proving how one group of colonisers was a good makhiwa clique compared to the other. Moreover, this explains Coltart’s comparison of Rhodesian colonialism with that of the Boers in South-Africa. The claim suggests an undying level of patriotism to Rhodesia which he could not omit in the memoir of his life. It overwhelmingly categorises evil insinuating that there is less evil than the other. There is no legitimacy of glorifying a collective evil just because of its varying degree of oppression. Apparently, this is what Coltart (2016) presents to us in his much glorified book that some Africans have defended so much.
However, after all the shared remarks by comrades and some wedged in the Rhodesian memory lane I captured a few lessons.
One of which being the need to remain cautious and analytical when we read narratives of the self which are devoted to the purpose of constructing national memory. Biographies must be reflective of nation unifying accounts. They must refreshingly bring us to a common understanding of national belonging.
At the same time, I involuntary remembered that this column will not fall short of being Afrocentric, nor will it fall short of conglomerating African intellectual prowess servicing interests of decoloniality. This weekly intellectual project will continue to engage any knowledge that undermines the dignity of Zimbabwe and the African continent. As I have made it clear, as I would repeat it once more; even outside this public sphere of sharing opinions my mandate is to pursue the de-westernisation of Africa’s thought processes.
Taking this thought route comes with many burdens mainly unorthodox leftist criticism. This particular way of thinking is often castigated and it usually secures one the visa to ideological antagonism from those opposed to appreciating the other side of truth concerning Zimbabwean politics. Anyone with such an ideological state of being is easily labelled a Zanu-PF apologist, even if they are not card holding members of that party. Nevertheless, it’s my hope to remain loyal to the thrust of pan-Africanism and the wishes of those who sacrificed their lives for Zimbabwe and Africa as “I write what I like”.
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]
Bongani Ndlovu