Prof Masipula Sithole and Zimbabwe National Consciousness

 By Takura Zhangazha*

A very recent event made me remember my primary Zimbabwean academic mentor, Professor Masipula Sithole.  Someone had mentioned, in passing, what a new Catholic Pope Leo XIV would mean for global politics. I simply said let us wait and see. 

(And I wont return to this matter on global Catholicism in this article) 

 But before I had answered I reflected a little bit on the late Professor Masipula Sithole's  lectures with his then (1997) very famous first year Political Science degree course titled ‘Survey of Political Ideas’ at the University of Zimbabwe. 

While we were derided for even studying political science by our then peers we enjoyed the way in which our intellectual senses were cajoled into engaging ideas in his early morning lectures. We were taught about Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, S Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas before we moved onto the complexities of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and the necessity of Nkrumah, Cabral and Nyerere.

All after that we then had to move to Western liberalists in his course such as Samuel Huntington, Ali Mazrui and the age old argument then introduced about the inevitability of liberal democracy and capitalism as a panacea to all of Africa’s challenges.

The professor however never forgot what he taught us.  That is to think beyond what we perceived as our intellectuality via passing examinations and getting civil service jobs because that is what political science graduates were primed for, career wise. And he always used to humorously say, "political science is the master science." Even when we did not believe him. Which I now do.   

But we would have a rare back and forth with our tutorial supervisor, who I shall not name because I did not ask his permission to include him in this blog.  This rare back and forth would relate to the question/fact of what is ‘virtue’ in Zimbabwean society. 

 As the expert, the tutorial supervisor would retort back that and in very simple terms, "vapfana (young comrades), you have not read enough about political science and political philosophy to understand your own Zimbabwean society”. 

We were undergraduates.  So we sort of understood his point in an argumentative academic way.  And we also knew not to punch above our student payout payment weight. 

But ‘ Prof Masi’ as we affectionately referred to him would want to entice our contradictory arguments out of us. Something that rarely occurred because of either his busy schedule or his assumption that we were either not reading enough or not activist enough.  He, like the late legendary Kempton Makamure and Shadreck Guto were what are now referred to as organic intellectuals that sought to cross class divides.   And by dint of the same, belong more and more to the ‘people’.

This did not happen easily and will least likely happen in our lifetimes.  Mainly because as Gramsci and Cabral argued a lot of us wannabe intellectuals, both by way of formal qualifications or long duree activism  are unwilling to commit ‘class suicide’.  Not in an abstract sense but more in a cultural lifestyle expectation direction.  

This is completely understandable given the current status of both the Pan African as of old intellectual paucity of many Africans as it is linked to the changing dynamics of cultural, social media, donor or international aid funding for whatever reason you want to think of.

 What I would know is that Prof Masi, were he alive, would have had a robust discussion on the matter with us in his stuttering style. 

And would have attended the occasional tutorial just to listen in on what we were thinking as then or current young Zimbabweans.  Ideologically and also culturally. 

We were made to read for example Claude Ake on the democratization of Africa. Or the professors  Thandika Mkandawire, Patricia McFadden and Solomon Nkiwane’s hard to get academic articles. But in our struggles to get this knowledge, Prof Masi always tried to help us.  And he would write recommendation letters for us to get to the rare documents that we needed. For scholarships or jobs. 

The catch however was always measuring our commitment to the pursuit of intellectual and political science knowledge.  A point we did not understand until Prof Masi’s passing.   

This is because we missed that the key lesson learnt from Prof Masi was always the fact that knowledge has to be passed on.  Whether it be by way of education or lived experience.  

The reality of the matter is that Prof Masi was an organic intellectual.  From the days he wrote a weekly column for the Financial Gazette and through to the days he addressed public meetings in anticipation of a progressive Zimbabwe, including acknowledging the mistakes his now officially national liberation hero brother  Ndabaninigi Sithole made.  Through to being a founder member of what is now known as the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) as it is linked to the Afro-Barometer index. 

I have not randomly thought to remember Prof Masi.  Instead I have deliberately thought of him as being symbolic of public intellectualism.  As he would have desired and intended for others to become. 

He was never a gatekeeper of knowledge. He shared it freely and widely.  Even if arguing about culture, music and the future of opposition politics in Zimbabwe.

Above all, he never gave the impression of being  self absorbed.  Even when he jokingly said to us in undergraduate class, “ Vanangu, ini ndinotambira nebhara”  We did not know it at that time that it was satire. Until 2007.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)