Beware of false heroes

To keen watchers of Zimbabwean politics, the few weeks which have gone by have been quite unsettling. There was a concerted attempt to use death to re-polish out and out quislings of imperialism in our past, all of them cleaned and scoured from our midst by natural expiry. 

I have agonized to conceive this tweet which looks inhumane and bereft of milk of human kindness. Even Shona says, afa anaka, the only issue being that this adage works well if the bad dead are quietly left to depart from us. Where some narrow interests try to turn the bad dead into false models for our children, then one's conscience and sense of responsibility gets aroused, in which case hard truths might have to be made publicly. 

We lost businessman Mawere recently; he was a college mate in the early 1980s. We shared a life, an age. That apart, he committed a very serious offense against this Nation in his life as a businessman whose rise had been facilitated by both the ruling party and Government. 

In line with his Policy of indigenizing the Economy, the late RG Mugabe ran into a situation in which previous owners of Mashava and Shabani mines wanted out. But on ideological grounds, the previous owners did not want to sell those two asbestos mines to the Zimbabwe Government. Time was running out for the transaction. 

In desperation, the Zim Government delegation looked around for a Zimbabwean who could be used as proxy in the transaction. The closest we had was Mawere then with IFC in the US; he was approached and he agreed to become the proxy. That is how SMM was born, with Mawere as the face of it. 

Coincidentally, Mawere's term with IFC was also coming to an end. He came back home to run SMM, with Party and Govt behind. He did a lot more. He consolidated his hold under very controversial terms, leading to a conflict situation with his godfather who felt elbowed out. 

Worse, he created a maze of offshore companies, primarily in South Africa to which he sold Zimbabwean asbestos at beaten down prices, thus prejudicing the State both by way of due taxes and dividend. 

More infractions followed: proceeds from transfer-priced sales were never repatriated to Zimbabwe, itself the domicile of SMM. These were kept offshore, principally in SA. The prejudice to Zimbabwe was huge and litigation was put in train. 

This is how Mawere became a fugitive. Fast-forward to his death: we get paeans and encomiums by way of dirges and epitaphs in respect of a character who did such huge harm to this Nation. He gets undeserved appellations like "business mogul", "shrewd businessman", etc, etc! 

Death and ignorance polishes all his heinous misdeeds against this Nation and sheer villainy and knavery is reissued anew as virtue and keen business acumen. Tisadaro weduwee!!!  

Case Number Two:

This last week we lost a colonial-time radio announcer who, thanks to Independence, got upgraded to a radio journalist. You only need to know the infamous role of the colonial Radio Two in the fight against Zimbabwe's freedom and Independence to situate the role of Masuku as an announcer in settler colonial days. Or to know how radio broadcasting was a key terrain of contestation between racist Rhodesia and Liberation Movements which opposed it. 

The contestation went fr beyond our boundaries, not just in the simple sense that the antipodes to RBC were based in Cairo and Tanzania, and later in Zambia and Mozambique as the struggle wore on, but also in the sense that western electronic media outlets, principally the BBC, were a formidable odd against the Liberation Struggle. On airwaves, UDI was no barrier to the unity of settler colonial imperial messaging. 

A number of RBC staffers with a nationalist sense - personified by CDE WEBSTER SHAMU - and other journalists like late NATHAN SHAMUYARIRA, deserted RBZ and the then liberal Paver Brothers media outfit to join the liberation struggle and strengthen messaging from abroad. A precedent was set where erstwhile RBC staffers could still commit professional suicide by deserting the colonial media systems for the Struggle. 

In the case if JUSTIN NYOKA, then with BBC which was anti-liberation struggle institutionally, a military mission had to be organised by late JOSIAH MAGAMA TONGOGARA to abduct and take him to Mozambique to beef up communication wing of ZANLA. 

Justin Nyoka was not just a famed BBC reporter; he had also taught late ZANLA CoD in school. The role of African announcers in the RBC was to turn Rhodesian propaganda into vernacular idiom for maximum impact on rural listeners who were the bedrock of the struggle. 

John Masuku was part of this team. Fast forward to 2000, when Zimbabwe embarked on radical Land Reforms, thus challenging the cornerstone and mainstay of the settler Economy which political Rhodesia had been founded to protect. 

Among the planks of western opposition to this last act of decolonization was the radio platform, animated through extraterritorial broadcasts on the Shortwave wavelength. 

Three key western states started these extraterritorial broadcasts aimed at ventilating interests of white-landed gentry, and at challenging the Zanu PF-led Land Restitution Programme. These were UK, America and Netherlands. The instruments were VOA, SW-Radio and VOP respectively. 

We fought back this challenge to Zimbabwe's sovereignty in the nether through all the pirate radio stations which targeted rural populace to begin with, much like the RBC of yore. 

As you get to Cranborne, just past the rail line to Mutare, look to your right; you will see very high masts on some disused piece of land which belongs to Transmedia. Also as you approach Makuti on your way to Kariba, check to your right; you will see similar masts. We used both transmitter stations to jam signals from those irksome, intrusive stations. 

John Masuku presided over VOP, a role which harkened to his colonial-time anti-Liberation struggle role. The eulogies he has been given to mark his demise, glossed over this discreditable role he played in opposing the Land Reform, using the guise of human rights violations to sanitize that opposition. 

I was intrigued by GLADYS HLATSHWAYO's tribute to Masuku. It made mention of his and her role at VOP, completely disregarding the shameless role the intrusive Dutch radio played in challenging Zimbabwe's sovereignty. Time and amnesia, it would appear, make heroes of longtime knaves. 

CASE THREE AND LAST. 

A day ago, we celebrated the so-called Valentine Day, a day dedicated to lovers, always imaged as red/gossamer. Where I come from, the colour red does not depict love; it is a gory colour of death. Where I come from too, Valentine, is not a name I normally associate with indigenous naming traditions and practices. Where I come from, names are verbal nouns, within which action is always embedded, in keeping with our fame as a DOING CULTURE. 

A producing culture. A commemorative culture, for better and for worse. When I shot out of my late mother's womb, to utter my first cry which announced my arrival in this world, the happy Family gathered and named me KUDZANAI, which roughly translates to RESPECT ONE ANOTHER. The doing word was "kudza-", and the exhortation was "-NAI”, making my name a verbal noun. 

All  Shona names follow that naming traditions: In my compound, I have RUKUDZO, KOMBORERO, MAKANAKAISHE, MUKUDZEI, IVAINASHE and NYEPAI, all of them verbal nouns. That how we NAME in order to OWN. 

I have always had a problem with this Valentine thing, through which we are inserted into western celebratory and commemorative traditions as if we never loved before the first white man, acting on both conscience and Christian goodness, reached our land! Except the word RUDO/KUDA predates these so-called white do-gooders, meaning we had a word for the practice which enabled processes by which life reproduced itself. 

As if to punish us for kowtowing to this alien malpractice in the name of one Italian called VALENTINE, our former Prime Minister was called from this life on the same day, in what appeared to be a deep, holy tribute to what he loved most! 

I waited to see who would emerge a bitter hero: COUNT VALENTINE or MORGEN TSVANGIRAI, our late Prime Minister. On balance, COUNT VALENTINE lost to SAVE, something which should make me thrice happy as a Vuheran, a Zimbabwean and an African. Except he did not prevail in contradistinction to COUNT VALENTINE; rather, he prevailed for the role and values he personified as a politician embedded within our body-politic. 

There was a spirited attempt to re-issue him as a political paragon, a visionary. Save ndisekuru vangu; I joined the MDC-T throng to bury him in HUMANIKWA in Buhera. But his role as a political actor and leader was far from exemplary. He took a firm stance against the national Interest and agreed to be instrumentalized by the West against reclamation of his heritage: the land. 

I am not talking about his role as an activist for democracy as he understood it, although we can also debate that. I am talking about the politics which saw him become the darling of erstwhile settler colonial white farmers, against whom the Land Reform became necessary. 

Nothing summarised this more than that fateful day white settlers signed a fat cheque in MUTORASHANGA to fund his MDC as their black-led vehicle for opposing land reforms, themselves the new phase in our national anti-colonial struggle. 

Read against that sombre and chequered backdrop, the memorial paeans composed for Morgan Tsvangirai will always read gratuitously deceitful, nay a robust effrontery to the being, values and memory of our Nation. Often, wafawanaka is best realized through silent tribute, especially when times may be too soon for honest appraisal!