Speaking of Zimbabwe after the economic rubble, dust and ashes of those burnt alive, this is what we must write. If you want to humble an empire, then it makes sense to maim its very spirit. But the Chimurenga spirit of Zimbabwe was never maimed, and the African spirit of communalism glowed with a hallo of hope and resolve by day throughout the long drawn funeral of the Zimbabwe situation.
Zimbabwe has lived a long story – the flourishing Great Zimbabwe of Africa that was intensively trading with China and Middle East while Europe was in the Dark Ages; British colonialism with land, gold and diamond exploitation; guerilla war against imperialism; then the long seasons of rest and economic flourish plunging into bloodbaths of political violence; and brutality followed by a complete collapse of economic and social infrastructure. Horror! Horror! Horror! What is more than a national funeral?
But no matter how long and winding a river might be, it must water into something greater than itself some day. It is the way of all flesh. Now the Government and Opposition have signed a power-sharing deal to reconstruct our motherland. And there is a grain of hope planted.
But things were that bad. One university lecturer told me he received 4.2 trillion Zimbabwe Dollars per month by around August 2008. But this could only buy just about eight loaves of bread “if you are lucky to find it,” he added. “We eat bread probably once in every three months.” This means a shirt that cost 8 trillion Zim Dollars would have the university lecturer work for it for two living months, not to speak of French made shoes costing 72 trillion that he must work for in Lord knows how many years. What about the messenger and the village widow? What was life like? Hell!
There are untold stories, and dirges unsung, funerals not mourned and the dead never buried. Mugabe is right, “Let us not ignore the truth as we proceed,” speaking on the signing of the power-sharing deal. The truth is, Comrade Mugabe’s war against his own people went too far, just too far.
Come March 2007, three senior defence force officers died in succession, possibly in a political purge following rumours of a coup d’état. Probably something like what happened in Malawi when in the Dzineso, Njoloma and Chigawa deaths came mysteriously under Bakili Muluzi! After rumours of a coup in Malawi, in the midst of Muluzi's "Bloodstained Democracy". But the difference, Zimbabwean souls were declared national heroes when ironically, as whispers have it; two were given lethal injections in hospital while the third died mysteriously in a car-train accident.
In March 2007, when Zimbabwe was not on a physical war with any other country, a Reserve Army was formed and gazette “ordering war veterans not above 50 years to register with Ministry of Defence so that they could be given arms at any time when the Commander-in-Chief deems it fit.” Why?
Yet, this is another untold story – that of the Chimurenga spirit behind the war veterans. During the Chimurenga Wars of liberation against British imperialist at its heist of colonialism, the people collectively sang and believed in Chimurenga Songs. They were, in the words of Alec Pongweni, “the soul and binding force of the people”. These songs built a common sense of identity against “the unacceptable face of imperialism.” Mugabe fought a good fight, but he has oppressed his own people with unacceptable horror and style.
What Mugabe has done throughout the unacceptable face of his dictatorship has been to draw upon this spirit by continuing to present Britain and America as the same imperialist who “was there yesterday, and is here with us today”. In so doing, Mugabe has drawn a common sense of alliance on his side against even those Zimbabwean political leaders said to be possible puppets of the West – Tsvangirai.
The Chimurenga Songs, with their popular appeal and inspiration, carried a shared spirit of struggle and sworn allegiance to the man who saved them. This is the spirit that has ensured Mugabe’s political survival, and there were those who were ready to die for him. There were those to whom he remained a popular god-father much as he was hated and demonized by others. But they feared him as well, and fear has been his weapon too. Yes, the motives of his loyalists are complex. He used the war veterans to make a system by giving them posts and privileges everywhere in Government.
In this way, Mugabe avoided repeating the history of East Africa. In Kenya, that sight of horror still dripping in our memory began with those maimed in the soul in the post-independence frustration of having shed blood in the Kenyan Mau Mau struggle against colonialism only to be left out of sharing the national cake by their own brotherly leaders, their own comrades.
The violent blood bathed explosion of the recent Kenyan situation sprung from the deep recesses of ethnic emotions with counter-accusations that some ethnic groups are sitting on the national cake more than others. It is “not just about politics as witnessed in other areas”, says US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger. The wise and illustrious Archbishop Desmond Tutu and AU Chairman President John Kufour of Ghana quietly saw the depth of it all.
In fact, Kenyan Prime Mininster Raila Odinga whipped up the divided ethnic sentiments into campaign propaganda. It was overwhelmingly felt by other communities that “the Kikuyus are selfish bigots dedicated to tribal hegemony and will never share spoils of government with other communities”, says Odinga’s pre-elections strategy paper called Positioning and Marketing ODM and the People’s President Raila Odinga. The Kikuyus are Kenya’s largest ethnic group that has been controlling a huge clump of economy and power in the post-independent Kenya – after the Mau Mau common cause for political and economic liberation from colonialism.
The feeling of betrayal, alienation, frustration and desperation in those who fought for independence but were left out of the spoils of the war has been there since 1960s. It is the story of betrayed hope in A Grain of Wheat that never germinated (told in 1967), of Petals of Blood (1977) and the beauty of shedding blossoming blood for their land, the story of the Black Messiah who turns out to be, not a saving Christ, but a Devil on the Cross (1982); and the story of Matigari (1987) – the betrayed patriots who fought for independence returning with decided revenge.
In all these four novels spanning decades, the African literary colossus called Ngugi wa Thiong’o has been pocking into the same post-independence feelings. It is the feeling of heart broken yearning, “I am nothing because I have nothing” as one Tanzanian poet forcefully puts it.
Mugabe dodged walking this Kenyan path with the war veterans. And he rewarded them in excess and built an unshakable wall of loyalty around him by those who shared a common identity of anti-imperialists, a common cause to die for their land and a political consciousness of Mugabe as the father – and you only have one father in life. Mugabe constructed a whole culture into which his dictatorship found roots.
Of course, the Zimbabwe conflict was nothing of a clash of deeply divided sentiments as was in Kenya or Rwanda. It was just one massive brutal force of government machinery let loose upon the powerless who decided that Mugabe had done his part, and that he had to go democratically. That is why Zimbabwe did not have a people-against-people type of clashes. That is also why Zimbabwe should be easier to heal. The people share much more in common than in division. And my Zimbabwe will heal.
Times of the struggle came and went with confusion of leadership at times. And the songs went “Vaparidzi vawanda / Hatichavizi wekutevera / Honai Baba tadzungaira” to mean “There are too many preachers in Zimbabwe / We no longer know which one to listen to. / Lord, we are thoroughly confused.” After the victory and the war was done, The Green Arrows sang, “Mr. Mugabe is now in control, / Now we know who to follow. / Behold Lord, we have been liberated.”
These Chimurnga Songs planted something deep into the hearts of the people with the all excitement of liberation what their eyes had seen of colonial oppression. As Malawians proverbially put it, “What gets into the ears spreads a mat in the heart” (Kadalowa mkhutu kadayala mphatsa) and “What the eye has seen the heart cannot forsake” (Chaona maso mtima suiwala). They saw the oppression and heard the songs.
That is the power of Chimurenga Songs, and the power of popular culture in planting political ideology. It plants what generations cannot easily dislodge. And Comrade Robert Mugabe’s legacy of survival cannot go without what happened to the hearts of Zimbabweans in the secret rooms of their souls from the Chimurenga War of liberation across their calm and stormy waters of the times that followed.
Mugabe seems to have discovered a secret which African leaders are yet to fully see, the power of using culture to govern hearts of a nation. This is what Terry Eagleton speaks of in his book called The Idea of Culture. “To govern successfully, [we] must therefore understand men and women in their secret desires and aversions, not just in their voting habits and social aspirations. If [we are] to regulate them from inside, it must also imagine them from inside”.
Gathering loyalty and votes goes beyond studying “voting habits” and gauging what the electorates aspire for. This is the Malawi Congress Party has remained a significantly solid party at the seams despite being led by people with neither repute, charisma nor vision as Gwanda Chakwamba and John Tembo have been. The party was made a political norm among the Chewa admirable for our Gule Wamkulu secret society culture that rallies a common sense of identity now being whipped into political identity.
This is what culture can do, writes Eagleton. British Colonisation used culture to conquer our spirit. They used literature in the schools and language (these mirrors and vehicles of culture) to make Africans feel that European life was the norm and our African way of living was abnormal. Norms are necessarily cultural. And their legacy now made part of our norms today stubbornly refuses to go.
Mugabe used the spirit of popular culture to make himself popular with those that shared a common heart of Chimurenga struggle against Western exploitation of gold, diamonds and land. Common sense now says the richer an African country is in minerals, the more it will be a site of conflict – often involving the hand of invisible forces beyond Africa.
And Mugabe appealed to the sympathy of the region by invoking that which had spread a mat in the hearts of African leaders, something deep in our history, something deeper than the bottom of the soul – the sensitivity of land and Western exploitation.
Now, it is over. Mugabe has pledged to share power with Morgan Tsvangirai and Professor Arthur Mutambara. Signing the deal is one thing, a political milestone in the smiles of Africa, implementing is yet another.
The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) spoke with furious silence, very loud silence. For all his political prowess, even Nelson Mandela could only speak eight words, “The Zimbabwe situation is a crisis of leadership” – well, perhaps only five calculated words: a crisis of leadership! Mandela only described the situation, and never condemned Mugabe.
Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika took to the pulpit and told the world that “the Zimbabwe situation is an African problem, and it must solved by Africans.” Now every African leader who spoke at the power-sharing ceremony said the same one thing. This was an African collective stand, a loud political statements made by a community coming of age.
There is something historically African about Zimbabwe which is a shared problem of the region. Land is a sensitive spot wherever you go in Africa, and the West should have known, besides our minerals being depleted beneath that land. Britain had betrayed Mugabe from the Lancaster House agreement to resolve land problems amicably. The West had failed Zimbabweans.
When Mugabe took desperate and defiant measures by kicking out White farmers unceremoniously, he became a daemon in the eyes of the West. The economy collapsed, most likely because Mugabe had provoked sentiments of those who control multinational economy and trade at our stage of globalization where every economy is significantly determined by global network economic forces. Western media told us the economy is collapsing because farming is affected with the eviction, and this was true, but half of the whole truth.
The silence of the SADC region made four statements to the West. One, we do not want another mayhem and Iraqi in Zimbabwe. We shall not solve Zimbabwe the American way. A war in Zimbabwe would mean a chaos that would dive in to the control their precious minerals too. Malawi’s and Zambia’s economies would suffer as we trade with South Africa via Zimbabwe, and the economic cancer would easily spread. Two, you let our brother down and now you cannot spring back like holy saviours. Three, we Africans are capable of being in charge of our affairs – not that we can completely do away with the West (just as they cannot fully do without us) but that we must be in charge of our destiny. Four, every funeral has its mourners. Zimbabwe was our funeral, and we had to mourn it the African cultural way. After all, politics exists within cultures -- and culture can be the language of politics.
But where did Mugabe go wrong? He unleashed state machinery to suffer his own people, already suffering the yoke of economic dearth. This is why no human sanity can forgive of Mugabe. His internal politics was at best unacceptable, brutally inhuman and what no African leader should dare again.
While some may argue that the power deal in Zimbabwe is rewarding those who lose votes in a democracy, let it be remembered that it remains an exit strategy for Mugabe. After sharing power with Tsvangirai, Mugabe will not be there for the next elections. Besides, it is only politically practical and humane to avert more suffering, bloodbaths and deaths of the many by pretending to appease the daemons that wreak death and havoc, at least as strategy of sending them to rest forever.
But certainly, there is a sense in which the British government ought to have suffered shame and defeat because they wanted to see Mugabe unmasked naked of all human dignity.
But in their suffering and dying, never take away their human dignity. Never. Dignity is the last thing of man to go with. And let Comrade Mugabe go with his dignity, after all his sins. Let the dying go with their human dignity.
