(HERALD) The rise of African nationalism
The rise of African nationalism
By Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa
THIS is the second of a series of articles in which AMBASSADOR CHRISTOPHER MUTSVANGWA traces the foundations of Zimbabwe and how four centuries of Zimbabwe-Europe interaction have served to sap the country of its ability to chart an independent and prosperous course in global affairs.
Soshangana and the Shangani in the East
Another Nguni offshoot, the Shangani moved into the Mozambique-Zimbabwe border. Here they fought great anti-colonial battles against Portuguese rule under the great chief Gungunyana.
The British and modern Zimbabwe
The present-day Zimbabwe is a product of British imperial rule for over 90 years. Unlike other African countries where the English sent administrators, Zimbabwe was turned into a home by the colonisers.
The fertile soils, the equable climate off the plateau was simply too enticing to the new European invaders thus vindicating the great sense of human geography in the original Shona who had made the plateau home at about the same time as Vikings invaded England and well before the Norman conquest of the British Isles.
At their population height in 1970s, the white settlers were less than 3 percent of the total population. Yet they wielded great power concentrated in a racial minority.
Their numbers have dwindled mainly because of lack of allegiance to Zimbabwe.
Britain, the metropolitan power, has consistently and persistently manipulated their loyalty to serve a selfish, neo-colonial and increasingly outdated agenda of pernicious influence on the Zimbabwe body politic.
The British tradition continues to wane as their numbers have decreased in the aftermath of their military defeat a decade before the 21st century. But their influence in ushering in the concept of a modern state to the Zimbabwe nation is still there and will endure long after their present if flippant sulkiness.
The English language and international discourse
Besides the management of a modern economy, advanced commercial law and other aspects of a modern state, the enduring contribution is the usage of the English language in national discourse.
With the emergence of the USA as the dominant superpower of the 20th century and beyond, Zimbabwe could ride on the world-wide acceptance of English as the premier lingua franca of international interaction.
The liberal democratic tradition
Another remarkable feature of English colonial rule was the introduction of the liberal democratic mode of governance.
At home, British rule had done its part in advancing constitutionalism as a mode of modern governance. Yet as it went abroad, British imperialism practised class discrimination that would lead to rebellion by the American colonists. Worse, it was the pioneer and practitioner of modern racism against the people of colour.
Nevertheless, with the eventual demise of the imperial adventure, the concept of liberal democratic governance has been avidly adapted by the former subjects.
In Zimbabwe, it took one generation before the black majority shook off the stupor of the shock of military defeat by British conquerors at the end of the 19th century.
Agitation for workers’ rights in the new towns soon coalesced with rural demand for stolen land.
The aftermath of the Second World War saw this political activism morph into the demand for the non-racial voting and majority rule.
Political parties were formed in the face of growing resistance and increasing white minority settler repression. This was the incubation of the future political leadership that would culminate in a successful military challenge to British imperial rule.
Heroes and the anti-colonial tradition
Just as Walter Rodney postulates in his celebrated book, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa", the natural development of Zimbabwe was stunted and even temporarily arrested by aspects of its negative interaction with Europe.
Changamire Dombo of the Rozvi
The Portuguese who had set up legation at the court of Munhumutapa did not take long to see an opportunity in occupying the well-endowed Zimbabwe plateau for their far away king.
Through the ruse of dabbling in local succession politics, the Portuguese interlopers did not take time to ensconce themselves as imperial arbiters of the Munhumutapa Kingdom.
Though outnumbered with stretched supply lines, they soon turned themselves into rulers taking courtesy of their advantage of superior firepower. However, their imperial adventurism was very shortlived as the Shonas from the interior organised a counter-offensive.
Changamire Dombo of the Rozvi was the first great hero in the long history of painful encounter with European imperial invaders. His warriors drove Portuguese armies away from the interior plateau to the Indian Ocean coastal zones.
He thus spared the country the fate of present-day Mozambique which became a colony of Portugal for so many centuries.
The respite of freedom was to be challenged by more modern and better armed British imperial troops. Under the guise of dubious and deceitful treaties, Rhodes and his Pioneer Column occupied present-day Zimbabwe in the wake of the 1884 Berlin Conference on the Partition of Africa.
Lobengula and the Ndebele War
This brazen act of imperial conquest forced King Lobengula of the Ndebele nation into a war against the marauders.
Though he was defeated, the spirit of resistance took another dimension when both the Shona and Ndebele organised a joint resistance that would stretch the new occupiers.
Nehanda and the First Chimurenga
Nehanda, Kaguvi, Mashayamombe, Chingaira and many other Shona and Ndebele chiefs carried out co-ordinated attacks at isolated settler outposts all over the Plateau. Facing stark prospects, imperial Britain had to dispatch fresh reinforcements from Port Elizabeth to go to Zimbabwe through Beira in order to save its embattled settlers from imminent annihilation.
European advances in military technology such as the Gatling gun and the invention of dynamite tilted the equation against native peoples who still fought with spears. Their numbers were rendered useless against such firepower and the war of resistance collapsed into painful defeat.
Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and modern nationalism
The defeat of the people of Zimbabwe cowered a whole generation into submission as fear gripped the land and white settlers did as they wished. They appropriated large estates for themselves while forcing the majority natives into marginal lands.
Indentured labour was the order of the day. So were onerous taxes and other administrative measures intended to force the majority into a new proletariat designed to serve the new masters. Working conditions in new urban centres, farms and mines were as appalling as the low wages.
The sheer weight of oppression was such that it could only revive the spirit of resistance. By the 1930s the people had taken to strikes and agitation against colonial excesses.
The outbreak of the WWII forced a stretched Britain to recruit Africans and other colonial subjects into its war effort against Hitler’s Germany.
The battle cry of freedom had a resonant effect. At the end of hostilities, many were demobilised without as much as a thank you by a broke and penniless England.
To their consternation they noticed their erstwhile battlefield white colleagues being rewarded with even more land which was being expropriated from fellow Africans. The resultant anger and alienation fuelled the spirit of popular resistance eve more.
In the meantime, missionary education had nurtured a more conscious African elite, which could eloquently articulate the issues of concern to the black majority.
This new elite also benefited from interaction with other Africans when they went to South Africa to further their education.
After all, South Africa had the oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress, which had been founded in 1912 in reaction to nascent apartheid as the British co-opted Afrikaners into a white ruling condominium.
Joshua Nkomo, the Father of the Nation, became the voice of Zimbabweans as he articulated their grievances and formed political parties that urged majority rule and one man one vote.
Robert Mugabe, an uncanny intellectual, austere revolutionary and visionary statesman started his political career as Joshua Nkomo’s lieutenant but came into his own as the demands of the drawn out struggle rose.
The two combined into a formidable duet that scaled new heights in the fight for freedom. They did not hesitate to the ultimate choice of armed confrontation with the entrenched settler minority in order to dislodge it from power.
Repeated proscriptions of political parties, imprisonment and detention of the leadership, brazen violence meted out to the agitating populace exposed the futility of non-violent confrontation of the entrenched settler minority.
The nationalist movement came to the painful conclusion that to win freedom and sovereignty, the people had to organise their own defence against the colonial state machinery.
Zimbabwe had to reverse the defeat of Nehanda, Kaguvi and others before they could once again come into their own.
One man one vote, majority rule, a people’s constitution and all that go with the trappings of a modern democratic state were only possible after the people had been organised to answer the settler insolence and intransigence with potent armed power. A terrible new beauty was about to be born.
Herbert Chitepo, J Z Moyo and the People’s War
The challenge to chart the new territory of founding a revolutionary army fell on two, on lawyer Herbert Chitepo of Zanu and Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo of Zapu.
In the relative safety of exile in newly independent Zambia and Tanzania, both took it upon themselves to embrace current thinking on national liberation theory and practice.
They rightly deserve the credit of the formation of an armed political cadreship for the defence of a people under colonial bondage.
This army was built on the bedrock of love of the country and its people. Those who were its initial cadres sowed a tradition were the well-being of the individual was subsumed to that of the nation.
The prospect of one’s life was subordinated to that of a country and its people for eternity.
Good schooling, rewarding work, marrying and bringing up own family as well as quest for self-actualisation, including any anticipated fame: all these were to pale in significance and value to the call of patriotic duty.
A great calling that could not reward the self. It inevitably led to maiming, loss of sight or hearing.
Most horribly, it often ended with the brutish claim of that invaluable, once only gift of life. And for the survivors there is the lifelong trauma of war and the consequences of foregone opportunity in a competitive society.
It is no wonder that their invaluable philosophy and praxis of nation building so frightened the enemy that he dedicated all his effort to the personal elimination of both Herbert Chitepo and JZ Moyo among many others of their proud ilk.
Josiah Tongogara, Nikita Mangena and the Samora Machel generation
Zimbabwe’s military genius came into its own under the command of the incomparable Josiah Tongogara of the Zimbabwe African Liberation Army (Zanla) and Nikita Mangena of the Zimbabwe’s African People’s Army (Zipra).
Their military mettle came to the fore courtesy of a new wave of recruits who left the country at the inspiration of the political and military exploits of Samora Machel and his Frelimo of Mozambique.
The armed victory of the people of Mozambique that helped foment a revolution against fascist Portuguese rule was to fire the imagination of youth in the whole of Southern Africa.
All the classrooms of the region starting with those of Soweto burst into open defiance of colonial rule spilling into the streets to demonstrate.
More potently, thousands others melted into the African bush to trek to neighbouring independent countries to seek the much loved gun. Defying the prospect of imminent death they fervently embraced arms with the sole desire to train and go back home to settle the final score with a well-armed and dug-in armed racist oppressor.
Cuito Cunavale and Mavonde battles: racist military invincibility shattered
The armed forces Marxist coup of 1974 removed the forces of Fascist Portugal from the Southern Africa war theatre.
At the same time it triggered heavier military commitment and co-operation by the racist regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa. Armed intervention into the black-ruled states of the region translated into open conventional aggression especially in Angola.
An alarmed West came to the logistic assistance of their increasingly cornered kith and kin. Angola had no option but to call in Cuban help with Russian weaponry to stem the tide of invasion.
The encounter was to culminate in the battle of Cuito Cunavale in 1978 in southern Angola, when South African forces of occupation were soundly defeated by allied Cuban, Angolan, Swapo and ANC forces.
With this rout, the myth of the invincibility of white racist forces in confrontation with black Africans was effectively shattered.
On the eastern front in Zimbabwe, this piece of military history was to be repeated in the 1979 Battle of Mavonde at the border between Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and Mozambique.
As the British supervised truce talks went on at Lancaster House in London, the beleaguered Rhodesian forces decided to mount a last-ditch offensive to break the back of Zanla.
The express aim was to militarily humiliate the guerrilla army and force the black nationalists into abject surrender at the negotiating table.
Alas, they had not reckoned with the cunning Josiah Tongogara and his meticulous battle planning. The Zanla High Command had chosen a strategic stronghold in the mountainous border region as their staging base for a final onslaught on the racist edifice of Rhodesia.
Taking a leaf from the Viet Cong book, they proceeded to build an elaborate defence structure based on intricate tunnels. They then deployed their best firepower cocksure that the day of reckoning would surely come.
Sure enough, November 1978 saw attacking Rhodesians hurl full force into what would turn out to be the mother of all battles. But their luck of yesteryear when they would use superior arms to wipe out hordes of spear wielding Africans had finally met its match.
Their ground assault with heavy guns ran into tenacious resistance of military riposte. They then roped aerial bombardment. But all to no avail as volleys of anti-aircraft bullets sowed sure death on any pilots who would dare to approach the Mavonde military complex.
The time was up for racist Rhodesia. Zanla carried the day. General Peter Walls, the crest-fallen commander of the Rhodesian Army had to pack his bags and fly to London for ignominious face to face talks with Josiah Tongogara and his Zipra counterparts.
The chastened British military did not lose time to confer their formidable foe with the status of a full general notwithstanding the fact that he had never gone through the paces of the famed Sandhurst military training. With that came the honour of leading the discussion of the all-important military aspects of the ensuing ceasefire.
It is worth noting that Rhodesia disappeared from the map of history without ever having issued a military communiqué of the final outcome of the Battle of Mavonde or "Monte Casino" as they had christened it.
The Battle of Mavonde victory and history
The Zanla victory at Mavonde sealed the fate of the Lancaster House peace talks and led directly to the independence of Zimbabwe.
Britain was forced to finally assume control of its wayward Rhodesian kith and kin. It now had to do its best to pull any chestnuts it could out of the colonial bonfire they had recklessly lighted for themselves through arrogance of misguided intransigence.
But it had a more stunning if numbing effect on apartheid South Africa and its military industrial complex.
The ferocity and tenacity of the Zanla defenses at Mavonde had finally sounded a death knell to wafted tales of the inane military superiority of the white men in the region.
And in this instance, the Zanla victory was totally homegrown. At the battle of Mavonde, there had been absolutely no involvement of Cuban internationalist forces or any other outsiders in the fateful encounter.
The faith of apartheid politicians in the invincibility of white generals had gone up in military smoke.
The watchword was that it would be folly for white South Africa to allow military confrontation to take its unfettered course. Eschewing the defiant extremism of Rhodesia’s Ian smith, it became more prudent to bargain existing military superiority into political concessions.
After all, memories of the 1974 demise of fascist Portugal were still fresh. The military and political victory of Samora Machel had spawned a new revolutionary dynamism in the sub-region. The respite of Zimbabwe’s negotiated independence had to be leveraged for sub-regional accommodation with the potent force of African nationalism. The political grounds of the peaceful surrender of apartheid were thus sown.
Zimbabwe and wounded British imperial pride
Starting with the so termed Kaffir Wars against the Xhosa, on to the Nguni Wars in Zululand, then the Shona-Ndebele Wars, and indeed the Anglo-Boer War, the rampaging British imperial marauders had tasted occasional battlefield losses but never lost a war in this sub-region and in sub-Saharan Africa.
The lasting effect of the victory at Mavonde was slow to be fully absorbed by those of the English who still harbour imperial nostalgia of the British Raj. That explains why London–Harare bilateral relations are apt to be so easily sullied. Military defeat at the hands of Africa is a painful new lesson to permanently scribe into the history of a bygone but once proud empire.
Independent Zimbabwe and its contribution to Africa and beyond
National reconciliation and nation building
The new Republic of Zimbabwe pleasantly stunned the white former foes by announcing a policy of national reconciliation as opposed to the justifiable retribution that would have merited their genocidal excesses during the national liberation war.
Notwithstanding its absolute parliamentary majority, a Government was formed by Zanu-PF out of all national stakeholders including the white losers.
The new Government went on to perform the miracle of minting a new unified army out of the three military factions who had so bitterly fought each other.
The Zimbabwe model of national reconciliation was to be avidly embraced by the United Nations in its invigorated role of conflict resolution and nation building.
Conscious of the Shona and Ndebele as the population pillars of modern Zimbabwe, the two national leaders, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe tirelessly worked for a new national cohesion. The Unity Accord of 1987 brought in a new dimension to the politics of national accommodation.
Independence also saw migrant workers from all sub-regional neighbours being granted citizenship. This still has to be emulated elsewhere in the Sadc region.
Zimbabwe has also benefited from the domestication of faith based institutions. Much as metropolitan Europe and America have tried to abuse the Christian church for neo-colonial ends, the faith-based institutions have tended to evince patriotism. This has come in handy to assist cohesive national political discourse.
Zimbabwe used the opportunities of independence to make extraordinary advances in education that has seen it top all sub-Saharan Africa.
Only Tunisia is ahead on the continent. The massive educational drive has proved a boon in many ways that may not have been anticipated.
When the HIV and Aids pandemic struck, the country could still find itself with a rich human resource pool that withstood this national calamity.
And when the mean West opportunistically imposed illegal sanctions to pauperise the nation, Zimbabweans skipped into the Diaspora where their high quality skills and dependable work ethic found ready demand.
Their remittances would provide a lifeline of sorts to those who remained in the beleaguered economy at home. Now with internal stability returning and more promising economic prospects, the ingrained patriotism shall seem a return of all that treasure of varied skills and global exposure.
Pan-Africanism and regional solidarity
True to the tradition of anti-colonial Frontline States, the new state lost no time in shouldering its share of sub-regional responsibilities. Zimbabwe’s foreign policy and military engagements became premised upon the need to stem the northward counter push of apartheid as it preyed upon a war weakened Mozambique.
Soon after internal peace was assured, the Zimbabwe military was deployed in Mozambique to fend off apartheid sponsored Renamo, which was on the verge of toppling the Frelimo-led government.
With relative stability achieved in Mozambique, Zimbabwe’s diplomacy became the bastion of the fight against apartheid colonialism that would lead to Namibia’s independence.
It went on to stand full-square in the struggle against apartheid until the freedom of Nelson Mandela and the peaceful demise of apartheid.
As South Africa was still consolidating its peace and democracy, Zimbabwe allied itself even more closely with Angola to thwart the irredentist ambitions of Unita, until the latter was finally defeated.
Driven by a desire for a peaceful sub-region that would provide an environment conducive to economic development, Zimbabwe together with Angola and Namibia led a military push to arrest Rwandan-Ugandan territorial expansionism in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The British riposte and illegal economic sanctions
This military action was to open a fresh wound in the toxic relations with imperial-minded Britain and other Anglophonia. All of them including Bill Clinton’s Washington would have wanted to profit from the dismemberment of this important country at the heart of Africa.
They also would have opened a rear front for the express purpose of the destabilisation of the emerging Southern African bloc that was prone to be assertive in dealing with Europe and the West.
After Zimbabwe’s successful foray into Congo-Kinshasa, London had a new reason to be fervently anti-Zimbabwe and to seek to bring President Mugabe and his Government to heel.
Labourite London wasted no time in adopting the same strategy that imperial Portugal had used to weaken the Shona and their Rozvi Kingdom after their humiliation in the 17th century.
Bin Laden’s 2001 attack of New York World Trade Centre would turn out to be the perfect excuse for vindictive policy of regime change under the umbrella of Pax America.
Harare was now in the gun sights of the ambitious builders of a new empire. But the painful aftermath of military adventurism in Iraq ended up checking the neo-imperial pretensions of Tony Blair and George W Bush.
In the meantime, landlocked Zimbabwe has had to be severed from all economic links to the outside world even to the extent of ill-fated attempts to invoke United Nations Sanctions. With China and Russia wielding veto power that goal proved impossible.
But even then, of immediate use was the riot act of the West-dominated economic order of the Bretton Woods system read out on Zimbabwe. Misery wrought upon the populace through financial strangulation and opportunistic divestment by traditional economic co-operating partners became the basis of a push at orchestrated regime change.
Surviving illegal sanctions: triumph through unity
For a decade, Zimbabwe has laboured under a very onerous sanctions regime that would have felled any third world country of lesser resolve.
Yet the people of Zimbabwe remained unflinching and their spirit refused to be bowed down. Instead, it led them to be more soul searching until a new found internal political cohesion was found with the help of regional solidarity.
Admittedly the country’s cohesiveness has been severely tested. The label of pariah state and instability became the badge of a contrived, externally driven dishonour.
For the record, the internal political debate at times took a more vigorous twist.
Yet to the relief of all Zimbabweans of goodwill it ended up shunning the temptation of fawning to foreign interests, let alone the cardinal sins of treachery or treason.
Thus when our fellow African brethren entered into the fray as peace-brokers, they were positively surprised to find themselves working on fertile fields of ready political compromise for the good of the nation
And that national discourse, aided by the effort of regional neighbours and the goodwill of Africa as well as the sympathy of progressive humanity carried the day.
The beautiful tale is that all Africans ended rejoicing in the signing of the Global Political Agreement by President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Professor Arthur Mutambara under the contented gaze of President Mbeki of South Africa and other regional leaders.
A genuine national middle class is the road to national prosperity
The sources of the Zimbabwe tradition have clearly shown that the four centuries of Zimbabwe-Europe interaction have mainly served to sap the country of its ability to chart an independent and prosperous course in global affairs.
Wars and economic sanctions have stunted the development of a national middle class. Colonial occupation wanted to make sure that Zimbabwe, and indeed Africa would never follow this normal route of national evolution.
With the successful recovery of our land and its resources, Zimbabweans are once again poised to follow the well-trodden path of nation building that will lead to prosperity.
The history of national genius is about to write yet another more glorious chapter in the tradition of great granite citadels at Great Zimbabwe and elsewhere. The heroes of the past can once again smile in the gaze of the departed.
The only noble reason to write a new constitution is to create a socio-political environment that achieves this great end of national social progress to the glory of the nation for all generations to come.
Any other argumentation is the height of frivolity and should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. The train that is Zimbabwe which had been derailed for a good four centuries is now firmly back on its proper tracks.
ENDS
Labels: HISTORY, PATRIOTISM
posted by MrK @ 3:27 PM
2 Comments:
The uneducated nd biased narration of events shows the contempt for facts as Zanu and its brutality are glorified. We know the truth Chris including your prvious role as a member of the dreaded CIO.
The idea of a politically united Africa, Pan-Africanism, has been around for over a hundred years. While the pan-african movement has been involved in anti-slavery and anti-colonial struggles and the fight against Apartheid South Africa, there has never been any significant movement towards a political unification. However, recent historical events, quite unexpectedly, may provide an impetus in this direction.
http://www.watchinghistory.com/2009/11/african-union.html
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