David Coltart whitewashing history, seeking relevance

It was last Saturday morning that I finally finished David Coltart's autobiography "The Struggle Continues: 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe" – a tome of well over 600 pages that details his life since his family came to Zimbabwe from South Africa.

Last Saturday, of course was the day that one of our columnists, the masterful Nathaniel Manheru, gave us a disparaging assessment of journalists and journalism in Zimbabwe.

He divined that journalists in the country were "hardly literate" (ouch! Doesn't that hurt?)

But then it's a story for another day – not least to say that debate has been raging for some time now.

David Coltart is an interesting human being and politician, and his book which reads simple enough for its size is a reflection of his person as an ex-Rhodesian with liberal pretences and career as an opposition activist-politician and a not so remarkable lawyer who happens to be doing nothing special these days.

And the one striking thing about this book is that for its sheer size, it tells us very little we did not know or expect and contains no winning philosophy.

There are basically three important frames in which Coltart tells us his story: first, the book, which he calls "an autobiographical political history" is to all intents and purposes a commemoration of 50 years since Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence and it is only later that he owns up to this fact, as indeed he dates the story December 2015.

His approach to the history of Zimbabwe pre-Independence, more specifically post-UDI period is to try and whitewash the Rhodesian era and run away from it as fast as he can and devote much time and space to post-Independence Zimbabwe where he does not hide who his opponents are: President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

In the period before Independence, Coltart's philosophy is to deploy as much liberalism in his narrative as possible to the point where he feels obliged to point out at every turn that while he and his white ilk enjoyed life in Rhodesia that same privilege was not accorded to black people.

Thus the story about his growing up in Gweru, from attending an all-white primary school, Hillside Primary, which he says "(u)nlike schools for black Rhodesians (was) world class"; to going to a South African university, he tinges his narrative with regret that blacks were excluded and that staff and domestic workers were black.

But he appears to suggest that this was a fact of life that came out of personal choices rather than a class and, much sinister, a racial and political milieu that was Rhodesia.

This seems to give Coltart a modicum of comfort and ammunition as he blitzes through the Rhodesian period which he does not seem to have fundamental objections to.

In fact, telling us the story in 2015-16, his only struggle in this book appears by way of a belated guilty conscience that is typical of many white liberal writers.

This is nowhere better captured that when he tells us that: "Although I experienced a Damascene moment in 1981 regarding my Christian faith, my political outlook has evolved more slowly, and I hope it continues to evolve."

He goes on: "I have changed from a teenager who thought Ian Smith was a hero into an adult who believes his policies were both disastrous and morally wrong."

These two statements sum up the person and politics of David Coltart.

In writing this book with its liberal leaning, David is just a hypocrite and dishonest fellow who, for all we know, is a racist and white supremacist politician.

There are many times that he has been called an "unrepentant Rhodie".

He deserves it: he only knew God and Christianity – and by implication the value of humanity – in the year 1981 when the racist and supremacist regime of Ian Smith had fallen.

It is under the same Ian Smith, whom he idolised, that he fought the war.

He does a lot of good to tell us that his political outlook has "evolved more slowly".

A point has to be made regarding Coltart and his serving the racist colonial police force, which he says he did out of the requisite national service under the British South Africa Police.

(Again he retrospectively tells us that, "no one questioned the illegality of the regime we served, nor the fundamental injustices prevailing in Rhodesia [simply because they, Coltart and company, did not think so!])

Coltart ends up with a commanding post in an interrogation unit but remarkably for all his police work in the brutal era of Smith, Coltart's story appears to tell us that he did not fire a single shot at a black man, did not slap a black cheek or kick a black butt.

Incredible!

It is one point that I raised with a literate colleague and a go-to person when my spirits (pun intended) are low.

He suggested that information about Coltart's operations could be easily got at the Police General Headquarters on his diary logs.

A story one day will be told about this interesting side of Coltart.

Tied to his liberal, nice-guy approach to Zimbabwe's history Coltart even attempts to rewrite the history of the liberation of the country, that is, how the black forces for Independence were configured and the dynamics thereof.

His approach is simple: divide and rule!

First he appears to suggest that only one side of the black liberation movement, Zapu, played the most important role; and secondly, that Ndebele people became a target for extermination and ethnic cleansing by liberation forces, Zanu, that had played a minor role in the liberation struggle!

It is with so much cheek that at one point Coltart describes President Mugabe as an "unknown quantity" yet he, from the writer's own narrative, Mugabe had risen in the nationalist ranks to become leader of the party and ardent pursuer of the armed struggle in between diplomatic efforts.

Regarding black politics in Zimbabwe, Coltart adds to his racism a layer of tribalism which makes him to somehow believe that he is a kind of messiah to the people of Matabeleland.

This perhaps is the basis on which Coltart bases his messianic pursuit of the so-called Gukurahundi story which is not only self-serving but divisive and in the main an apparent attempt to get a go at the dominant party and forces that won the liberation struggle and ended white minority rule.

This point, and if the hullabaloo around the book as it was published this year is anything to go by, leads to what would have been the third major point of this piece.

But we can as well treat the point right away.

As we speak today, Coltart is a veritable nonentity with his political career having reached its ceiling during the inclusive Government era where the opposition MDC parties were incorporated into power in 2009.

Coltart gushes about these years in the inclusive Government where he became the Minister of Education and seems to suggest that he was the best thing that ever happened to our education system.

As such, without an immediate political future for the opposition in the country and with Coltart looking set to play a part, it appears that this book is a cry for donor funding for his so-called human rights work and legal aid clinic which gave him much footing prior to joining the opposition MDC in 1999.

And the attempts at opening old wounds under the cover of "transitional justice" looks like his big bargaining point for any prospective funders.

And he is like crying: "Look here! I am the guy who authored 'Breaking the Silence' book!"

But political capital can still be mined out of this whole debacle by Coltart and other forces, can't it?

Lastly, the third frame in which Coltart's book can be read is his role in the formation and funding of the opposition MDC-T.

In remarkable detail, it is revealed, perhaps for the first time how he was critical in funnelling resources from the Western world through his Bulawayo Legal Projects Centre and went on to create similar vehicles outside the country in places such as South Africa and funded by such bodies as International Republican Institute and Open Society Foundation.

In this book he chronicles no less than 200 visits to South Africa and overseas to seek funding for the opposition.

That funding was premised on the pursuit of regime change in Zimbabwe and Coltart played a key role in canvassing for Western sanctions on Zimbabwe, which efforts he reveals in this book.