The Sunday Mail
Many platitudes have been written about the importance of history.
We have all read how a people without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots (Marcus Garvey), how those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it (Edmund Burke, George Santayana), and how we must study history because in it lies all the secrets of statecraft (Winston Churchill), among many others.
There is a reason why such platitudes are oft repeated by those who still possess that keen sense of history that is so vital for any people intent on building a great future: it is because too many of us are content to believe the fallacy that what is past is past.
We find it easy to talk of “water under the bridge”, even as we blindly grope for something to hold onto in the darkness of ignorance of our own selves and stumble in search of a path to the bright tomorrow we somehow think will materialise out of thin air.
For a country like Zimbabwe, it is amazing that short-termism, immediate gratification and an abject lack of appreciation of who we are as a people (an identity that Chapters 1-4 of the Constitution helpfully enunciates for the ahistorical in our society) are the order of the day.
We are who we are because of our history. And we will become what we will become because of an understanding of that history.
Oddly, we get very little by way of contextual historical narrative from Zimbabweans.
Yes, people like Aeneas Chigwedere, Dr Stan Mudenge and Ambassador Agrippa Mutambara have done well to document that history.
But on the whole, we still have large and vital parts of our story being told by the likes of the three Peters — Stiff, Baxter and Godwin.
We really should be more concerned by who is telling our story for us, what their agenda is, and what it means within the whole matrix of identity and nation building.
At The Sunday Mail, we have for a long time now been trying to do that. Only so much can be done via newspaper platforms. The bulk of the work rests on the shoulders of the men and women who lived that history.
It is this poor appreciation of our own history that allows the world to tell us who we are.
The English say give a dog a bad name and then hang him. We have been given a bad name, we are being hanged. And we are walking silently to the gallows.
That is why Washington’s former Ambassador to the UN, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, toasted Jonas Savimbi as “one of the few authentic heroes of our time”; Reagan described him as “Angola’s Abraham Lincoln”; and Chester Crocker lionised him as “one of the most talented and charismatic of leaders in modern African history”.
Heroes are being created for us, narratives being spun, and our history being — literally — whitewashed.
History is a tool for our total emancipation, an agent for our transformation and an enduring lesson on what is right and what is wrong.
Surely, a Zanu-PF Government must have it within itself the moral suasion to feel compelled to ensure our history is thoroughly researched, documented and made available to the nation.
Such an endeavour need not cost much beyond the only major consideration of actually publishing of texts.
The history resides within the minds and hearts of thousands of people who are still alive today; all that’s needed is committing it to durable form such as paper or electronic devices. We must never forget that it was the lack of durable documentation of our history that allowed colonialists to come here and within a few, short generation convince many African people that they were nothing more than drawers of water and hewers of wood. And today, many still believe that they are not fit for anything apart from working for Europeans and Americans, hence the strident opposition to land reform and indigenisation.
The bottom line is this: we have a story, and we must tell it!
EDITORIAL COMMENT: When heroes are made for us
The Sunday Mail
Many platitudes have been written about the importance of history.
We have all read how a people without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots (Marcus Garvey), how those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it (Edmund Burke, George Santayana), and how we must study history because in it lies all the secrets of statecraft (Winston Churchill), among many others.
There is a reason why such platitudes are oft repeated by those who still possess that keen sense of history that is so vital for any people intent on building a great future: it is because too many of us are content to believe the fallacy that what is past is past.
We find it easy to talk of “water under the bridge”, even as we blindly grope for something to hold onto in the darkness of ignorance of our own selves and stumble in search of a path to the bright tomorrow we somehow think will materialise out of thin air.
For a country like Zimbabwe, it is amazing that short-termism, immediate gratification and an abject lack of appreciation of who we are as a people (an identity that Chapters 1-4 of the Constitution helpfully enunciates for the ahistorical in our society) are the order of the day.
We are who we are because of our history. And we will become what we will become because of an understanding of that history.
Oddly, we get very little by way of contextual historical narrative from Zimbabweans.
Yes, people like Aeneas Chigwedere, Dr Stan Mudenge and Ambassador Agrippa Mutambara have done well to document that history.
But on the whole, we still have large and vital parts of our story being told by the likes of the three Peters — Stiff, Baxter and Godwin.
We really should be more concerned by who is telling our story for us, what their agenda is, and what it means within the whole matrix of identity and nation building.
At The Sunday Mail, we have for a long time now been trying to do that. Only so much can be done via newspaper platforms. The bulk of the work rests on the shoulders of the men and women who lived that history.
It is this poor appreciation of our own history that allows the world to tell us who we are.
The English say give a dog a bad name and then hang him. We have been given a bad name, we are being hanged. And we are walking silently to the gallows.
That is why Washington’s former Ambassador to the UN, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, toasted Jonas Savimbi as “one of the few authentic heroes of our time”; Reagan described him as “Angola’s Abraham Lincoln”; and Chester Crocker lionised him as “one of the most talented and charismatic of leaders in modern African history”.
Heroes are being created for us, narratives being spun, and our history being — literally — whitewashed.
History is a tool for our total emancipation, an agent for our transformation and an enduring lesson on what is right and what is wrong.
Surely, a Zanu-PF Government must have it within itself the moral suasion to feel compelled to ensure our history is thoroughly researched, documented and made available to the nation.
Such an endeavour need not cost much beyond the only major consideration of actually publishing of texts.
The history resides within the minds and hearts of thousands of people who are still alive today; all that’s needed is committing it to durable form such as paper or electronic devices. We must never forget that it was the lack of durable documentation of our history that allowed colonialists to come here and within a few, short generation convince many African people that they were nothing more than drawers of water and hewers of wood. And today, many still believe that they are not fit for anything apart from working for Europeans and Americans, hence the strident opposition to land reform and indigenisation.
The bottom line is this: we have a story, and we must tell it!
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