The Sunday Mail
Nick Mangwana
A necromancer is a sorcerer who communicates with the dead.
The last couple of weeks saw a lot of people opposed to President Mugabe turn into necromancers. They suddenly started to communicate with the departed luminaries of the Zimbabwean nation.
They knew what George Silundika (MHSRIP) wanted. They became experts on the wishes of Chibwechitedza Dr Joshua Nkomo (MHSRIP). They started representing the wishes of JZ Moyo (MHSRIP) and John Landa Nkomo (MHSRIP).
You see comrades, after mentioning the names of the dearly departed and revered, we say MHSRIP, meaning May His/Her Soul Rest in Peace.
Surely, those self-appointed necromancers who have a morbid obsession with the macabre should let our heroes rest in peace. As far as political morality or lack of it is concerned, the obsession with the macabre has been taken to a different level by those who propose that the graves of heroes should be desecrated because President Mugabe said something about our Kalanga compatriots that is now deliberately quoted out of context.
In 1978, General Josiah Magama Tongogara was interviewed by a reporter with the Zimbabwe News. Among many other things, he was asked about his personal views on the leadership under whom he worked. He said a lot of unflattering things about Ndabaningi Sithole and also had no kind word about Abel Muzorewa.
He spared his greatest admiration for Chairman Chitepo and President Mugabe. This is what he said: “The late Hebert Chitepo cannot be compared to Sithole. Although he had grown up at a mission school and became one of the leading intellectuals of Zimbabwe, he quickly adapted to the needs and demands of the revolution. He mixed freely with the people and listened to their grievances.
“During his nine years of leadership of Zanu, he became a father of the party. More importantly, he understood and internalised the process of the revolution. Robert Mugabe, the present leader of Zanu, is a self-confident and principled man. He cannot be moved from the principles he holds, or from collective decisions of his organisation.
“His practice is firmly set against tribalism and regionalism; he judges issues on their merits, not on colour, tribe or region of the person that has brought them up. Zanu is blessed to have such a leader.”
There you are reader. In the words of the illustrious general; as if he knew that the time will come when he would have to defend his leader beyond the grave.
The President is not a tribalist or regionalist. Of all the things the general could have talked about, he dwelt on tribalism and regionalism. So, whoever chooses to project President Mugabe as a tribalist or regionalist is also accusing Gen Tongo of dishonesty or naivety. When words of icons are preserved, they become oracles when they pass on. This is why there is a lot of support to the pressure for the President to write or at least record his memoirs for posterity.
He needs to speak from beyond the grave. Not some future distortions from people with narrow political agendas as is happening. Now the words of Gen Tongogara do not need a necromancer to bring us back. They are a matter of public record. Let us go back to those that believe that the desecration of the memory and the person of the late Father Zimbabwe is a political weapon to be used.
The word desecration was used here because the moral reprehensible suggestion does just that; desecrate the memory and honour the late Vice President so deserves because he so earned it.
The word “desecration” is defined as the “act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful, contemptuous, or destructive treatment of that which is held to be sacred or holy by a group or individual”.
Now, just the idea of taking the interred remains of this revered individual from the sacred place of national entombment to some village elsewhere is trying to turn a national leader into a village politician.
Dr Nkomo lived and had a house in Highfield, a predominantly Shona township. He viewed that as part of Zimbabwe and felt he belonged there as much as he belonged in Kezi or Bulilima.
Allowing some Bronco drunk political malcontents to make lurid and gruesome suggestions for their own political expedience and creation of sensationalism is just profanatory. The debate of whether Dr Nkomo was Kalanga or not is not one for this piece. The point is: Did President Mugabe avoid appointing any person to his inner circle (Cabinet/Politburo) because they were Kalanga?
The answer is a resounding no!
Because the mark of bigotry is active discrimination and marginalisation. On social media, a famous professor with Kalanga pedigree has been busy fighting this type of ignorance. George Silundika was a Kalanga and that did not stop President Mugabe from appointing him to his very first Cabinet.
On his untimely death, he was buried at the Heroes’ Acre as a Zimbabwean Hero. It didn’t matter whether he was Kalanga or not. It just matters now because those that are obsessed with the grotesque are suggesting desecrating his memory. At the time of George Silundika, who was affectionately known as TG (Tarcisius George) by those that were close to him, there was a debate on whether he should be buried at his home village in Gala in fulfilment of Kalanga customary practice.
This was not a political position. It was about tradition. It was the very same Dr Nkomo whose name people are making a political football today who intervened and explained to the good elders that it was the work Cde Silundika did for his country that earned him the status of a hero.
That it is a fitting honour for him to be buried alongside his comrades who included the previously quoted General Tongogara and JZ Moyo.
The National Heroes’ Acre is called the National Shrine for a reason. A shrine is a place to be hallowed, venerated and a place of pilgrimage.
It is a reliquary where the remains of those in whose honour we have named our streets are interred. Taking them to a small village away from their comrades is being impertinent to them. If people have unhealthy fascination or even a gory fetish for human tissue, they should just say so and spare the rest of us the squeamish imagination of their fantasies.
JZ Moyo is another Kalanga hero who was very much involved in the unification Zimbabweans through his advocacy for unity between Zipra and Zanla. He was one of the people who helped set up the PF in Zanu-PF.
Please don’t defile his memory.
To turn the memory of such an individual who worked tirelessly for the whole country into a tribal hero is not only crass; it is disrespectful to him, his family and the rest of the people of Zimbabwe.
These heroes were real people with actual families who continue to grieve and miss them. Beyond that enigmatic and iconic stature were real human beings. After they were buried, everyone else went home and proceeded with their day-to-day lives.
But there are families that had lost not only a father, but also a bread winner, counsellor and guiding beacon.
Those are the people every sensationalist should think about before making pallid suggestions of exhuming human remains for their own political capital.
President Mugabe has no beef with his people, the Kalanga. He knows they are educated and extremely sharp. He has one of their own – who is a professor for that matter – working as the face and voice of his Government. He took another and made him the face and voice of his party.
How many people of Bukalanga heritage deputised him at both party and State levels? What more evidence can anyone honestly want? People can spin a speech and take convenient excerpts from them to achieve their own mischievous ends.
But that is not easy with actions.
So, those that want to judge the President’s position on these issues should look closely at how deaf he has been to people’s dialects and pedigree over the years, including now rather than deliberately and callously interpreted distortions.
The people of Bukalanga should not let themselves be abused by political malcontents and misfits.
They have a celebrated heroic heritage for their distinguished contribution to nation-building. In any case, the term Zimbabwe sounds more Tjikalanga than Shona itself.
If the reader disputes this, then you are called upon to prove who actually named this country thus. The grim call to exhume the remains of heroes is a macabre notion from an equally ghoulish lunatic fringe. And this fringe should know the bounds to its freakishness. Not everything can be used for political capital. It’s common human decency to respect the dead. Even in a war situation, soldiers bury some of the enemy soldiers they kill and put RIP at the head-side.
Respect for the remains of human beings distinguishes humans from their primate cousins.
