The Herald

Political Commentary

By Nathaniel Manheru: The Other Side

7 May 2016

As I sit down to write this piece, it is February 18, 1978, and David Coltart has just taken off for South Africa, to start his university studies at UCT, the University of Cape Town. He leaves behind Rhodesia, still burning, his Ngundu post — the last he commanded before being cashiered from the BSAP, the British South Africa Police as the Rhodesian police force is called — still feeling surrounded, embattled. We have been together from a very long way off, on a long journey which he decided should start in 1957, his birth year, and in his home.

It is also the birth year of my brother Fanuel, the one who survived to become the first born of our family, after a series of mortalities of infants in our family. The repeated deaths of my mother’s infants were a very sad occurrence that earned her a nickname, Mai Chibhodyange — one who bears for the grave. Except the nickname said a lot more than the tragedy that befell the family infants. It suggested some measure of inexcusable recklessness on the part of my mother.

How that was so, I have never understood, although I want to believe this was the verdict of aggressive masculinity on a hapless woman after whom tragedy had stalked repeatedly, against the expected duty of extending the line of the Manherus. After all, was she not married precisely for that, namely to grow the line of the family? Had papa not paid bride price, right up to the last kobiri, the last penny? She had come in as a second wife, a good time after baba’s first wife, who by then had borne him four children, two of them sons. To start a cemetery for a family that knew no tears? No. Mai Chibhodyange she had to be called, deservedly.

The one who bears for the grave

Fanuel sprouted God knows from where. To survive beyond the fifth year, itself the impassable year for his early siblings. It marked the beginning of more children, with just one — another son — born to soil. His name was Obednico, lifted from the Bible as a statement of my mother’s hope for the longevity of her children. He died. Unbowed, mama bore another, a son who, in an act of stubborn will to life, was given his immediate late brother’s name. So another Obednico.

This one lived, born in 1960, and after him came myself, a child of 1962 but one fated, as most African children of my generation and before were, to be registered as born a year later. So 1963 is my official year of birth. But this is not about me. It is about Coltart, my brother’s peer, had it not been for Coltart’s paleness, or my brother’s ebony colour in a racially truncated Rhodesian society. And of course for the contrasting fortunes of parentage.

Hung for stealing a sheep

Fanuel was born to an African peasant family; Coltart to a white middle class family. From “The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe”, Coltart’s father reads like he had a very stable, successful banking career, firstly and for quite a while with Grindlays Bank, and after at retirement, with Finscor. Not many of my young readers will know these two Rhodesian financial institutions, they having been born well after Independence.

Such a career made Coltart a child born biting a golden spoon. Not by allegation, but by his own proud admission in the book. The only slur on his family’s escutcheon related to an occurrence way back in the misty past when one from his line, thinking such a successful family could not fail to prove some consanguineous fastening to British (or is it Scottish) royalty, sought to trace back the family tree. Only to be stopped abruptly by some rude, irreverent 15th century church entry that spoke of a Coltart who had been “hung by the neck until dead for stealing sheep”. Of course that was rather harsh. I wonder what the sentence would have been for the Rhodes, the Jamesons and, much later, the Coltarts again, for stealing a country.

Contrasting peers

My father died an unknown man, hardly remembered for anything great by his small African village. That created yet another great chasm between Coltart’s family and Fanuel, although their parents may have been peers. It was Fanuel’s father’s elder brother who had fought in the Second World War, Babamukuru vaSimbi. I wrote about him once in this column. Another difference between Fanuel and David. In the early nineties, Fanuel disappeared from the Chipinga white estates to go, we presume, to South Africa.

It is not clear whether he took the route through Mozambique, then at war, or went down through Beitbridge. We never heard from him again, and are content to reconstruct his naughty face through a son he left behind, one of his two children. Of course David lives, born alone to a death-free family by way of infants, and then to go forth and multiply to . . . oh his book has not yet told me the size of his brood.

Coltart on history

Quite neatly, The Struggle Continues’ first seven chapters constitute a unit: by time, by era, by colour, and by ethos. A friend was late in bringing me a copy of this book, which only reached my eager hands late Thursday evening, after so much waiting, after so many tantalising but decidedly misleading excerpts selectively ran by our hardly literate journalists. You not only take what they publish with a pinch of salt.

That is an understatement. It has to be with a shovel of s**t. I am not so sure of what needs to be done to make our journalism any closer to readable decency. By late afternoon yesterday, I had gone through half the book, certainly past the seven chapters that introduce it. It tells you how eminently readable David is. Or how gripping his story is. Or how determinedly sinister I am in looking at his book for this week. Take your pick.

Beyond modesty

Quite a book by way of style like I have already said. Indeed quite something by the time span it seeks to encompass — 50 eventful years that only delete seven from his life to now, deletes the seven as the time of the unconscious, of his childhood. Coltart makes a humble claim for this startling, sturdy efforts. He calls it “an autobiographical political history”. Thus far I agree.

Beyond this claim, he becomes presumptuous, offensively so: “autobiographical political history of the last six decades of Zimbabwean history”, he says, cockily. Substitute “of” with “in” after “decades”; remove the ownership suffix on “Zimbabwe” before history, and I am fine with his claims. Retain these and you trigger my adrenalin to tempestuous levels that make me want to write — comment — midstream as an angry African. A self-respecting African not wont to grovelling before any race.

The Struggle Continues is a great book about Coltart, his middle-class white family and class, his ever evolving politics and his place in anti-Zanu-PF opposition politics in the past, now and in future. Let the book not attempt to encompass, to make lofty claims about its author, please. One gets a little weary of this class of Rhodesian-white do-gooders — in their own inflated self-estimate — who think they enjoy a commanding vantage point from where they can give the world a representative slice of “Zimbabwean history”. And there is a growing army of such cocky ex-Rhodies, including Ian Smith himself.

A second colonialism

The list of such is long. Some were historians of the Rhodesian establishment, myth-makers and apologists who believed they could re-narrativise the occupier into owning this country. Others were curators of various sites of our African history who followed in the footsteps of the McIvers, all to steal our civilisation, give it away to the Phoenicians or some such strange races, or simply to devalue its and our worth, by making that civilisation anonymous, by making it an ownerless, unbreakable enigma. The if-it-does-not-belong-to-the-white-or-other-non-African-race-let-it-belong-to-no-one type.

That breed which thinks the Great Zimbabwe was the mythical god-from-a-machine, never the painful handiwork and footprint of a great civilisation that struggled to make itself and that has inheritors. Still others simply lived the age, all the better still as offshoots of lineages of great colonial names, an attribute which they think entitles them to narrativising this country’s history with a sense of proud proprietorship, without being gainsaid.

Their forbears made that history, thereby bequeathing them with all-time authorship rights. And then you have Rhodesia’s soldiers and servicemen who think time has washed away their bloody hands, salved their conscience enough to reposition them as today’s story-tellers from ‘inside’, with all of us mutely sitting around them, eyes fixed, ears preened to see and hear ourselves in their stories. They forget they were insiders of the white citadel, contemptuous outsiders of an occupied people in continual resistance, in continual making of opposed history, itself part of overall national history. That our histories conflict, contest, parallel, with any contacts or intersections igniting sharp sparks of grave controversies. That their narratives are a second attempt at genocide, a second occupation of a people who have confused decolonisation with decoloniality, to quote a UNISA-based Zimbabwean historian. I don’t need to give you names. Or to remind Coltart that he belongs to this category.

Forcible conscription

A key feature of Coltart’s great political autobiography comes by way the three pages of praise that assail the reader, that seek to pre-possess the reader before he wades into it. You meet the Kennedys, the Obornes, the Rogers, the Howards and their imperial titles, the Russells, the Haysom and their books or linkages with Mandela, the Seerys and their flatulent statuses, the Lambs and their associational fame with Mujuru and Malala, ex-British high commissioners and their undisclosed failed subversive missions here, the David Blairs who gained notoriety here as journalists for rekindled second British empires. I don’t care much about whites singing praises to one of their own.

I care much when they seek to make claims that encompass and imprison me and my kind in that narrow, partisan narrative. You meet extravagant phrases like “a brilliantly engaging deep dive into Zimbabwe’s political history”; “a history of Zimbabwe itself”; an understanding of “the complexities and multiple truths of Zimbabwe and its people”; “a masterful account of Zimbabwe’s unfinished struggle for freedom”; “the history of Zimbabwe”; “the tragedy of Zimbabwe”; “an unsparing . . . depiction of the discrimination and brutality of the colonial era”; ‘the dramatic history of his country, Zimbabwe”.

Parallel histories that don’t meet

Nor do I care which politician, which leader the book derides or praises. Let the gored cow collapse or die. But please, no one should conscript us into a narrative that is decidedly white, narrow, self-exculpatory and serving by making it “the Zimbabwean history”. Not even “a”, but “the Zimbabwean history”. Or locate my struggles as a black man within the strange struggles of a white minority class battling to end guilt, struggling to retain colonial-time privileges, or seeking to reposition

themselves politically in post-colonial politics. My humanity can’t be cheapened to that degree. Let a white man whose hand itches to write do so from the vantage point of his race and class, without making claims about the life I lived and live, which they will never know or reach. We come from different spheres of life and experience. Conflicting ones even.

This land of histories

I create an impression that Coltart’s praises come from white only. Not really. There are blacks, black like me. There is Petina Gappah, a lawyer and award-winning writer with deep connections to Coltart and the opposition. She carries my respect though by her comments which spotlight the introspective value of the book, firmly placing it in the genre of autobiography.

Dr Alex Magaisa

Then there is Alex Magaisa, a Kent law academic and past advisor of Morgan Tsvangirai. Like Gappah, he is careful to situate this effort within the autobiographical, and within many other testimonies which, analysed or put together, help historians reconstruct a national history. Both know there is no history of Zimbabwe; there are histories. You clearly see two contrasting sensibilities: one imperial, another African, the latter so measured and respectful, but acutely aware of the vast chasm between Coltart, his experiences and therefore his pen, and three-quarters of the people of this land. It gives me some modicum of comfort.

A leaf from India

Lest I sound vain and dismissive, just want to make a few points on the contents of the book itself, contents on history since I intend to deal with the contemporary questions it raises in another instalment. In so doing, I am fully conscious of the fact that the indigenous people of this land bear the full responsibility of writing their own history. They are still to do so, and should not begrudge those that fill the vacuum of their silences.

But the boundaries of that history must be guarded jealously so we do not suffer another quarter-century of satisfied silence, thinking there are Terence Rangers out there ready to write for us. They never do. I am happy that black historians and other social scientists are beginning to repudiate Eurocentric narratives, to give the turn of events from their African perspectives.

Gatsheni-Sebelo

That way Gatsheni-Sebelo’s idea of decoloniality begins to come real, but not without efforts to scuttle such new, liberating narratives from all manner of corners. As far as this is concerned, we have a lot to learn from Indian scholarship, which is why the death of the late Professor Sam Moyo was such a blow. Thankfully, he left behind active acolytes. The Indians traced their civilisation from the ADs to 1947, the year of independence. No one reframes them anymore, to make them something else than what they are, and aspire to be.

Two sins: one expiated, another indictable

I will make just a few, telling points. In essence, Coltart seeks to depict a sense of seamless continuity between Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, which is why he does not see the two as contesting histories, contradictory values and narratives. But he puts both dispensations on the scale of blameworthiness, concluding while the crimes of white Rhodesia and the Rhodesia Front are expiated through introspection and unactionable self-narratives, those of Zimbabwe which he morally equates with those of Rhodesia, are beyond expiation, indeed should be excavated, exhumed, raked, and if possible tried through the ICC.

That is the import of Breaking Silence and its resurrectional sequel, The Struggle Continues. One example suffices. Coltart witnesses the flinging into a disused mine shaft of a mutilated body of a freedom fighter by his peers in Chiredzi in 1977. The matter ends there: a mere paragraph,a mere narration in a book, rather than a call to identify the mine and exhume the combatant for completion of black Zimbabwean struggle history, for decent reburial of the war veteran and his peers.

He knows the disused mine surely? What has he done? By contrast, Coltart investigates and exhumes remains in disused mine shafts in Matabeleland in the late eighties and nineties. He names the atrocities Gukurahundi, indicts Government and builds an eternal case against the present government. What is the moral? Apartheid was no standing as a government. But people were hauled before Truth Commission.

The gun that never shot in hot war

Coltart upholds the idea of struggle between the two dispensations to suggest continuity of resistance. After reading the greater part of the book, you notice both Rhodesia and Zimbabwe are criticised without either being condemned, as if to suggest 1980 was no marker, and that excesses of post-independence deny Zimbabwe moral status that puts it apart from Rhodesia, while his own see-saw struggle with his own conscience as a Rhodesian security functionary, appears to exculpate Rhodesia as a dispensation with a conscience.

And it is this continuing strand of conscience — which he himself personifies — that defines the struggle which he says continues. It is non-statal, exceeds states, which is how individual moral standing seem to matter than brutalising systems. The struggle does not inhere in the Rhodesia Front; does not inhere in Zanu or Zapu. If anything, these antagonistic sides parallel each other, often mutually recruiting for each other, albeit unintentionally.

Conscience therefore becomes the referent to struggle, personified by him, his father and his liberal friends. His choice to fight for Smith is blamed on youthfulness, peers, call-up or excesses by freedom fighters. Once he discovers excesses of his side, then it’s time to leave for UCT. He gives not a single incident which comes close to self-incrimination, leaving one wondering at all whether he ever fired his FN rifle, and at a target. It is a very strange kind of war he fought. Or even if you come close to incriminating him as a reader, you redeem him as the only Rhodesian who confesses!

Reissuing white historiography

Penultimately, Coltart works within the white Rhodesian historiography with all its paradoxes and contradictions. Before 1957, his account of history upholds the settler myth that the whole of Zimbabwe was under Mzikilazi and Lobengula successively, which is why treating with Lobengula was enough to justify white occupation of Zimbabwe. Then he runs into a narrative problem when the settlers occupy Mashonaland, but without seeing the need to treat with Lobengula anew.

It was well “beyond the borders” of Lobengula’s Mthwakazi, he says! And Rhodesia from occupation to the end of the Federation was a country in halcyon days! For who? White well-being becomes everyone’s well-being. His whole narrative before 1980 draws from Ian Smith, Ken Flower and minimally the Todds. He can’t draw from the Shamuyariras, the Sitholes who are covering the same period, or even from fellow liberal whites like Doris Lessing whose 1957 publication, “Going Home”, is a key text on white Rhodesia from a white perspective.

Cooks and garden boys as African society

African organisations have no history, no beginning, and drop into the narrative from the blue, with countable references to Joshua Nkomo only. Otherwise the real Africans you meet are a mass character, Vashiko Time Oliver and Peter Muchakagara, his family’s Mozambican cook and Shona gardener respectively. And much later constables Sibanda, Murima, Kanyekanye, a San tracker called Maplank and Mangwiro.

These exhaust his African universe, giving him the competence to write about our struggles, you and me! Giving him an authorial voice in the narrative of this country. These few Africans are lauded, a typical Rhodesian disposition from the 1890s. Colonel R.S.S. Baden-Powell writing in 1897 moans the departure of his loyal Cape Boy servant called “Diamond”. The entire settlers fighting to consolidate their occupation of Zimbabwe show great gratitude to another Zulu Askari called Jan Grootboom who proves too useful in both the 1893 and 1896 campaign, to be an “ordinary Kaffir”. “He is not a proper nigger; his skin is black, but he has a white man’s heart. I will shake hands with him”, said one white Grey Scout under Baden-Powell. The dilemma of exceptionality is typical to white colonial historiography and Coltart narrative has not outgrown it so many years after 1980. Zimbabwe needed a Martin Luther, a Nelson Mandela and De Klerk, he repeatedly opines, as if all these solved problems of their nations, let alone of humanity.

Facing future politics

Lastly, the whole narrative is self-serving. It lays a groundwork for Coltart’s political career after 1980. Much worse, it anticipates his continued career between now and 2018. Some kind of self-manifesto ahead of 2018, but one seeking to reissue or revalorised an otherwise dying narrative, Breaking Silence, but within contemporary politics of Mthwakazi. After all, his entire stay in Kezi and Matabeleland hardly saw any self-incriminating action.

Why wouldn’t he be electable in 2018? Above all, even within the narrative of opposition, he is still vigilant enough to notice excesses which might endanger human rights should the opposition ever come to power. This is a healthy stance to assume nowadays when the opposition has long lost its lustre. You condemn institutions, you exceptionalise individuals, like him! Above all, his tentacles of connections in the white world are vast and limitless. Who would not want such a white man near him? Or above him? Whatever his appeal to whomsoever, that is no reason to embrace his story as my story, as our story as blacks of this country. I refuse.

Icho!

nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw

Sunday News

By Richard Runyararo Mahomva

1 May 2016

Last week’s piece summarised how the element White liberalism intruded the idea of liberating Zimbabwe in pure nationalist and pan-Africanist terms. It was in that instalment where I highlighted the hidden agenda of what members of the colonial race present to us as generosity for what they perceive as our lack of civilisation.

This is shown in the way they make it appear as if their superficial acceptance of our historical difference with them is a virtue. Yet it is clear that their generosity through aid to Africa is financed by centuries of White ancestral theft to the continent. This is not new as exemplified by the neo-colonial agenda marshalled through foreign donor ‘development’ projects in Africa specifically in Zimbabwe. Whenever White aid is rendered it appears as if the former colonial state has demoted itself by understanding the African condition so that equality with the needy African states is achieved. Surprisingly, this has continued to be the key characteristic of Black and White relations above all Africa’s relationship with the West.

This rehearsed benevolence dates back to the time of the African struggle and was the main cause for the abortion of Africa’s aspirations for political and economic freedom in Afrocentric terms. This is the reason why our patriotism to the values of our past and the present at a national level are diverse and conflict with each other. The alternatives for the Afrocentric paradigm of patriotism is now nothing more than political slogans that only reflect psychotic partisan power interests. The same slogans are now the vehicle for Zimbabwe’s split patriotic consciousness.

This is the reason why other sections of the country’s population find it excruciating to have the national pledge introduced in schools. This thinking substantiates the case in point of Zimbabwe’s split patriotic consciousness. Msipa (2016) and Coltart (2016) have also provided an exhaustive debate which reflects this from a historical perspective.

Through their lives they have shown how individual commitment to the nation will continue to be shaped by class and race matters. Their memoirs further capture how inter-racial dialogue inevitably leads to the transmission of political orientations of the populace. This is why today we find Africans who are sympathetic to the cause of the White interests. It is this situation that has facilitated the betrayal of African liberation values at a time we need them the most to confront the future. However, it is interesting that in the face of such betrayals of African political identities we have revolutionaries that upheld their love for the good cause of African liberation to the bitter end.

Msipa’s memoir is quite elaborative on that aspect as it captures how he committed his life to the attainment of the country’s freedom. How that has shaped his patriotism to this day. Likewise, the concluding remarks of the book offer a critical introspection of what Zimbabwe needs to do in order to develop. He avoids glorifying the wrongs of our post-colonial political and economic facets of nationhood. As one reads Msipa’s memoir to the end it is clear that we need to work hard to restore Zimbabwe to its founding ideas of national uniformity, prosperity and freedom for all.

Without the boldness to escape self-interest split-patriotic consciousness will remain a threat to the virtues of those who chose to sacrifice their lives for Zimbabwe.

Regardless of all that the country has went through Msipa takes the reader back to what he wanted to achieve through his brotherly ties with some of his contemporaries. Using President Mugabe as a key example he explains how this country is a product of sacrifice, long-suffering and the will to bring about change for the betterment of the lives of our populace.

Msipa clearly indicates that patriotism of the populace is sustained by delivery of good governance. As long there is good governance it is easy for an Afrocentric paradigm of patriotic consciousness to be achieved. This way neo-colonial additives to the making of nationhood would be discarded.

As long there is discipline in the revolutionary party and less factional fragmentations within ZANU-PF it is easy for the Afrocentric patriotic paradigm to be achieved.

This is because so far it is the ruling party that carries the banner of the Afrocentric political ideology. This tempts me to revisit the Head of State, President Mugabe’s address on the need for essential discipline needed to build progressive universal patriotism:

Internal discipline is a state of order within a person that propels him to do the right things. It is a stage of individual development that resolves the contradictions within an individual. The pull to be selfish is counterbalanced by a greater pull to be selfless, the pull to drunkenness is countered by one to moderation, the pull to disobedience is negatived by that to obedience, and the pull to sexual givenness yields to sexual restraint, deviationism is corrected by compliance and individualism by collectivism. The individual must comply with the order laid down by the group.

Without the mentioned discipline understanding one’s belonging and duties to the nation’s universal patriotic consciousness shall be limited.

On the other hand, the issue of split patriotic consciousness is also important in enabling us to understand the position of coloniality’s transfer to our contemporary politics. This is better explained by shifting identities of White liberals like David Coltart. This is why it is necessary that when one reads Coltart’s character as entailed in his book they should attempt to answer one crucial question. At what point does Coltart become part of the Black cause and historical agenda? The answer there quite clear that his sympathy to the African was only for his fair personal political advantage.

Writing in independent Zimbabwe, Coltart mentions that he reached his Damascus moment in 1981 just like the biblical Paul who was persecuting the innocent (Coltart 2015: xiii). Reading this view from the book’s introduction triggers the reader’s curiosity on why the guilt of working to the service of coloniality arrived in Coltart’s conscience after independence?

Moreover, considering that the book “is an autobiographical political history of the last six decades of Zimbabwean history… (ibid), the political scientist in me is awakened to argue that the writing’s aim is to exert an effort into the ongoing power struggles in Zimbabwe. It further entails locating oneself in the changing courses of the political culture of the land. For example realising that being an apologetic beneficiary to racism at the end of colonial rule was no longer politically correct.

This is not different from some who started fingering the ruling party for corruption and despotism after they were shown their respective political exits.

In conclusion, Zimbabwe’s nation-building process requires historical honest if we are to move on and accept our patriotic differences with dignity.

At the same time acknowledging that we have a common aim of acting according to terms of the African decoloniality script.

This way we will be guaranteed of a safe departure from the paradigm of difference and various antagonisms for one another.

Sunday News

Comment

17 April 2016

By Richard Runyararo Mahomva

It is with great shock that Zimbabwe is continuously losing her prolific thinkers. This past week I was shocked to receive the news about Alexander Kanengoni’s departure for eternal rest. “Gora” (His Norm De guerre) the veteran writer was no more. The late critical thinker and war-veteran, Kanengoni has not lived to see Zimbabwe turning 36, something I am sure would have delighted his heart.

Kanengoni will be mainly remembered for his articles in the Patriot Newspaper where he was deputy editor. The same paper and its editorial policy complimented Kanengoni’s role as a sharp critic of neo-coloniality. Cde Kanengoni, just like his late colleague Dr Vimbai Gukwe Chivaura was an essential asset of literary decoloniality in Zimbabwe. His call further extended to the decolonisation of knowledge at continental level. He committed his life to making Africans understand their role in the civilisation of humanity and largely how Zimbabweans need to cherish their hard earned freedom.

I remember reading his highly patriotic poems in “The Ghetto Diaries and Other Poems” a book that was given to me as a souvenir by Professor Nhamo Mhiripiri and his wife, Mai Joyce Mhiripiri. This was during my last days at the Midlands State University (MSU). I still remember it was on the evening of Professor Nhamo’s birthday at his house where I was given the book. So I consider the poetry anthology given to me by the Mhiripiri intellectual couple as a farewell package and a gift that further connected me to Kanengoni’s writing beside his newspaper articles.

The Mhiripiri literary darlings, Nhamo and Joyce are also published in the same compendium. I am happy they chose to give me a book with Kanengoni’s poems. I enjoyed reading his poems mainly: Nyadzonya massacre, One day at Roerei Refugee Camp and one titled; The lost times of our lives. The book carries poetic narratives of a generation that had lost its being to marginalities of coloniality, it represents an awakening and a consciousness of distinguished patriots. I always feel inspired to defend African epistemology every time I read the poem: Lest we forget — Nkosi sikelela iAfrica by Prof Mhiripiri in the same collection. All the poems reflect a unique perspective of a patriotic proclivity shared by African writers considering their backgrounds of first-hand experiences with both colonial Rhodesia and free Zimbabwe. Some poems carry messages of optimism for continuity from a horrid past which heralded the contemporary nation-building challenges manifesting in the form of our split patriotic consciousness.

Like his other colleagues and contemporaries, Kanengoni’s writing expressed a high level of what I have described in the two previous articles as a benchmark of ‘Afrocentric patriotism’. This is the kind of patriotism that acknowledges and embraces the ethos of the African liberation struggle and conceptualises it as a medium of making sense of the present.

This is the same medium that informs the analyses of Msipa and Coltart’s books from their varying patriotic inclinations as explained in the other two articles. However, within the public sphere there is too much lenience on

White narratives of patriotism as some strongly feel that there is need to be silent about the cruelties of the White past as part of reconciliation. Some fellow African scholars think tolerance to manifestations of neo-coloniality misguided as “moving-on” can produce cadres who are in essence relevant to contemporary matters of integrating humanity as that defines modern thinking. Responding to last week’s article a colleague, Eric Donald Mabuto highlighted that:

[…] The insistence of analysing the two texts on the basis of how they treat history is almost a way of escaping analysing them in the way they treat contemporary issues. We know about the colonial heritage and how it undermined blacks there is ample scholarship on that subject. What is of interest to contemporary African scholars like me is analysing existing inequalities that cannot be summarised by racial condemnations. I am talking about inequalities between blacks themselves. The type of inequalities that led to the Rwanda genocide, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the migration of educated and uneducated Ndebeles to South Africa in search of better pastures.

Mabuto’s demand for us to look into contemporary issues offers an interesting dimension to the analysis of Msipa and Coltart’s memoirs. One omission of his observation is that the contemporary black on black violence and inequalities are products of the colonial empire. Therefore to dismantle these contemporary challenges we need to go back to their space of origin and unmask individuals and institutions responsible for Africa’s current disintegration.

That space is the empire founded on racial essentialism constructed to divide Africans. This is why the colonial boundaries set for administrative convenience of colonial governance catalyse our “perceptions of difference”. At local level this is what defines the aspect of split patriotic consciousness. We have been torn asunder such that the measure of patriotism for one is their allegiance to a particular political party if not one ethnic group fighting the other. Moreover, if the past is not important as emphasised by my fellow African scholar, why do people like Coltart and Msipa revisit it in explaining their place in the contemporary matters of nationhood? If issues of race condemnation are now trivial why are they evoked at a time we should be forgetting about them? Over and above, if they are raised should we be silent about them because we think they do not matter in advancing interests of faking modernity and reconciliation?

The subject of racism, colonial privilege versus disenfranchisements and colonial heritage cannot be omitted in analysing the two books. These are issues that voluntarily find themselves at the centre of Msipa and Coltart’s memoirs. Moreover, racial falsehood is unavoidable and worth critiquing especially in Coltart’s book. Coltart’s focus is on his life and its link with the “50 years of tyranny” The periodic setting of the book from the title gives life to the sanitisation of anecdotal capturing of history.

By merely looking at the title of Coltart’s book, one notices an omission of the more than 100 years of tyranny constructed by Rhodes not to mention the architecture of the illicit trading and prazo systems which served Portuguese interests dating back to the rise and fall of Great Madzimbahwe stretching forth to the Mhonumutapa and the vaRozvi empires. Then later the British fronted expedition shouldered on Cecil John Rhodes the brains behind the British South-African Police where Coltart was conscripted as a force member.

If indeed the idea of the book was to capture the history of Zimbabwe from the lens of tyranny as purported by Coltart there was need to go beyond the stated 50 years. However, what is clear from the structural make-up of the book is that more emphasis was to be placed in reconstructing the political image of Zimbabwe after the fall of colonialism. This further explains why Coltart finds no offence in reminding Africans about his position of privilege which shaped the oppressive output of being Black which is carefully captured through the life of Cephas Msipa in his memoir.

It is the “Coltart mentality” among some fellow Africans that influences their conglomeration of narratives that divide the country and the continent. This is why every time race matters are raised those Africans inclined to the “Coltart mentality” pick up the Gukurahundi issue to suffocate any ideas that challenge residues of Rhodesia in our midst. The Gukurahundi issue has been used to cover up for genocides committed by Rhodesian forces to the nation at large. Likewise, Coltart brings the similar subject in his book all in the interest of vilifying the current Zimbabwean government yet ignores how colonialism constructed the ‘perception of difference’ among our people. I appreciate how Professor Ngwabi Bhebe has attempted to give a refreshing submission to this subject that is constantly raised by those interested in further marginalising our people to promote ‘perception of difference’ at a time we should be working on uniting as Africans:

It is not unreasonable for readers to ask how such close allies [as ZANU and ZAPU] could be involved in a civil war that saw many lives being lost in Matabeleland. On the other hand, to us such a question would only show that the reader has not read this book with attention.

For the book has shown how factional conflict in Zimbabwe, or among Zimbabweans, is quite close to the surface. It does not matter whether people belong to the same party. … The situation is worse when people belong to different political parties. … ZAPU and ZANU followers started killing each other when they were dumped together at Mboroma by the Zambian authorities. The ZIPA experiment in Mozambique collapsed for just that same reason. In Libya, ZAPU and ZANU were put in the same training camps and they killed each other. The reason was very simple.

These young men and women were trained to hate each other … Thus, the cadres were brought up to hate (Bhebe 2004:254).

This is the major reason why Msipa continuously argues that he was ZAPU since his entry into nationalism. The same patriotic perspective guided by ZAPU principles followed him right through his ministerial service in a ZANU-PF dominated government. These are the aspects of split patriotic inclinations that confront us when we read literature by those who claim belonging to Zimbabwe and use their lives as templates of conveying that message. This makes the subject of race and partisan fraternal belonging unavoidable when attempting to understand the variant or split perspectives of patriotism in Zimbabwe.

Next week’s focus will be on the aspect of protagonist representation of White characters featured in Coltart and Msipa’s memoirs. I have chosen to call this the “good makiwa” mentality to unpack how liberal race perspectives cement the existence of split patriotic consciousness in Zimbabwe’s literature from the lens of the two memoirs under review. I wish I had jumped to that particular subject this week. However, the writing inspiration led me to something different as I strongly convinced that the issue of split patriotic consciousness needs further elucidation.

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 rasmkhonto@gmail.com

The Standard

3 April 2016

Former Education minister, David Coltart’s recently published book Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe has sparked heated debate on mainstream and social media platforms. Some of his critics argue the book gave ammunition to First Lady Grace Mugabe’s Zanu PF faction — G40 — in its war against Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

On the other hand, former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s followers see it as an attempt to destroy the long-time opposition leader’s reputation. Last week Coltart (DC) told our reporter Obey Manayiti (OM) the real reasons he penned the book and why it was released now. Below are excerpts of the interview.

OM: What is your reaction to criticism of your book, especially by the likes of Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo?

DC: I expected the book to be criticised, especially by those not dealt with favourably in the book. I am delighted by the attention which is being given to the book, especially the criticism because it draws attention to the book and hopefully will generate debate about some of the issues raised in the book.

OM: Some critics have been disputing certain facts in your book, how reliable was your research?

DC: Once again, I expect that some of the facts will be challenged, again by those who come across unfavourably. I have done detailed research for the book, evidenced by the 794 endnotes in the book, which reveal the source of the material relied upon. I also read extensively to produce the book, so I relied on the accumulated knowledge and writings of many others.

OM: The book has sparked debate on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Are there any people approaching you privately on the contents of the book and what are their sentiments?

DC: The response to the book, both private and public, has been overwhelmingly positive. I have been inundated with people writing comments on social media and also many have written e-mails to me. A small minority have been critical, some very constructively, pointing out some typographical errors.

OM: What motivated you to publish your memoirs and did you anticipate the kind of reaction you are getting now?

DC: I have wanted to write this book for a long time but never had the time to write. Ironically, it was my loss of the July 2013 election which opened up time for me to write. I was motivated by a desire to write about my own perspective on events and also to correct what I thought were misrepresentations of key events. I also think that there is too little written about Zimbabwe’s history and I hope my book encourages others to write their own stories. Own perception of history is inevitably subjective and the more people who write about our history, the richer, and more accurate, that history will become. I did anticipate the reaction — indeed the introduction itself and the acknowledgement section anticipates that some would react in a hostile fashion to the book.

OM: You are one of the prominent lawyers that defended Zapu leaders during Gukuruhandi and you also played a leading role in the documentation of the atrocities with the Roman Catholic Church. Do you think Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa was a key figure in the atrocities?

DC: I have no doubt that Vice-President Mnangagwa, in his capacity as the minister in charge of the CIO at the time, played a key role in Gukurahundi.

OM: Mnangagwa disputes some of the statements attributed to him in the book, why do you think he is reacting that way when the information has been in the public domain for such a long time?

DC: Vice-President Mnangagwa is in an awkward position. He is trying to convey to Zimbabweans and the international community that he is someone worthy of holding presidential office in Zimbabwe. The revelations made in my book, alongside those contained in older publications, affect this goal. Had he said nothing about the revelations contained in my book, some would have assumed that he agreed with what was written. Accordingly, he had no choice but to deny what he is alleged to have said and done in the past. It does appear, however, that he did not anticipate that Chronicle would reveal the source material which confirms that my book accurately reflects what Chronicle reported him saying in 1983.

OM: What do you think is the best way forward in dealing with the Gukuruhundi question, should Zimbabweans let bygones be bygones as some people seem to suggest?

DC: I think the victims of the Gukurahundi need an opportunity to tell the nation what happened to them and their desire in terms of reconciliation and justice. It is wrong for any politician or lawyer to dictate what victims want. Accordingly, at the very least, we need a victim orientated truth commission.

OM: What is your reaction to criticism that you are not very open about your role in the security services during the Rhodesian era?

DC: I think any reading of the first seven chapters of the book will dispel any accusation that I have not been open about my role in the Rhodesian BSAP. I found those chapters very difficult to write because it was important that I accurately record what I experienced during the period of my life. What is written is a full and transparent account of my role.

OM: Jonathan Moyo is one of your harshest critics on social media and you have revealed in your book that his resentment of you is not new. Where do you think the resentment comes from?

DC: Jonathan Moyo and I used to share a similar political outlook and on at least one occasion shared a common platform in criticising Zanu PF policy in the early 1990s.

In 1999/2000 Moyo changed course and since then has been one of the principal propagandists for Zanu PF, which has inevitably brought us into conflict.

I think that his resentment may stem from the fact that I often refer to Moyo’s “previous life”, which perhaps is embarrassing for him.

I bear no grudges against him and greatly respect the work he did in the 1990s, particularly in the publication of his book about the 1990s elections called, Voting for Democracy.