adminLiterature Rethink with Richard Runyararo Mahomva
The two review instalments of Philip Barclay’s book, Zimbabwe: Years of Hope and Despair (2011) attempted to unpack the authenticity of Britain’s antagonism to Zimbabwe. In the first instalment, I plainly clarified that Britain’s diplomacy with Zimbabwe soon after independence was advantageously positioned to normalise the evil exploitative horse and the rider game. The two countries’ diplomatic eat al fresco came to a halt when the horse demanded a fair share of the ride. Prior, the British-Zimbabwe diplomacy was grounded on conditions favouring the subjugation of Zimbabwe’s sovereign interests to enhance post-humus colonial power. Upon realising this diplomatic delusion, Zimbabwe had to shift loyalties from imperial subjugation towards high interests of self-determination, (President Mugabe: 2001).
This decolonial turn sanctioned Britain to re-activate its centuries of hate to this land. The success of Britain’s attempt to crush forces of national continuity only depended on curating mechanisms of change. The nationalist movement became the target enemy; its continuity had to be adjourned to pave way for Western crafted liberalism — the Movement for Democratic Change. The new mechanisms of marshaling neo-liberal (colonial) democracy were characterised by hyped pronouncements of eradicating the old order entrenched in liberation values. The same liberation perspectives are a mirror of real post-colonial national goals and interests which had to be obliterated.
As Mbembe (2013:4) explains it, the burden of history enshrined in Zimbabwe and Africa’s liberation memory is trivialised and is aptly alienated from the logic of global modernity:
“Why are we so addicted to the past? . . . fighting over the past because of our inability to build a future which . . . is mostly about each of us turning into an entrepreneur, making lots of money and becoming a good consumer?”
The observation by Mbembe exhumes the prejudice anchored perspective of Africans being unable to build a future. In fact a particular group of Africans has to be inducted into the Western system of doing things and do away with the hoary breed of leadership. This is because Africa’s old leadership, mainly Robert Mugabe, who is their main villain is supposed to be feeding people with propaganda (history which informs Afrocentric continuity). The nationalist legacy is demeaned for its lack of material enrichment for the masses and this has popularised thinking in “neo-liberal market” related terms. In light of this perspective, Mbembe further probes:
“Is this the only future left to aspire to — one in which every human being becomes a market actor; every field of activity is seen as a market; every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, state or corporation) is governed as a firm; people themselves are cast as human capital and are subjected to market metrics (ratings, rankings) and their value is determined speculatively in a future’s market?”
The annihilation of the liberation memory gives the coloniser a protagonist posture, which helps in creating systematic forgetfulness of past injustices — we are oriented to forget. The victims of injustice are supposed to forget, move on and focus on economic progress. The former physically oppressed must enter into a phase of metaphysical bondage of developing means of production owned by the oppressor. The erstwhile oppressed should be “market actors” than there are ideological (historical) actors. This simply mutilates any remembering ontological fractures of coloniality and the oppressed become commodities of the neo-colonial enterprise. The popularised myth is that history cannot build a future for the African. This assumption ignores the view that the present and the future state of Western domination is a precedent of historical accumulation and plunder which needs to be assessed from the lens of history to the perspective of the oppressed. The deliberate call for the forgetting of history is meant to facilitate the embracement of the former coloniser in the present in a bid to construct the future. Revisiting the past is feared and unwanted for it will only awaken the Black man to the reality of the centuries of the West’s hate to Africa.
Reinvention of history
This is why it becomes important to critically appreciate the writings by proxies of Britain. The publication by Philip Barclay (2011) plays a critical role in giving one side of the face of Zimbabwean history. I fear for those who will access this book with no empirical comprehension of the hidden forces driving current status-quo decades from this day. This is because of its shortfall in explaining the history that ushered Zimbabwe to its 2008 political dilemma. The reader is misled to conclude that Zimbabwe’s politics can be summarised within the little narrative patch of what Barclays characterises as “Years of Hope and Despair”(2006-2009). As a result, Barclay’s account maybe misinterpreted to push the idea that Britain was pursuing its philanthropic mandate to a country in despair with no hope to rise. This is because of President Mugabe’s revisitation of history after independence, thereby pioneering the seemingly anarchical Land Reform Programme. Then all of a sudden the government becomes heathenous, thus trade unions, pressure groups become the vanguards of a “new national-interest”. Regime change becomes the new epistemology of forgetting history.
However, this indicates that revisiting liberating history in a manner that enriches the oppressed is not justified and this kind of history must be forgotten. In the eyes of progressive global thinking people must be subjected to developing means of production they do not own. On the other hand, new history is being made — the history which demonises aspirations of decolonising the country and the continent’s political economy which has been hostage to centuries of British captivity. The reinvention of history by proxies of the coloniser is a significant catalyst for regime change to prepare the envisaged political space which will be bankrupt of the liberation legacy. That way, the genuine ideas which should build the destiny for Zimbabwe will be forgotten. In other words, literature produced by Britain’s proxies like Barclay buttresses the idea of the interests of regime change in Zimbabwe.
The abandonment of “history” to usher “regime change”
The selective rejection of history in appreciating the Britain-Zimbabwe relations does not begin with Barclay (2011). It is as old as Zimbabwe’s post-independence political consciousness to challenge the dog-master relationship which had existed between Zimbabwe and Britain. This is what led to the abandonment of Britain’s marriage vow to Zimbabwe as clearly pronounced in the letter by Britain’s Foreign Affairs Secretary, Clair Short:
“I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish, and as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers . . . I am told Britain provided a package of assistance for resettlement in the period immediately following independence. This was, I gather, carefully planned and implemented, and met most of its targets. Again, I am told there were discussions in 1989 and 1996 [with the Conservative government] to explore the possibility of further assistance. However, that is all in the past.”
The above remarks by Short indicate that the regime-change prospects in Zimbabwe were meant to abolish the mandate of Britain in fulfilling terms of the Lancaster Treaty as highlighted by Blessing-Miles Tendi (2014: 7):
“New Labour lacked appreciation of the significance of the history of the Lancaster House negotiations on land. Lord Carrington, for instance, alleged that despite being the broker of the Lancaster House agreement and the person who, Mugabe claimed, made financial assurances to him on behalf of the British government to sponsor land reform, he was never consulted about the history of the 1979 land negotiations by Short or any other relevant New Labour government member.”
This is clear that some responsibilities accorded to some by history must be forgotten to solicit fraudulent tendencies of some international actors at the expense of vulnerable states. In the case of Zimbabwe, this has further taken its tall through the regime-change projects falsely customised as democracy initiatives.
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