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(HERALD) Sibanda: Exorcising the heresy of Matabeleland

Sibanda: Exorcising the heresy of Matabeleland

THE National Heroes Acre in not a facility for bleaching darkened political souls. It is a site and recognition of honour: honour irrevocably achieved and thus honour which cannot be reversed or undone through subsequent transgressions.

Zanu-PF, the sole creator of that Acre, indeed the deserved sole author of rules of entry to that shrine, relies on death for this irrevocability. For Zanu-PF, life has to have been snuffed out, to have gone extinct, for heroism to be recognised, proclaimed, honoured and then celebrated.

Before then, uh uh!

I had the privilege of following the whole debate on this very matter as it unfolded in Zanu-PF. I recall that the debate was quite emotional, albeit with its own moments of humour and memorable brilliance.

Zvobgo and his "chema"

One leading figure in this whole debate was the late lawyer-minister and the then Secretary for Legal Affairs in the party, Cde Eddison Mudadirwa Zvobgo, who also lies at the Heroes Acre.

I particularly recall his witty answer on why heroes could only be honoured posthumously, never in their lifetime, a good many of whose twilight years often got quite rough and penurious. And examples of national heroes, who only became great and comfortable in death, having lived a hard, patched life, were summoned to buttress this emotional and emotive debate. But Cde Zvobgo would not be ruffled, hiding his well-known stubbornness beneath sheer brilliance of intellect, for which he will always be renowned, well beyond his lifetime.

To do so, replied the inimitable lawyer, "for me recalls a bizarre incident involving my own young brother, Abisai who, upon getting remarkably reduced both in purse and in personality, accosted me for his "chema" so he could enjoy it in his lifetime!"

It turned out that Abisai, also late, badly needed some small change for a small drink with which to fend off a raging, fanged hangover that "sat" him, to use local parlance. Unfortunately his pocket was out, which is how he ended up inventing this modest proposal of strange appeal.

Consistency, persistency

The sheer brilliance of the argument, so aptly backed by personal and even confidential family experience, simply staggered the Politburo which laughed as much as it took in all its threads. Whether this was a "live" example summoned from beneath the hard-to-fathom mind of the lawyer, or just fiction favoured and populated with living beings for pseudo-veracity, only the Zvobgo family can answer. But it did the trick. Except Cde Zvobgo would not end half-done.

He knew that one visit would not make a baby. Matters had to be seen through, and he hurried forward to clinch his point in typical eloquence, characteristically hidden beneath his seemingly unkempt, Karangarised pronunciation, but one steadied by complex syntactical construction: "A person, once declared a national hero, should be incapable of negating that status and verdict, which is what death comprehensively does for us.

They being dead; doth not sinneth! The accent on the selection of heroes must fall on those persons to have pursued and promoted the ideals of the liberation struggle consistently and persistently, without deviating from the same, right through to the bitter end . . ." That did it and the debate ended with the lawyer’s recommendations sailing through, un-amended. So were born the rules of selection and access to the Heroes Acre, themselves subject of much debate and altercation today.

Sibanda the nationalist

As I write, there is a sizeable debate regarding the status in death of Gibson Sibanda, the deputy president of MDC-M. The Sibanda’s profile as proffered by those involved in pushing for his recognition, rested on his career as a veteran trade unionist and trade union leader who cut his union teeth in the railway sub-sector of transport industry.

They also highlighted his role as a welfare officer in Zapu, as a result of which they say he got detained at Whawha and Marondera. The exact circumstances of that detention were not disclosed, as also was not the duration of that detention.

Significantly, the two MDC formations have staked their demand on Sibanda’s nationalist credentials, itself an admission that what he did beyond Zapu, Whawha and Marondera, may not have been that salutary as to be heroic, as to go and count towards this sought after status. More of that a little later.

A brawl over the dead

What begs preliminary debate is the whole moral of enjoying a brawl above the cold and still body of a man not yet buried, a brawl so replete with self-interest and self-positioning. And I find myself in an invidious position where to make the point, I actually have to participate and extend parameters of this same blameworthy brawl. In fact I had resolved to let the disgrace pass without me, until I saw an article reflecting the views of the Sibanda family on the matter.

The late Sibanda’s daughter, given as Thandi, has been reported as asserting her father’s entitlement to a national hero status.

Thereafter I became convinced that indeed the late Sibanda had been sacrificed by those closest to him, had been made fair game for public comment.

By volunteering their opinion over a matter and debate which is patently political, the Sibanda family, through its family spokesperson, has traded in the sanctity of his death and body for public scrutiny. They have invited tongues, and yes tongues do belch anything between praise and censure.

I hope the family will like what follows as this matter gets turned over, and with it, their own father’s life and career.

The Matabeleland heresy

But I have another reason for jumping into the fray. Both formations of the MDC are playing on the symbolism of Sibanda’s assumed regional identity. For far too long, there has been an inexplicable reluctance to debate issues and concerns coming from the so-called Matabeleland region.

So-called because "Matabeleland" is neither a geographical place nor a socio-cultural entity, it is political construct which is as convenient and self-serving as those peddling it.

The truth is that "Matabeleland" is a politically fraught fiction; as fictional as is Manicaland, Masvingo, and all the Mashonalands with all their pretensions to scientific compass bearings. I challenge anybody on this earth and beyond to tell me what Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Manicaland or Masvingo mean, or what it is on the ground that validates such stupid nomenclature we did not have to perpetuate after colonialism, we did not need to sanctify as identity markers, patently false though they are.

Let’s debate that. I remove my gloves for a hard-knuckled debate.

Gukurahundi monologues

But my point goes further. Starting off from this false consciousness, certain individuals who claim to speak for this fiction called Matabeleland have been mischievously tendering false claims of injury and entitlement, all unchallenged. We fear challenging flawed thinking from this part of Zimbabwe, with the result that potentially political dangerous misconceptions have congealed and settled by sheer default. I will illustrate.

The conflict in the early part of our Independence which pitted Zanu against Zapu, Zanla against Zipra, and for which everyone including the President regretted and regrets, has spawned a one-sided, monologue-debate, led by variegated interests, including Rhodesian and foreign ones, for self-serving ends.

How Zapu and Zipra became Matabeleland, remains a mystery to me. Was Zapu and its Zipra not active in Hurungwe and even Zvimba, the President’s birth place? Was it not national? Yet this thinking, driven by people who had nothing to do with Zapu or Zipra, asserts so in order to achieve their narrow interests. It has become a real blackmail, an unchallenged vehicle for pursuing ignoble interests while using guilt and tribal sentiment to claim immunity from rigorous scrutiny and challenge.

Somehow, those in Zanu-PF have gagged themselves on this debate, mistakenly thinking that their silence on this very matter safeguards the Unity Accord.

For that reason the debate has proceeded without them, and has been used against them and the Party. Who does not know that the Justice and Peace report — Breaking Silence — became the MDC’s launch manifesto in that southern region of Zimbabwe?

Second cousins theory

Then comes a related but separate debate centred on well cultivated mis-perceptions of "Matabeleland" as deliberately underdeveloped, as "a second cousin", to use Eric Bloch’s phrase. In fact I am wrong to call this an Eric Bloch phrase. Eric merely recalled it from colonial history.

Go to any issue of the Rhodesian Herald, from the days of the British South Africa Company administration right up to Independence. You will notice a raging and often divisive debate involving white Rhodesians located in the southern part of Rhodesia against the rest of their kind in the country, asserting their rights and entitlements as southerners, against the much reviled administration of the BSAC.

Curiously, the argument did not make any reference to the place, fate and fortunes of Africans living in that part of Zimbabwe, Africans we now glibly refer to as Ndebeles. It never did. How certain persons from that part of the country consider themselves successors to those "white second cousins" of Rhodesia; remains a mystery to me. And this whole debate on Matabeleland-Zambezi water project had its origins in that intra-white colonial debate. It is not the genius of post-independence politics, led by Dabengwa or lately, Sipepa Nkomo.

Centre-periphery

But the debate was not and will never be a unique one. It was and will always be a debate between any national capital anywhere in the world and its satellite zones again anywhere in the world, for as long as we follow the capitalist model of hub-and-spoke, as opposed to spatially balanced and spread, development to urban planning. And it is sheer folly to blame any one tribe, or any one post-independence political party or arrangement, for the way Harare and Bulawayo are, for the way both capitals are, in relation to the rest of smaller cities and towns in the country.

Where others are not even second cousins

What is worse, national statistics on development after independence do not bear out this second cousin theory which is so mistaken and so political fraught, to be left alone. Go to Buhera, specifically between Murambinda and Birchenough Bridge, and tell me what you witness there by way of opportunities for livelihood. Compare these to any place in the southern part of our country and tell me what your conclusions are.

Outside Ruti Dam built by Rhodesians, you will not find any of the dams you get in "Matabeleland South".

What then do you call that stricken stretch of Buhera, if you decide to call the southern part of Zimbabwe a second cousin? Mubvakure, perhaps? Walk between Birchenough Bridge and Chakohwa, including northwards to cover the whole of Mafararikwa right up to the shores of Save, and find for me any one dam, any one irrigation project as new and as big as any you find in the southern part of our country.

Test all the human development indices in that sorry habitat and tell me what you come up with. Or the whole of Rushinga; the whole of Lower Guruve; the whole of UMP; the whole of Mberengwa; the whole of Kariba. Or Chiredzi. In all these areas and regions — whatever tribal or regional names you care to give them — life is simply inert and enervated, the habitat too brittle and brutal to support life. Yet no great theories of deliberate underdevelopment have emerged from these areas which do not merit the tag of cousins of any number at all.

The myth of Ndebele-ness

Thirdly you have the myth of Ndebele-ness running hard on the heels of the aforesaid, with the attendant accessories of language, culture, myths and symbols to buttress it.

Recently we have had a fire gutting down the kraal of King Lobengula, himself part of our country’s founding myths, alongside Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi. It is a fire that started in the environs of the revered kraal, clearly through sheer neglect and indifference which makes all those living close to the kraal culpable.

The fire was not imported from a heath in Harare or any part of the so-called Mashonaland, in order to torch this cultural symbol. Those with the responsibility to put out the fire did not have to come from Chipinga or Chakohwa. They had to come from communities within the kraal’s circumambient universe, and for whom that facility was meant. They include the Khumalos who trace their origins to that place and by that reason whose responsibility towards ensuring its safety doubles.

Then comes infantile politics

No one did anything to safeguard the recreated monument in this dry season we know to come every year, until it got gutted to ashes by uncontrolled fires so common in this dry season.

Witness what followed! A huge and emotive debate blaming those in Harare "who do not want to see our culture incorporated and visible"! Aah! What a way of abnegating oneself from responsibility!

Meanwhile, you have a huge-equally emotional debate on the statue of Umdala wethu which must not be touched by anyone else, placed anywhere else except where "Matabeleland" — the "rightful" owner of that iconic, national figure — approves.

What is the rhyme, what is the reason? Clearly you can see how crass arguments, infantile arguments, simply gain decency by default, by the silence of men and women whose duty it is to eschew such childishness.

The Swazi saga

And it’s not like this grotesquery will go away through indifference. Far from going away, it is actually overstretching itself, getting bolder and bolder. The constitutional outreach progarmme illustrates this. Recently we had an individual — interestingly the country’s former ambassador to many capitals including, Addis — seeking to bar outreach teams from gathering views in his area, until questionnaires came in a certain language spoken by locals there.

Apparently the former national envoy has now become a chief of a sub-ethnic group. A whole holder of a PhD, happily receding into antediluvian chauvinism! And he is not alone. We have whole professors who tell you that to make it politically, you have to wear the tribal mantle!

The issue of leadership

To that add the shrill demand for the so-called devolution of powers by way of a federal constitutional arrangement. This, we are told, is a sure panacea to the so-called underdevelopment. Not the colonial legacy, not capitalism, not sanctions, not neo-colonialism.

Much worse, you had Tsvangirai’s ill-fated recall of MDC ministers from Government, and the spurts of anger this triggered from Matabeleland. Regardless of the fact that those recalled came from all over, including Masvingo, Chitungwiza and Mhondoro, the argument centred on a proposition that Tsvangirai, like Mugabe, was pruning the leadership from "Matabeleland". You had the likes of Conte Mhlanga stretching their long necks to make a hoarse, tribal point. Everyone is Ndebele! Really? And that is what must matter only in making appointments. It cures all misdemeanours, all other foibles, including pilfering cell-phones! Again I am ready for a rough take on this stupid argument, calculated to blackmail those in authority.

Munakandafa?

Which takes me back to the subject broached at the very beginning.

Why didn’t the MDC formations predicate their demand for Sibanda’s hero status on his oppositional profile as the founder and president of the original MDC? Why did they seek to stretch his uneventful association with Zapu to make a case for his going to Heroes Acre?

Secondly, how do formations which only yesterday were trading insults, suddenly gang up on

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this one matter? If both knew and regarded Sibanda that highly, why was he not their leader, indeed the voice they listened to in the run-up to their split? Why should a hero they derided and toppled only yesterday be held high in Zanu -PF, the party he organised against, and only in death?

When he could not be accommodated as a minister of government, thanks to their bickering, was the burden of justifying his continued stay in Government not thrust on the President who ended up being Sibanda’s only defender? Where was Mutambara; where was Tsvangirai, both of them co-principals? Or did they need to be consulted first before defending his continued stay in Government, without a seat? Thirdly, is there a link between Mutambara’s stridency on this matter and the MDC-M congress which is around the corner? Is there any connection between Tsvangirai’s stridency on the same matter, and the pressures his party is facing in Matabeleland in the wake of Zapu and a restructured MDC-M?

Heroes Acre as a cleansing tool

What is not coming through the current debate how these leaders are using the late Sibanda as a pretext and excuse for dealing with the issue of legitimacy facing the two formations. The image of a quisling party serving foreign interests won’t go way. It won’t go away not because someone stubborn keeps pasting it back the two formations’ foreheads. It won’t go away because of the conduct of one of the formations which keeps cultivating and watering this reviled identity through its puzzling conduct.

Mistakenly, the MDC leadership thinks getting a salute from Service Chiefs, themselves war veterans, or one or two errand war veterans to its ranks, will bleach its darkened soul without any material changes to its politics as a proxy party opposed to the ideals of the liberation struggle. The role the MDC played from its formation in 1999 was and remains ignoble and treacherous.

It is a role that saw MDC, led by Sibanda and Tsvangirai, fighting the return of the land, taking money from sponsors of Rhodesia which resisted and killed those lying at Heroes Acre. Above all, it is a role that brought us sanctions responsible for the gnawing misery we face to this day. These, not Zanu -PF, are the compelling issues standing between Sibanda and the shrine, indeed between the MDC politics and the regard its leadership seeks to levy from all of us.

Where he faltered

If Sibanda worked with Zapu at some point in his remote past, and got arrested for it, well and good. This, together with his role in national healing, most probably explains why he was granted a state-assisted funeral. But the important thing is that he blotted his escutcheon by the dim role he played subsequently, which made him fail the consistency, persistency test, indeed which made him deviate from those ideals that saw him detained at Whawha and Marondera. That is the heart of the matter.

The debate which will not change anything

Yes, Heroes Acre was created by the two, sole liberation movements which will continue to dominate the supply of rules and candidates for that Acre. It is a prerogative of history which no other party shall enjoy. It is the benefit of the sacrifices the two liberation movements made, the price the two MDC formations have to pay for being late-comers shunting hostile foreigners into the home. It is an Acre steeped in an emotive history which the MDC has challenged. The values and history embodied in that Acre are too important, too sensitive, too immutable to be renegotiated or altered, less so on the promptings of the MDC, given its role. One is touching the very soul of the two liberation movements and the response just gets irrational.

More adjustments in offing?

The two leaders know this truth. The question is why they proceeded to make the request regardless. This is where the whole matter gets tasteless. Each had his own selfish reasons. Mutambara, who faces the rebellion of 11 out of 12 of his party’s provinces, had to be seen to be peddling hard for the late Sibanda, in order to recover some modicum of respectability at his party’s congress, in order to ingratiate himself with the southern part of the country.

Yet this gesture does not redeem his place within the MDC-M. Nor will it endear him to Zanu-PF whose goodwill he may badly need a few weeks from now, the same way Sibanda needed the President after his appointment fell because of changed circumstances. All indications point to the fact that after that congress, MDC-M will have a new president who becomes its new principal in the Inclusive Government. That means someone has to crack their brains on where to place Mutambara who I must admit has served the equation remarkably well. But he must know that leadership is not about succumbing to a mere sentiment and pushing an absurd position.

Riding high, not higher.

Tsvangirai who faces a backlash in Matabeleland and who is desperate to overwrite the humiliation at Windhoek, sought a new, distracting political cynosure in the debate on Sibanda’s status. His effort only serves to alienate him further from the region he seeks to court. His ousting on Sibanda and Ncube from the original MDC decided his fate, which is why even Chief Ndiweni turned against him.

Welshman Ncube and Dumiso Dabengwa, who curiously have been quiet on this whole matter, stand to reap the most from it. Presently they ride high on the regional sentiment I have raised up for debate. What their role is in stoking it, I am not so sure. But the narrow horse they enjoy riding for now, will not take them any higher. Trapped in the integument of narrow politics, their fate may be sealed in being underdog regional politicians, fighting for the right to negotiate with the victor. I wait to see how both, pursuing same politics in the present form, will escape this verdict.

Icho!

nathaniel.manheru *** zimpapers.co.zw

Labels: GIBSON SIBANDA, NATHANIEL MANHERU

posted by MrK @ 6:09 PM