The Sunday Mail
Renowned academics have commended Dr Obert Mpofu’s forthcoming book, “On the shoulder of the Struggle: Memoirs of a Political Insider”, which provides a riveting narrative about Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. The following are some of the commendations from different scholars.
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Publisher: LAN Readers
A fitting ode to an illustrious political career, the sheer breadth of Mpofu’s experience and contribution paints a self-portrait inextricably entwined with Zimbabwe’s post-colonial identity. Imbued with fervent loyalty to the values of the national liberation struggle, the account is a catalyst for both historical and contemporary political discourse and a welcome addition to the proliferation of the African narrative.
Panashe E. Marufu, University of Cape Town
This pro-African nationalist Philo-praxis biography captures firsthand experiences and emotions of Zimbabwe’s protracted armed struggle. The piece is anchored on shedding more light on how the won Zimbabwean struggle, together with other African struggles, is continually decimated by a miscellany of neo-liberal forces. From where he stands, Dr Obert Moses Mpofu sees Africa waking up one day with no history if efforts are not made to harness its undoing by liberation and heritage plunderers of sorts. The writer, having actively contributed to Zimbabwe’s decolonisation, is prepared to take the struggle to another level by providing a written record of his experiences and thought.
Vongai Zvidenga Nyawo, Professor of History, Midlands State University
“On the Shoulders of Struggle: Memoirs of a Political Insider” offers a hybrid third space for a macro critical political sociology and historical development of the liberation movement in Zimbabwe. This biography is grounded in and grows out of a long history of (epistemic) engagement with nationalism and post-colonial political discourses.
Mpofu tacitly exposes the Empire’s crafting of cultural technologies of dominance and submits a Global South counter-hegemonic challenge to neo-colonialism.
Part of the book’s foreword, which was penned by Dr Artwell Nhemachena of the University of Namibia &Visiting Associate Professor, Kobe University, Japan
Throughout history, colonialists have made unrelenting efforts to decentre African national liberation movements. At present, it is the pervasive neo-liberal discourses that threaten to dismantle emancipatory causes on the continent.
In the post-independence era, African sovereignty has consistently been subjected to deconstruction by the West and its imperialist proxies. It is against this background that Dr Obert Moses Mpofu’s memoir mounts an African anti-colonial reconstruction agenda from a Zimbabwean perspective.
Already suffering natural attrition through the demise of elderly African national liberation fighters and leaders, the movements’ atrophy has been precipitated by neo-colonial mechanisms and institutions. In the face of such protracted neo-colonial endeavours to dismantle African nationalist movements and the values they embody, an epistemic re-remembering of the liberation philosophy is called for. Indeed, in contrast to permanence, the epithet “movement” itself signifies ephemerality which warrants perpetual dialogue.
Dr Nhemachena says: “Appropriated by neo-liberally inclined non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs), African national liberation designs have been erased and supplanted by neo-liberal schemes, with Africans engrossed in empty-shell neo-liberal discourses where they should instead be focused on the reclamation of their land and other resources. Accordingly, Mpofu stresses the principal motive of the armed struggle as economic in nature — while noting that politics was, and still is, used simply as a tool for “democratising the economy”.
“Indeed, whenever resource nationalism or other emancipatory ideas blossom in the so-called Third World, they are swiftly uprooted by the West, repackaged and branded as an affront to property rights or tyranny. Our people and their future leaders have, therefore, given primacy to comparatively immaterial ideals that serve in part to detour Africa’s path towards economic liberation.
“In light of this, comrades such as Mpofu, whose commitment to holistic African liberation has remained consistent, are worth celebrating. In a global environment dominated by neo-liberal ideologies, Mpofu’s contribution offers a relevant contemporary antithesis to a Western political doctrine that rallies African youths against their own liberators.”
In the preface to the book, Pofela Ndzozi, who is the research and publications co-ordinator for the Leaders for Africa Network (LAN) in Bulawayo
Ordinarily, people live to either make history or to immortalise it. Dr Obert Moses Mpofu has achieved both dimensions. With wanton disregard for the boundaries of a “single story”.
Mpofu’s submission represents a construction of the struggle for Zimbabwe with the immediacy and novelty of a participant.
Added to this, Dr Mpofu’s academic approach, and the Leaders for Africa Network Readers’ (LAN) interest, the synergy was inevitable.
Mpofu’s contribution, which philosophically situates Zimbabwe’s contemporary politics and socio-economic landscape, embodies LAN Readers’ dedication to knowledge generation and, by extension, scientific growth. LAN Readers is a social science research and publishing entity with the aim of contributing to emerging discourses on developmental issues of both national and regional significance.”
Although the publication was initially intended as a reflection on Zimbabwe’s pre- and post-independence political journey with a focus on the impact of the liberation on contemporary politics, the November 2017 developments that birthed the “New Dispensation” necessitated a broader scope. While Mpofu’s contribution still follows the original blueprint, his book gives due regard to recent socio-political and economic developments.
Through a collaborative process with LAN Readers, the final form of the contribution took shape. It was never the author’s intention to pen a memoir.
However, by contextualising the historical narrative within the personal, Mpofu breathes new life into the Zimbabwean story, colouring our history with a human element, a story with a depth and multi-facetedness often absent from the standard textbook reading.
