Herald
Opinion by Alexander Kanengoni
3 November 2010
We are used to young people of his age who, when thrust in a similar situation outside the country, find it easier to condemn their country because we all know, that is the language the West wants to hear to grant them the permission to stay.
THE stunning performance by Munyaradzi Chidzonga at the recent Big Brother Africa reality show in South Africa has become a talking point of some sort.
While the bigger part of the nation is celebrating this huge personal achievement, there is a section of the media that seems surprisingly unhappy about the celebrations.
First of all, it must be appreciated that when Munyaradzi expressed his desire to meet President Mugabe because he confessed the man was his hero, there is no doubt he said it from deep inside his heart.
When his fellow housemates nicknamed him the Diamond Boy and the Son of the Soil, it was because of the explicit love that he showed for his country. The fact that most of the time, he went around draped in Zimbabwe’s national flag sealed the strong connection between him and his country.
Most of us celebrated that love for his country together with him. And apparently, the rest of Africa too. He was a surprising and refreshing difference.
We are used to young people of his age who, when thrust in a similar situation outside the country, find it easier to condemn their country because we all know, that is the language the West wants to hear to grant them the permission to stay.
Therefore, when President Mugabe granted the young man his wish immediately after touching down at Harare International Airport from Johannesburg where he had incredibly lost to Uti, the Nigerian, he received him as the President of Zimbabwe and not as the leader of Zanu-PF.
There can be no doubt about that. And even before that, when flamboyant businessman Philip Chiyangwa and Cde David Chapfika arranged to raise funds to reward Munya for his sterling effort, they did not do it as Zanu-PF functionaries but as ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe. Most of us did not see anything wrong or partisan about those gestures.
So when the editor of The Independent, Constantine Chimakure, said, two issues ago, that the conflict in Zimbabwe has become glaringly ideological, he was right.
In fact, to most of us, that is how it has always been. Most of us totally agreed with him when he said we should develop a national and not partisan ideology. I will keep repeating that people did not go to war to perpetuate the colonial state model but to change it.
The biggest change would be to alter the fundamental relationship between the previously marginalised blacks and the economy, beginning with the land. The Lancaster House Agreement forced the perpetuation of the colonial state for the first 10 years.
That was the time you heard some whites going around saying: “If we had known this was what you wanted, we could have given you the country without the fight.” That was bragging.
When we eventually changed the Lancaster House constitution to acquire the land by decree that fundamentally altered the relations between the people and the economy.
We were at last moving out of the colonial state model and of course, that movement was ideological; it would face fierce resistance.
The same applies to the current Indigenisation and Empowerment Act that seeks to give locals 51 percent shareholding equity in commerce and industry. It is such movement, such a change in relations of production, that Vladimir Lenin, in State and Revolution, described as a “revolution”. Because there would always be forces fiercely opposed to the change, just as it was during the war to free the country, the change could cost lives.
That is why I was taken aback a bit to find the word “revolution” used so liberally in the current issue of the Jesuits’ monthly publication, Mukai, a conservative publication by all accounts. I came across the word several times. What was the word “revolution” doing in the extremely conservative, priestly magazine?
I once made what I believed was an honest and innocent contribution to the magazine supporting, one of their own, Father Ignatius Zvarevashe’s suggestion to localise the Catholic priests’ ordination ceremony and format.
The magazine immediately ran a disclaimer that views expressed by some contributors did not necessarily reflect the editorial position of the publication. I still do not understand why my small and humble contribution generated such discomfort. At least, they published it and I salute them for that.
But back to Munyaradzi, the attempt to deny him the right to think differently, which Chimakure’s paper is certainly not innocent of, is undemocratic. Is it not something that the paper wants everyone of us to believe it is fighting against?
Chimakure says we should develop a national ideology but his paper is reducing Munyaradzi’s story to a Zanu-PF affair. He is calling for something that he is not practising! We should all be celebrating Munyaradzi’s triumph, shouldn’t we? It surely must be one of the few achievements that unites us. That’s what I think.
This strange behaviour in some of us is comparable to Minister David Coltart’s recent statement invalidating the rating the United Nations gave our country’s literacy standing in Africa. According to the United Nations, we have overtaken Tunisia as the most literate country on the continent.
Minister Coltart claimed because the method used “was flawed”, it could not have produced a correct outcome. He went on to explain in a winding and confusing way what he meant but some of us were already too upset to continue following his logic.
As renowned novelist and colleague, Shimmer Chinodya would say: “What had gone into the minister’s head? How could he, our education minister, dispute an accolade bestowed upon our education system by the United Nations?’’
A colleague compared the minister’s utterances to a parent who accompanies his child to a prize-giving ceremony and then leaps up into the air to object publicly the merit of the prize that his child has won. It’s unfatherly, shameful and unheard of.
Even if he genuinely doubted the prize, he surely should have waited and told his wife in their bedroom in the middle of the night.
Several weeks ago, I challenged Minister Biti to tell us his party’s agenda. I challenged him to tell us if his party would have continued with the land reform programme if it had come to power.
I further challenged him if his party would have continued with the indigenisation and empowerment programme that Minister Kasukuwere is currently spearheading. Well, he hasn’t replied. He might still reply though since he is such a busy man. We should not forget besides being Minister of Finance he is also the Secretary-General of the MDC-T.
He is also the MP for Greendale and a partner in a law firm established a long time ago. We should not forget that he is a father and a family man. He must be a very busy man.
But it is the current constitution making programme that has completely exposed the dilemma of the MDC. They do not have a national agenda, only petty grievances: “Mugabe has stayed too long in power”; “Mugabe must have less powers than parliament”; “ambassadors must be appointed by parliament”; “it’s mismanagement that has brought the country to its present woes”; “there are no sanctions, only restrictive measures”.
No sanctions?
Minister Biti had hoped we would get over US$800 million from the donor community towards our US$2,5 million 2010 national budget because they had indicated they would provide it. Only a negligible amount eventually trickled in.
Then we resolved we would sweat it out and generate the money ourselves, especially through the sale of our precious minerals like diamonds. As I write this article, the world’s diamond producers and buyers are gathered in Israel where the West is trying for the umpteenth time to block us from selling our diamonds.
If they don’t want with their money, at least they should allow us to sell our diamonds and raise the money. How can our diamonds suddenly become “blood” when their own De Beers was mining and selling those very diamonds for 15 years without our knowledge and the West kept quiet about it and even deemed the diamonds clean?
That was day-light robbery. Honourable Prime Minister, where do you still get the courage to face the people and say there are only “targeted” sanctions? Are you not ashamed?
But it is the denial to celebrate our own African achievement by a section of our society that is intriguing. Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian writer and novelist, describes this phenomenon in a chilling manner.
“Colonialism constructed elaborate ways to justify its actions. You do not walk in, seize the land, the people, the history of another and compose hymns of praise in his honour.
“To do that would amount to calling yourself a bandit. You would rather say the man you dispossessed is worthless and unfit to manage himself. If there are minerals you are carting away, you prove that he doesn’t own them, that they just happened to be lying around the same place.
“Therefore the agenda of the colonists did not, could not, make provision for the celebration of the world of the colonised.”
Is this not what we are still getting from our erstwhile colonial masters? It appears they are having a lot of difficulty in becoming Zimbabwean. At least, they should allow Munyaradzi to think differently. Is that not what they ‘taught’ us was the meaning of democracy?