Zimbabwe @ 33:- Nationalism that will not die

I am writing from a Southern African country. For the first time in a very long time since 1980, I have had to observe Independence Day from outside the country. Thankfully technology has collapsed time and space, and so I was able to follow from this far end, and in real time, activities taking place at the national stadium.

You could not miss the fact of attendance of the event in such overwhelming numbers. And ZBC went a step further. They picked on a few voices - most of them raw and untutored - to give us a glimpse into what motivated such a huge turnout.

From all the voices you met even signification, all of it articulated across class, age and gender.

To the interviewee, it was about recognising our sovereign independence, about sparing a moment of joyous reflection of the drawn-out process - much of it very painful, very tragic - that yielded our statehood on that 18th day in April, all in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty.

Nationalism that will not die
The age factor was forcefully fascinating.

Little boys, little girls, chubbiness of tender youth in abundant evidence, attested to their connection - umbilical - to this magic date they never met, they never witnessed when and as it occurred, but to which they feel a spontaneous, compulsive attachment.

As one of Zimbabwe's midnight children - to borrow from the apostate Rushdie - a midnight child with one leg in the now defunct Rhodesia, another in this virile, independent Zimbabwe, you sit back and marvel at the power of nationalism, its sheer defiant tenacity across time, across generations, within boundaries, even beyond.

You can't help but feel pity for those big scholars who theorize a dying nationalism, allegedly on the hammer and anvil of globalization. No, nationalism is not dead, will not die.

Transcending boundaries
And in the lands yonder is where I was when that day fell due. From so far away from home, I congregated with a few fellow Zimbabweans working outside the country. Soon the talk got animated, the subject matter obsessively that of our Uhuru.

Not even the slightest tinge of exile, whether self or forced, registered in the conversation. We all felt home, at the very least vicariously, felt at one with the teeming thousands in celebration. Amazing how correct Benedict Anderson is, with his notion of imagined communities where an overriding sense of belongingness often transcends time and space to reunite those split apart spatially.

And I noticed I was the bearded one in the whole group, the only one parading strands (or is it strains?) of white hair, themselves definitive markers of time lived, travails endured. I chose the intangible and ephemeral gold of silence, if only to get to know how the relatively youthful company of fellow nationals visualized, nay, theorised our Independence.

They bubbled, they burned, each all the time straining to stamp conversational authority over the rest, indeed float a grain of thought on this rapid stream of near-hysterical consciousness that flowed continually. The outpouring was ceaseless, leaving me wondering why our Uhuru triggers such adrenalin, such noisy talkativeness.

Noisy in coming - what with the guns, the tears, the anguished groans of all those that fell in battle, noisier groans by way of memory sobs from orphaned mothers hungry for narratives of painful endnote to their beloved sons who left no scion, beloved daughters who robbed them of zvizukuru - that same Independence still noisy in the way it is daily lived, daily enjoyed, daily endured, yearly commemorated. This our cacophonous Independence, pulsating so noisily a good three decades and something later. It is alive, truly alive and today I sing an ode to it.

Readings from a sour face
But there was another face - sour - to this same being, to this Zimbabwe. It expressed itself as mournful editorials, quite often very angry ones reflecting the raging torrent of Independence's agnostics, Independence's discontents.

Malcontents even. Pitted against the huge attendance, the bubbling votaries of this momentous marker, was this cynical voice from above, typified by one writer who spoke so effusively on why he will not mark Independence, indeed why for him Independence is but just another day that need not bother anyone, least of all himself.

Half conscriptive, half prescriptive. He is a bitter man, savagely railing against the reigning system for arresting him, undeservedly in his view. Independence had bitten him, buffeted him, and he was bitter. Of course the convenient way is to brush this aside from the total view, brush it aside as one viewpoint in millions, trite, outnumbered, unrepresentative and therefore inconsequential.

A smelly burp and belch in polite company. But that would be wrong, an obscene alibi by a people who prefer to wander about, to skirt around an inconvenient truth. Such does not make great nations, make a great people. We must not fear ideas, fear sentiments registering in our body-politic, however odd or awkward.

Amazing stroke of convergence
But you also canvassed and consulted viewpoints from established political positions - by way of the two MDCs, Mavambo, the NCA - and you quickly discovered that what appeared like some solitary, even misplaced, voice of disgruntlement, did in fact enjoy a niche in this graduated, highly nuanced repertoire of national thought and thinking.

With the exception of the surly Simba Makoni, the rest of the political parties gratuitously acknowledged Independence day, saluting our collective gallantry as a people, holding the commemorative day high and in abundant reverence that would pique even the Americans, themselves hectored tyrannized by their history of own being and becoming right from the nursery.

This came through Tsvangirai's message. This came through Ncube's message; came through, quite surprisingly, in Madhuku's message. It came through Dabengwa's Zapu. But not through Makoni, who pointed to South Africa's NCA channel a thousand-plus reasons why this day was undeserving of any accolades, any ceremony.

But Makoni's view did not dampen the chorus of acknowledgment from big political players. This year's festivities are thus a notable milestone, one worth recording. For the opposition. For all of us.

For our nation. In previous years, the fashion was to compose harshest words for this day.

You sniped at it, verbally assaulted those associated with its advent, before retiring into anonymity, feeling suitably cathartic, feeling abundantly and triumphantly oppositional.

Traducing our own independence had become a routine, a ritual, some pastime.

Embracing the struggle
Let us take stock, from the perspective of these oppositional voices. They lauded the liberation struggle, arguably rather rhapsodically for people like Tsvangirai, whose own lives and roles make such an applause patently gratuitous, mercilessly chastising to their own conduct during those years of struggle.

It will not matter whether you see Tsvangirai as the one who ran away from the struggle as some claim, or whether you believe his own tale of abstention, all founded on family obligations. Not everyone went to the war, although most of his generation did participate in one way or the other.

And one's status regarding that war need not matter at all in post-independence discourse. But in the case of oppositional leaders it ends up mattering the moment they begin to challenge place and value of the struggle and those who moved it in our national narrative. After all no one is asking them to have gone to war.

All that is expected of them is to uphold values of that struggle, an expectation these guys are wont to vulgarise as a demand that they display war credentials in order for them to be eligible to lead this nation. And it is on this count that this year's independence becomes so significant.

For the first time, our oppositional leaders recognised the armed struggle and the independence it created. Indeed this is a milestone, a far cry from the stance of repudiation we saw in the past.

It means they can now sit their politics on the plinth of a key founding process of our nation. It legitimises their politics.

And the draft constitution . . .
Secondly, they all applaud the new Charter by way of the constitutional bill which is about to become our law. Applaud it to different degrees, with Madhuku being the most interesting one on this matter.

He now acknowledges this as a milestone worth his remark, although he proceeds to express his wish for "a people-driven process", that line repeated with the familiar ease of a nursery rhyme.

The bill, warts and all, has become a potent rallying point for an otherwise fractious ruling class, yet another feature making this year's independence anniversary quite some marker.

Beyond all these you drift into the terrain of negative acknowledgements, yet themselves still vital indicators of the gathering consensus destined to put our politics on a higher keel. The GPA, itself a dying yet still potent referent to all political processes happening in the country, acknowledged land reforms as definitively irreversible.

And the emerging discourse under the inclusive regime has been about making the whole programme efficient and bankable, itself quite a fast forward into this milieu of irreversibility. When you consider that it is the land question which got us to where we are, to the acrimonious politics of more than a decade, this is quite remarkable.

And the recent stance of renunciation by the shell CFU, completes the process, seals the consensus. While the land issue did not obtrude on the commemorative discourse, it provided an unspoken yet acknowledged discourse. We have moved.

Going back to liberation politics, politicians
Then you have Europe and America's punitive response to our forthright assertion of sovereignty.

I am referring to sanctions: themselves totally illegal, totally unjustified. This is one matter broached by the GPA and robustly pursued by the inclusive government, itself about to end. Independence came barely weeks after the return of the latest and possibly last mission. It was initiated by the British. It came hard on the heels of a symbolic review of sanctions by the enervated EU.

It has triggered frantic responses from guilty America which has had to turn to a liberation-era resource personified by Andrew Young, to make us approachable. This is a loud tribute, a clear acquiescence by mighty America to the ethos of African struggle. We have forced our will, not through stubborn resistance, but by the sheer just nature of our cause. Above all, it has been a clear demonstration of the bankruptcy of illegal and spiteful sanctions, the more so in the face of emerging consensus inside the country against them. That is how far we have moved on, while coming together around 18th April.

Negatively supporting indigenisation
A more problematic one relates to indigenisation and economic empowerment. Not that this policy is polarising, but just that it has suffered polarising afterthoughts on the part of those who previously supported it in Parliament, which is how it became a law of the country. The MDC formations hoped the policy was all sound, all fury, soon to wither on the vine.

To their rude shock, the policy inched inexorably towards the centre of legislative and governmental action, creating a cold sneeze for foreign capital. It was at that point that the afterthought came, creating the apparent differences we see today. And it is an apparent division, beneath which lies a convergence too early to be announced. Really, there is no Chinese wall between Zanu-PF, the author of the policy, and the MDC formations, themselves its sufferers in political terms.

This week we listened to two strident voices on resource management, both of them remarkably unoriginal. We had Biti, the Finance Minister and secretary general of one of the MDCs, warning against allowing too much leeway to the Chinese. They are not comrades, he warned, stressing Zimbabwe must dictate the ground rules for resource engagement with the Chinese. Next to say the same was Professor Mutambara, and I don't need to summarise his argument. It said the same. But here is the disappointment: both regurgitated a piece by the Governor of the Nigerian Central Bank, one Isanusi Lamido, published by the British Financial Times. Mortifying though that is, that is not my point.

I am interested in where these unoriginal thoughts leave the indigenisation debate, where these thoughts leave MDC thinking vis-a-vis the empowerment debate. Surely you cannot warn us against opening ourselves up and unconditionally to the Chinese without taking a position on the broad question of indigenisation and empowerment, the broad question of resource nationalism! As I have said, the MDCs have been illustrating the policy of indigenisation and economic empowerment, albeit negatively. Including on their agitation on the diamond resource. That is good enough. Often, history is moved not so much by positive advocacy as by inadvertence or absurd rebuttal. We are moving, and the resonance is now in the youth, the acknowledged masters of the forthcoming ballot. The MDC formations will have to support indigenisation, all in spite of themselves.

Noise in the playground
The last one relates to the mediating process we call elections. Previously divisive, previously surrounded by a bitter bicker, the imperceptible forward drift of the electoral calendar albeit at glacial speed, went unnoticed. We saw a furious bicker around the need and timing of the referendum.

We still moved into the ballot box, to world acclaim.
Today we hear a similar bicker in respect of the actual harmonised elections. Thank God we now know how to discount student noise from deep intimations from real leaders.

Listening to the Prime Minister's press brief, it became clear that Biti and his little boys are one giant noise in the playground, while elders get on with the job.

There is convergence where it matters, something Ncube has noticed. And this is why he agitates for inclusion, which he deserves by the way, weakened though he might be now.

When day breaks into the anteroom
I want to go back to the agnostic of our Independence. His voice finds resonance in part-pronouncements of oppositional parties. All of them lamented the mismatch between Independence and freedoms. They think Zimbabwe has not made much progress in consolidating basic freedoms. I am not sure, more so when the complaint comes from people who have been in the habit not on enlarging basic freedoms, but seeking to enlarge political space for their own bid for power.

And there is a difference, a huge difference. I am near enough to the kitchen to know that one unwelcome outcome of the Inclusive government has been a militant realization by the MDC ministers that rulers grant minimum basic rights to the povho in order to govern effectively. A realisation that this is a standard requirement of power!

And they have adjusted rather shabbily, often agitating for a more rigorous hand against basic freedoms, principally press freedoms, than would ever come from Zanu-PF.

But the key thing is that inclusive politics have tested claims to democratic commitment, pretensions to wide differences between parties, thereby getting Zimbabweans to know that a fart rings and smells more or less the same, once liberated from huge belly.

The excesses of power follow a standard template. But there is a point worth salvaging. The western world is busy disinvesting from the so-called civil society. That should clear the way for a genuine national movement engaged in civil liberties. The Zanu-PF/MDC binary, all along giving an undeserved benefit of opposition, is fast fading, meaning we can now make real choices, founded on sober assessment.

This is key. A nap in the anteroom, that is what the MDCs have enjoyed since 2008/9. But the night is worn out. Day breaks. Happy Independence Anniversary Zimbabwe.

Icho!

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Nathaniel Manheru can be contacetd at nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw