Othering Zimbabwe: Street Names and Populist National Unconsciousness.

By Takura Zhangazha*

Zimbabwe’s government recently announced a change to street names and state owned buildings in all of its majors cities and towns.  The roads that were renamed mostly had former Rhodesian settler state’s heroes names.  In their place government named some of the busiest or iconic city and town roads after persons such as the current president, Emerson Mnangagwa and a host of other national heroes of the liberation struggle.  Or those of the precolonial period. 

And urban as well as Diaspora social media went apoplectic. Quite literally.  If any Zimbabwean wanted to quote Shakespeare in his epic romantic play Romeo and Juliet, we would have ask the famous question, ‘What’s in a name?’ 

The answer would not be, and I am paraphrasing here, by any other one a rose would still smell as sweet. Mainly because urban and Diaspora based Zimbabweans are in perpetual search of catharsis.  Especially on social media.  So names do matter to them.  Except in the opposite historical direction.  For many of us, recognition of the liberation struggle nationalism of old is of limited economic and political consequence. 

They want the immediate.  Hence on social media the stories are palpably clear in their angst at the prioritization by central government of street name changes.  A great many are arguing, why change the names of roads that are in a bad state.  Fix them first is the argument.  Or alternatively, a derision at the retention of liberation history as the sine qua non of the basis on which streets or national symbols should be renamed.

These widely shared opinions are as astounding as they are laden with political meaning.  In this, the palpably high emotion is reflective of a dead national consciousness.  I would have preferred to say a dying national consciousness ala carte Fanon but in our Zimbabwean case, we are already lost at sea. 

We have essentially ‘othered’ ourselves to the extent of being exceedingly dismissive of our own history.  Almost as though we do not want to remember it.  

Or if we do, we would probably want our own convoluted and biased versions of it.  Depending on which political party one sympathizes with.  And its all fair game. Except that it is one with diminishing national return and a decimation of a collective whole.  Which is something that those in the ruling Zanu Pf party should be extremely worried about.

The populist urban desire to ‘un-recognise’ liberation struggle history in favor of a materialist present does not bode well for Zimbabwe’s future.  Instead it makes for a soulless national and country when its supposedly best and brightest will give the global mainstream media and social media companies so much behavioural data against their own being.

We could choose to blame the ‘patriotic history’ narrative engineered by Mugabe with his ‘ndisu chete’ (it is us only) narrow perception of the liberation struggle.  A narrative that stubbornly sticks to how ordinary Zimbabweans are made to recall their own liberation struggle history. 

That our real and lived struggles against colonialism are now dismissible in today’s raw and ephemeral populism is something that quite literally breaks my heart.  Even at the risk of sounding ridiculous.  We are at a place in which even our ancestors are asking themselves many questions as to how things have turned out like this.  Not only I relation to the material/economic suffering of our people but more significantly the chasms in what was always a progressive national consciousness. 

But someone has switched of the brain plug in Zimbabwe.  The erosion of a critical national consciousness began with the narrow historical narratives of Znau Pf.  And are now firmly in the hands of the would be and wannabe purveyors of neoliberalism accompanied by hedonistic religiosity.  

Simply put, we are no longer ourselves.  We want to be viewed by others in order to be validated.  To the same extent that this then becomes a process of othering ourselves. 

So we will make headlines for doing something as mundane as renaming our streets after heroes of the liberation struggle.  In fact we ironically desire these derogatory headlines and social media feeds only to spite ourselves.

But because of our ahistorical embrace of populism and warped mix of religiosity and hedonism, we will continue to forget ourselves. Deliberately so. What we may require is a return to pragmatic Pan Africanism. One that views the world and its developments from a critically conscious Pan African lens.  And with a focus not just on the past but more significantly, on the future and the collective posterity it should embody. 

So yes I long ago put it into my middle aged head that Second Street Extension is now Sam Nujoma Street. Or that Foruth Street is now Simon Muzenda Street.  And I will do the same with the new fact that colonial Charter Road with all its historical implications is now called Fidel Castro road.  Or that formerly Speke Avenue is now Agostino Neto Avenue. And that the road to Dzivaresekwa formerly known as Kirkman Drive is now Solomon Mujuru Drive.  All because it helps me remain historically grounded. Warts and all. Even though I do not have to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day.

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