The Sunday Mail
Dr Tafataona Mahoso
Future historians, when most of the facts are in, will be able to write more satisfying explanations and interpretations of the momentous events which happened in Zimbabwe in November 2017 and to assess the lasting impact of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces’ peaceful intervention code-named “Operation Restore Legacy”.
What a contemporary writer can hope to do for now is to provide a first draft which historians who lived through the 1974 US scandal called “Watergate” described as writing hot history.
The first contemporary lesson from the events here is that history is neither tradition nor nostalgia as some in the G40 formation tended to think.
History is the philosophical and practical grounding which empowers succeeding generations to frame and shape their future realistically.
When we want an accurate diagnosis leading to a prescription from our doctor, we bring to him or her our previous medical records, X-rays and past prescriptions of medicines taken.
The diagnosis, based on a combined reading of present symptoms and past medical history, enables the doctor to estimate a prognosis, which is about the future.
If there are no past records to present, then a wise patient has to narrate the history of his or her health, thereby enabling the medical practitioner to construct or reconstruct a history.
History is unavoidable.
The second contemporary lesson I picked up from the morning after Operation Restore Legacy came from the content of songs which re-occupied the media space which up to then had been flooded with Zim Dancehall music and with G40 hate speech and lies.
The historical songs now brought in were from the 1970s but not about the 1970s.
They were about the common aspirations of the generations of Murenga, Madzimbahwe, looking way into the future and confirming the principle that history is about the future, confirming the African proverb that Uyo anotungamira haatizi negwara (nenzira): The pioneer of a path does not disappear with it.
The path remains long after the pioneers are gone and it can be maintained, extended, widened and paved to include expanding generations.
The third lesson remains tentative yet crucial.
The rush to label “factions” every time there is disagreement among Africans is a long established enemy tactic based on linear perspective. It serves to create and establish the idea that everyone now belongs to one faction or the other.
In Europe and the US, they use more nuanced language about the left, the right, the centre, centre-left, centre-right, and so on, of the same party because they want to foreground national unity and to allow each tendency to be heard and understood, whether in the Democratic Party, in the Republican Party, in the Conservative Party, in the Labour Party, in the Christian Democrats or Social Democrats.
In the case of Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF “factions”, the opposite approach was promoted: The National Political Commissar foreclosed any such nuances by declaring that he was “the biggest thug in Zanu-PF”; so he was going to teach nothing and he would not strive for mutual understanding, let alone unity.
This was followed by an orgy of expulsions from the party of those people labelled as belonging to alleged factions, not tendencies.
The tendencies were quickly given nasty names in the Press to make them look as alien as possible.
Madzimbahwe were told about “Gamatox” and “Lacoste”.
There were desperate efforts even to the extent of labelling some provinces as mere hotbeds of factionalism and to put words into the mouths of our departed liberation war heroes condemning current living leaders.
Madzimbahwe, however, quickly realised that the “either/or” approach to political tendencies was meant to ensure a three-stage fall into mayhem.
The first step is the belief that everyone belongs to a faction. The second step is that my faction is holy while the other is evil. The third step is to engage in endless and unprocedural expulsions of all suspects and turn them into the key result area for the Commissariat.
The strategy here is that if the faction the enemy wants to promote and install fails to achieve its objective, plan B becomes a situation where the population sinks into despair and apathy, believing that it has no real choices; believing that it is merely caught in between or among warring factions who are equally bad and equally at fault.
Here, the enemy would have succeeded in reducing to a faction even those leaders who truly stand for a national vision and national unity.
Everyone is then perceived as merely chasing after positions.
Once that happened, the national and Pan-African values, and the history at stake became unclear.
Once we understand the perception which the enemy promoted and sought to make permanent, it becomes easy to understand the strategic value of Operation Restore Legacy.
That intervention raises the crucial question in the minds of the people: If it is true that we had simply been reduced to helpless pawns in a factional game; if the supposed factions were equally bad; how and why did the ZDF state clearly that Operation Restore Legacy was meant to remove G40 “criminals around the President”?
That intervention and its stated purpose showed that the people were not helplessly caught between two factions which were identical and equally to blame for factionalism.
The resonance of the ZDF’s declaration of Chimurenga ethos and legacy to be the value system guiding its intervention and future programmes lifted the struggle far above and beyond factionalism, thereby making it obvious to all that what was at stake were not factions.
The intended perception that we were caught between two factions was overcome for two main reasons: G40’s attacks on history and on war veterans, and the decision by the ZDF to intervene using Chimurenga (liberation history and legacy) as a rallying point.
That ZDF intervention did not only resonate with the values and aspirations of the people but also distinguished war veterans, the ZDF and the people who came out in full force on November 13, 2017 from the Political Commissar’s G40 boast of “I’m the biggest thing in Zanu-PF”.
Thuggery tramples vision and values.
It follows from all this that the fourth lesson from Operation Restore Legacy is the realisation that the same forces claiming that history is a redundant and useless subject have also persistently and consistently sought to denigrate and demonise liberation war veterans, many of whom still serve in the ZDF.
In my October 13, 2017 instalment in the Patriot newspaper, I cited a Sunday News story on Deputy Minister Godfrey Gandawa’s views about history and other humanities subjects.
The story is worth citing again: “(Twelve) varsity degrees to be redundant… It has emerged that at least 12 degree programmes offered by the country’s universities might be redundant in Zimbabwe by 2040 due to technology disruption.
“Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Deputy Minister Dr Godfrey Gandawa said the degree programmes that risk going under include Media and Society Studies, Political Science, Paralegal (Studies), Tourism and Hospitality Management, Psychology, Accounting, Business Administration, Marketing, Economic History, Heritage (Studies), Pharmacy and History.”
Deputy Minister Gandawa’s assumptions echoed Henry Ford’s idea that: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a thinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
Ford’s view was published on May 25, 1916.
Although detractors of history as practice and discipline latched on to Ford’s confused declaration, it was clear from the start that Ford did not define or understand the subject.
He expressed a personal reaction to a faulty method of teaching history as “tradition”.
He mistakenly thought history excluded contemporary life and contemporary affairs precisely because he had been made to believe that history meant tradition and the mindless memorisation of past events and dates.
Like structural adjustment programmes, the devaluation of history as a discipline and the denigration of the knowledge of history were exported to the South.
In Zimbabwe, promoters of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme also became enemies of history and the role of nationalist intellectuals in economic debates.
Their hostility was expressed as a general attack on the humanities as a whole.
ZTV and The Herald, for instance, reported in late November 1998 that late local businessman Eric Bloch and other “experts” used a British Council-sponsored workshop to demand an end to social science and humanities teaching at Zimbabwean universities.
Instead, Bloch said, universities should concentrate on technical and practical training to produce entrepreneurs.
The Herald paraphrased Mr Bloch, as saying: “We don’t need several hundred political scientists, socio-economists, linguists, holders of general degrees in the arts and the like.”
The President of Saint Mary’s College, Maryland, US, Mr Edward T Lewis, regretted the devaluation of history as an academic discipline and the denigration of historical knowledge.
Lewis made the painful observation that society and the economy in general were devaluing history at exactly the time when it was most-needed because of the proliferation of confusing media which also ignored historical knowledge.
According to Lewis: “As a result (of the devaluation of history), many of these students . . . have no sense of their past, no sense of their roots. They are victimised by a sort of solipsism in which they perceive themselves as self-created, existing entirely in the present.
“Locked in a concern for the immediate and strictly personal, they possess little sense of the shared values of a community. They clearly believe that one must decide for oneself with no responsibility to the past, no obligation to the future. For the most part, they recognise only an obligation to survive the (moment).”
The history of teaching which Africans are reclaiming worldwide goes back 5 000 years as demonstrated by Gorge James’ “Stolen Legacy” and James Breasted’s “The Dawn of Conscience”.
Moses became the supreme leader of the insurgent Hebrew nation emerging out of Egypt where he was raised and educated.
Moses’ African tezvara played the role of consultant-advisor to his mukwasha after visiting the latter and finding that mukwasha had developed dangerous dictatorial tendencies within the Hebrew liberation.
It is worth repeating Jethro’s advice: “Moses’ father-in-law said to him, ‘What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it (that is govern) alone . . . Look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and who hate corruption, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens.
“And let them lead and judge the people at all times. Every great and national matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves.
“So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you, you will be able to endure, and all these people queuing up here will go to their bases in peace.’ So Moses listened to the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said.”
First, the passage shows the truth of the African intellectual practice that the family is the first and basic locus of moral, political, ethical and philosophical education for children.
The family is the embryo of moral education, the basic unit for instilling the values of unhu/Maat.
Second, the African father-in-law did not lecture Moses about the notorious claims and counter-claims which today are called inherent human rights.
He focused on relationships in accordance with the African view that no child anywhere is born into inherent rights or with inherent rights. Every child is born into relationships, which, if optimal, may enable him or her to thrive or, if dysfunctional, may destroy him or her.
Third, it shows that the family did not provide this basic service for its own benefit and aggrandisement, but for the whole movement, the nation.
Jethro did not advise Moses to recruit his own immediate family or friends.
To the contrary, Jethro said: “Look for able men from all the people (constituting the insurgent nation), men who fear God, who are trustworthy and who hate corruption.”
Fourth, the leaders chosen from all the people were already leaders before being appointed and the cells, bases, branches, districts and provinces which they led represented the effective on-the-ground penetration of actual space, actual territory, by the Hebrew liberation movement seeking the Promised Land.
Fifth, it is clear from all the sources that the African heritage of integrated teaching was always aimed at existing leaders and future leaders being groomed.
These were leaders both of their families and their nation. In fact, this type of teaching was developed first and foremost for would-be-leaders of families and later extended and improved to benefit community and nation.
Africans understood 5 000 years ago, 2 000 years before Jesus, that whether for family or nation, it was dangerous to have leaders who thrived on oppression and injustice; it was dangerous to be led by leaders who lied routinely; it was dangerous to have untrustworthy leaders; it was dangerous to suffer leaders who seemed to enjoy flaunting and spreading their foolishness to the rest of society.
The family and the nation needed leaders who sought wisdom and truth.
Those who were incompetent or oppressive of their families would be barred from leading the community or national institutions.
Even where the leader had good intentions, Jethro recognised that Moses’ over-centralisation of power had become a danger to himself and his people.
It was no longer viable.
In Guns and Rain, David Lan concluded that Zimbabwe’s liberation war fighters and their collaborators during the Second Chimurenga were adopted by the owners of Zimbabwe as descendants of the mhondoro.
In the 1970s, the ancestors who own this land recognised that the guerrillas had succeeded in planting actual cells, bases, branches, districts and even provinces in places which had become no-go areas for chiefs and spirit mediums since 1896.
When we were in secondary school, we were subjected to a political and social geography book by George Kay which divided Zimbabwe into “White Highlands”, “Natural Parks”, “Tribal Trust Lands” and “African Purchase Areas”.
All these areas were no-go areas for indigenous African authority.
They were effectively run by representatives and stooges of the colonial authority and most of madzishe and madzimambo had been reduced either to unwilling victims or willing stooges of the colonial authority.
Even spirit mediums who represented sovereign national spirits, nevertheless, could not move freely from Nyamapanda to Beitbridge; from Rutenga to Dotito; or from Plumtree to Rusitu.
It was the liberation fighters and their collaborators who restored madzishe, madzimambo and masvikiro to their mhondoros and to their liberated territories.
After the Second Chimurenga, the African liberation movement recognised this universal national role of the freedom fighters in uniting the people, madzishe, madzimambo, masvikiro and reigning spirits of their ancestors (mhondoro) by making sure that there was a Heroes Acre (Heroes Shrine) in every province.
This act was supposed to signal the final abolition of tribalism, ethnic chauvinism and regionalism.
It was supposed to end forever the existence of no-go areas or no-fly zones within the territory of Zimbabwe for any and all vana vevhu.
But something was left missing: The teaching which unites the war veteran, chimbwido, mujiba, intellectual, teacher, priest, svikiro, sadunhu, ishe, mambo and mhondoro as all engaged in the teaching of Maat: Unhu, truth, justice, trustworthiness, integrity and wisdom.
Unless those provincial shrines are used as teaching places for these five-millennia-old values, they may become empty and irrelevant structures to be condemned by our children’s children as heathen, wasteful and obsolete.
You cannot have meaningful Heroes Shrines without living priests of the national liberation ethos to service them with dignity and wisdom.
This is why the ZDF’s intervention had to be couched in the organic values of Chimurenga and in our history.
