Renaming roads, reclaiming our identity

BY now, every Zimbabwean with the slightest interest in the goings-on in this country knows that Government has resolved to rename a number of roads and buildings around the country.

In a largely polarised environment, rancour and cynicism can be expected.

Some people are even suggesting the country should have kept its old names, which sought to immortalise Zimbabwe’s former colonisers and their heroes.

Agree or disagree with some of the names that will be on citizens’ lips from now onwards, this move by Government is a bold step towards totally reclaiming our identity.

When the white man and Christianity came to Africa, the first thing they sought to do was convert the natives to their own religion and then change their names.

They derived this from their religious manual, the Bible.

Without going into detail, those whose religions draw teachings from the Bible would know the story of Daniel (God is Judge), Hananiah (God is Gracious), Mishael (who is like God) and Azariah (God helps).

The story says king Nebuchadnezzar sought to take away the quartet’s allegiance from their God by changing their names.

They resisted the name change and also refused to bow before the image of the king, which resulted in their chastisement, but they triumphed in the end.

There are many people in Zimbabwe that have Christian names; names that they were given upon being “born again”.

Africans were somehow convinced that their names were not suitable for people that had been converted to Christianity. Some even abandoned their totems. But the coloniser did not end there in trying to completely decimate the ways of the African — they went on to appropriate and rename important landmarks like

Mosi-oa-Tunya (the smoke that thunders).

They named this most beautiful and culturally important place, Victoria Falls, after their own Queen.

Even countries, cities and towns were named after their own kith and kin — Rhodesia, Salisbury, Norton etcetera.

Thereafter, they named roads, buildings, hospitals and training institutions, among many other important infrastructure, after their own people.

The idea was to ensure that the African people were mentally colonised, that they believed everything foreign and European to be superior to their own.

The idea was immortalisation. This is why in this day and age people still laugh at each other for not speaking “proper” English.

It is not our mother tongue, why should we be proficient?

Thirty-nine years after independence, the major road that separates Ushewekunze suburb and Fidelity Southview Park in Harare South is named after Cecil John Rhodes.

What are we saying as a nation? Do we not have heroes of our own?

In this day, arguing against the renaming of Selous is like having a debate on whether Zimbabwe should be recolonised or not.

Rhodes and his plunderers looted gold and other precious minerals from Zimbabwe to the United Kingdom.

In fact, at some point the richest gold mine in the British Empire was in Southern Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe.

But not even a single thing in the United Kingdom is named after any of our heroes. After subjugating our forefathers, they took their heads to their countries to display in museums, a process of dehumanising and dishonouring us and our people.

Surely, we cannot continue to dishonour ourselves by naming our roads, buildings and important landmarks after those that sought to annihilate us from the face of the earth.

The announcement by Cabinet is actually several decades too late.

When the country was renamed Zimbabwe from Rhodesia in 1980, it should have followed that all these other things should have changed.

But, of course, there were other priorities at the time, which is why the changes have come in dribs and drabs over the past four decades.

Reclaiming the Zimbabwean identity is never too late.

A few months back, renaming of army bases after local heroes of the liberation struggle was another highlight in the ongoing fight to decolonise the minds of Zimbabweans.

Some have been asking who Leonid Brezhnev is or why we have a road named after Mao Zedong.

These are some of the people that need history lessons and continued decolonisation of their brain.

Without Russia and China — the two super powers that helped Zimbabwe prosecute the liberation struggle — Ian Smith’s “not in a thousand years” statement could have come to pass, which is why Chairman Mao and Brezhnev loom large in the country’s liberation narrative and have been honoured.

Just like any process, there are those that will find the renaming “flawed”; for instance, some are asking why former Prime Minister, the late Morgan Richard Tsvangirai, was “snubbed”.

This is neither here nor there. In future, Tsvangirai might have a road named after him, perhaps maybe even myself (Mtandazo Dube Avenue).

After all, Tsvangirai already has a building named after him.