Unity Day Evokes Memories of Solidarity
THE 32nd national commemoration of the Unity Accord evokes emotions of a solidarity which was born out of the pitfalls of “national-consciousness”.
The colonial reproduction of violence saw us becoming victims of Western hegemonic tensions which were fought on the African soil. Before the maturation of our independence and the unequivocal realisation of our independence we found ourselves in a state of turmoil.
Gukurahundi broke out to suppress the Soviet Union’s Communist Spread in Southern-Africa under Zapu. The apartheid regime in its conniving hand with Rhodesians catalysed the process.
Britain observed it all silently and only spoke out at the brink of the land reform. To this day, the remembrance of this gloomy side of our past is selectively manipulated by sponsored activists and neo-imperial political grandstanders to advance a memory of dismemberment.
The concealed influence of colonial interests in the construction of postcolonial violence is ignored. The same applies with the Biafra experience in Nigeria. Zimbabwe like many other African states entrapped in civil unrests has been conferred the typical “failed” post-colonial status.
The generic characterisation of state failure attributed to Zimbabwe is a construction of neo-imperial hegemony which is sustained by oligopoly capital, colonial scholarships, regime change civil-society and human rights activists propelling the fight against nationalist movements all over Africa.
All these institutions preserve a clear agenda of constructing the idea of failed African governments which must be replaced by more marketoriented regimes which attract Western direct investments and access to colonial credit lines. This explains the numerous visits by the MDCAlliance to the American Congress to consolidate the Zidera sanctions.
The same neo-colonial agents push the good governance, human and property rights narrative underpinned on impeding the realignment of property rights. This reaffirms their mandate to maintain the economic disparities invented by colonialism. This explains why the Zimbabwean agrarian revolution attracted wholesale hostilities from the West.
The agitation of the empire about our reclamation of space and the values of our liberation through the Hondo yeminda activated the reconstruction of the Zimbabwean national identity.
Immense efforts were deployed to erase the philosophical essence of national remembrances. Our Independence Day, Heroes-Defence Forces and Unity Day were relegated to mere partisan commemorative events in the corridors of sponsored antiestablishment perspectives. Not that there is anything wrong with having anti-establishment actors.
After all, we are a democracy, but the propensity to challenge the ruling Zanu-PF since the launch of the land revolution in the late 90s was grounded on erasing its legacy as a precursor of our liberation. The idea was to create an ahistorical political space and culture to give legitimacy to the pro-settler opposition led by Morgan Tsvangirai which was only born after the pro-peasant land revolution.
To supplement the anti-land reform trajectory, all binding elements of national memory like this sacred day in our national calendar was and continues to be vilified. In all these continued efforts to deconstruct the emotive meaning of this day to patriotic Zimbabweans — particularly those of us who remain radically opposed to vestiges of colonialism, Unity Day is a reminder of the catastrophic effects of the colonial reproduction of violence.
It reminds the conscious anticolonial soul that the empire continues to infiltrate the hopes and aspirations of independent nations in Africa. In our Zimbabwean context, the day is a memoire to our struggle for liberation as a force for decisive nationalism which graduated far beyond ethnic trivial predispositions.
From the outset, the cradle of the struggle against Rhodesia in the late 50s was a product of collective national consciousness. The mobilisation of cadres for the armed struggle was on the basis of the African emotion to dismantle the colonial system.
Tags of ethnic belonging were buried in the assumed identity of resistance and ideological intention to liberate Zimbabwe. Subconsciously regional balancing become the pivot of nationalist cadreship. Likewise, the pan-African essence of belonging wired our aspirations with those of our brothers and sisters in Angola, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana, Azania and every other part of the dispossessed world.
Therefore, the idea to unite the nationalist movements in 1987 after they were worn down by the coldwar dynamics was a strategic revert to the subconscious unity against colonialism. The Unity Accord was a restoration of the principle of regional balance. It was a clarion declaration to peace-building, national healing and reconciliation.
It was a unity of the nationalist movements who led the armed struggle. Indeed, the Unity Accord reaffirmed the political brotherhood of the gallant nationalists our liberation Cde Robert Mugabe and Father Zimbabwe, Cde Joshua Nkomo.
Through the Unity-Accord, Zanu-PF was born and the nationalist vision was redefined.
The Unity-Accord gestured the rebirth of collective nationhood epitomised in PF-Zapu and Zanu’s engagement in the armed struggle as unifying agents of the decolonisation project. To quote the Late Former President, Cde Robert Mugabe:
Unity is in fact more than mere harmony. It is an active bond of aspirants who share common given political beliefs. Unity is integrative of constructive or progressive or revolutionary forces in the direction of set goals. Unity is equally disintegrative of destructive or retrogressive or counter revolutionary forces that operate against progress and against unity itself.
Far beyond the Unity-Accord, Zanu-PF carries the obligation of challenging imperialism. Political construction under Zanu-PF must disentangle every pro-imperial arsenal designed to downplay our history to appease the ghosts of coloniality.
The day 22 December, continues to be a symbol of our cohesion and shared national aspirations beyond all the frantic efforts to dissuade us from re-membering ourselves and our dignity as a people.
Pamberi neZimbabwe.
Richard Mahomva is a political science and literature aficionado interested in architecture of governance in Africa and political theory. Feedback: rasmkhonto@ gmail.com
I SAT for Grade 7 examinations in 1975 in a war zone.
I used to walk a total 16 kilometres to and from school, had one set of uniform, no shoes, no jersey, no tuck money or packed lunch, no juice and let alone, drinking water.
We used to pick wild fruits as we came back from school. That was our lunch or dinner.
As we passed through the velds, we would round up cattle during the off agriculture season.
Our lessons began at 07:45 and ended at 16:45. From thence we would start walking home.
We had no extra lessons, no homework, we shared books and pencils.
Some of our classes were held under trees.
Our sports fields were dusty patches behind the school.
Sometimes we would use a neighbouring villagers’ fields as a soccer pitch. We were 47 in our class. Our teacher (MHSRIP) used to come from his own village.
Our school was close to a rifle range where the Rhodesian soldiers took shooting practices.
There was no electricity at our school. But out of 47 pupils, 39 passed to qualify for high school. Whether they managed to go is another issue, but I know a few of us went as far as university.
I passed with 5 units and 3 of my friends scored straight 4 units.
That was in 1975 and thousands of my generation went through the same experience.
For us Africans, the economy was non-existent. We had nothing, absolutely nothing.
Now we have extra lessons, homework, modern teachers and teaching aids.
All we had were dedicated teachers who knew what it was to teach and make us understand. They were not mercenaries.
Their first interest was the pupil. Today, the reason why there are so many failures in our schools is mainly because the teacher is no longer the dedicated professional whose pride rested on how many of his or her students passed.
The teaching profession has gone to the dogs. That is the main reason for the poor pass rates.