By Takura Zhangazha*
The late Masipula Sithole taught me (and many others) how to
perceive and think about our country, Zimbabwe’s, politics. Not only formally via the university lecture
room but also more significantly via informal engagements with him, long after
we had graduated from the Political and Administrative Studies (POLAD) degree that most of my own university peers (R97s) regarded with great derision. And I promise you, we were
never favourites in University of Zimbabwe (UZ) social and future scenes.
Another venerable lecturer at that time was A.M Kambudzi now working for the African Union, who taught
us, at a specific time in the late 1990s and in-between John Stuart Mill
motivated lectures, that there was no need for a Chicago pie franchise in the heart of Harare, Zimbabwe. Let alone that the packets had a Chicago City
skyline emblazoned on them. In Harare.
Or the late John Makumbe who because of his albinism and
much to the humour of the UZ Students Union ‘galas’ would always refer to himself as ‘the
only white man from Buhera’.
And it would be he who was to teach us, in a very abrasive way,
what local government, in its democratic sense should be.
Then there was also Bertha Chiroro who took us through the motions
of understanding ‘State, Politics and Society’ in what was then referred to as
the ‘Third World’. And how she taught us that we should always think, intellectually
at least, beyond our own borders.
Or Solomon Nkiwane giving us a run down on ‘international
relations’ and Zimbabwe’s difficult placement in the same. Albeit briefly.
In between the suspensions for engaging in student activism
we learnt that there was always a greater cause and struggle as to how we perceived
our and how we were perceived by our own society. As learnt from the above and below cited public
intellectuals of our ‘wannabe intellectual’ heyday.
By the time I met the legendary Morgan Tsvangirai
(personally and subsequently in the company of Hopewell Gumbo, Nelson Chamisa,
Phillip Pasirayi, Innocent Mupara, Ellam Gozho, Artwell Ruzivo under the aegis
of the Zimbabwe National Students Union ((ZINASU)), I had already encountered
the likes of Brian Raftopolous (whose surname we couldn’t quite pronounce), Lloyd
Sachikonye both of whom were at the then reputable Institute of Development
Studies which is now a computer centre.)
And also Ibbo Mandaza , the late Prof Sam Moyo and believe it or not Joyce Kazembe (ZEC deputy chairperson
as at present) as the key persons of what was then the Southern African Political
Economic Series (SAPES) Trust.
And the enlightening feminism of Prof Patricia McFadden, Everjoice Win, Nancy Kachingwe and Prof Rudo Gaidzanwa.
However we never understood what public intellectualism in
the late 90s Zimbabwe meant to the future of the country. If anything at all. And
in this it turned out to be phenomenal.
As student leaders of that time, we knew that our limited intellectualism was also associated with our proximity to opposition politics. As led at that time by others who would prove
to be legendary in their own right.
The likes
of Cde Munyaradzi Gwisai and Tafadzwa Choto (who taught us Marxism/Trotskyism),
Brian Kagoro, Tawanda Hondora (who liberated us from student leadership suspensions
at no legal cost), Tendai Biti (who dabbled in representing private capital and
labour- an amazing feat if ever anyone asks you), Arthur Mutambara ( who addressed
us at the University of Zimbabwe public transport rank prior to the 2000
elections and eventually joined the 2009 short lived government of national
unity as deputy prime minister) and Prof Lovemore Madhuku (who initially had a people centered approach to human rights activism). They may not have understood it at the time, but
they were organic intellectuals. And as Castro says, “ History will absolve
them.’
What we didn’t know, at that time as sons and daughters of
lower class peasants and workers was that it would somehow and eventually
become our turn to represent and protect the intellectualism of younger generations of activists that
would come after us. Not only at the University of Zimbabwe but in the many
other universities that would be spawned in the name Zanu Pf’s expanded access
to education. In the process we forgot
about the lived reality that was the liberation struggle. By birth, by design
and by default.
Nor did we have (enough) access to the internet to understand
our own African placement in contextual global history.
Where we consider public intellectuals of contemporary times
we can list the likes in our time of Prof
Gatsheni- Ndhlovu (an ardent decoloniality intellectual, if he can at all be
labelled as such), Hayes Mabweazara (with a firm understanding of media freedom
in Southern Africa), Eldred Masunungure (who incidentally taught me an undergraduate
course on Introduction to Political Science ), Tendai Murisa (a passionate proponent
of the democratic developmental state), Nhamo Mhiripiri, Memory Chirere who
pointed me toward literature in English)
The primary challenge however is how to move this commendable
intellectualism out of the university lecture room to lived experience by young
Zimbabweans. Or to at least attempt at
occupying social media and challenging ‘echo chambers’ of populist public
opinion.
Especially where it concerns the very necessary fact of
Fanonian democratic national consciousness.
Pitfalls and all. In all of its criticality.
And contending with the reality that we have arrived at a period
in which being a public intellectual is less appreciated in Zimbabwe . Even in
Hegelian terms where it is only done to pursue ‘recognition’. Or in what would
personally be preferably Gramscian intellectualism. And we wont even mention the
Cabralist assumption of ‘class suicide’ of the revolutionary intellectual. Despite
formal academic qualifications or a lack thereof.
Takura Zhangazha writes here in his own personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blospot.com)
Makhuma
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