Teaching the Future : The Importance of Young Teachers in Advancing the Pan Africanist Agenda in Zimbabwe

 By Takura Zhangazha*

A Presentation to the Young Teachers Association of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe

15 December 2023.

ZESA Training Centre, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Dear Cde Young Teachers of the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ),

Let me begin by thanking you for inviting me to this important gathering which you are holding under the theme, “Young Teachers, The Bedrock of a Credible Teaching Profession” with the subtheme that I have been asked to hold a brief discussion about concerning, “The Importance of Young Teachers in Advancing the Pan Africanist Agenda”. 

Before I go into the brief presentation I have been asked to make, I must thank Cde Ray Majongwe the Secretary General of the PTUZ and Cde Takavafira Zhou, PTUZ president and also  the general leadership of the PTUZ for not only remaining true to their unionism on behalf of the teaching profession but also being even truer to what I am certain are their progressive ideological values.  The latter values being those I am certain you share or else you would not be part of this meeting. 

Let me begin my brief presentation with a few historical pointers.   The teaching profession is one of the most liberatory professions in Zimbabwe.  Never mind that it has be denigrated in various circles and undermined by various post-independence governments’ and neo-liberal political economics in recent years.

 It is as you say, the ‘bedrock’ of what is and can be a progressive national consciousness.  Most of our nationalist leaders and also those that left schools to become guerrillas knew that the one thing that was always important was the passing on of again, progressive knowledge through the practice of teaching.

Teaching was one of the most radically conscious professions of any African liberation struggle.  And it remained so even after our national independence.  As trade unionists you would understand this better than I do. 

It was the teacher who always brought new knowledge to a remote or marginalised community.  The one who taught young Zimbabweans to read and discern.

 It was also the teacher who was the most recognised intellectual in a village or ghetto (with or without the money) and the one who would eventually disrupt repressive colonial discourses to lead to a new national consciousness among the youth, the middle aged worker and the old. 

Hence the still revered and indefatigable term, “Mwalimu” in Swahili.  Whether in reference to the great African Julius Nyerere or in our own Zimbabwean context, just “teacher” and how he/she would make us quake in our bare feet about a pending punishment for underperforming in one form or the other.

So the teaching profession that you have chosen, for various personal reasons is almost a calling, an historical national consciousness vocation.  And let no one lie to you about this. Even though I know that the aforementioned issues may appear abstract to trade unionists, they remain an historical fact.  

Members of the teaching profession are the bedrock of our national consciousness.  Second only to our mothers and sisters in our African contexts. 

I know as young teachers you have conversations about the material benefits of your profession. Your salaries and other benefits. Or whether you bought a stand, a flat, solar panels or cattle.  It is completely understandable.  But even if you did not want it or will it, you are the contemporary bedrock of our national consciousness. 

You teach young Zimbabweans how to perceive, behave and realise success in life at an early age.   Even if in a good number of cases you get disappointed in things that are beyond your control such as family issues and also monetary/economic considerations of what was once your brightest student. 

But let me quickly get back to the agreed discussion  point. This being the teaching profession and what we now refer to as Pan Africanism (thanks to our own organic historical struggles against colonialism and neo-imperialism) 

There are few revered nationalists on the African continent who did not either start off with teaching or who did not eventually end up teaching in our refugee or training camps. 

As most of you based on your own post-independence theoretical or philosophical training may know, there was a left leaning cde called Paulo Freire who taught us what he referred to as the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. It was not only a revolutionary teaching philosophy but also one that has stood the test of time.  In this, we are all historical beings, and who better to pursue and teach that understanding than young teachers themselves!

You teach in order to let others become free of ignorance!

Not only an ignorance of letters and figures but also to free our pupils and students of an ignorance of organic historical consciousness. 

So when you are asked about Pan Africanism and teaching there are at least two key elements that you must always bear in mind. You are not only teaching mathematics, accounts, business studies, geography, agriculture, history, economics or general science. You are teaching the future. 

And let me briefly explain what I mean by “teaching the future.” The knowledge that you have, that you will also have as you further your own studies and stations in life, is knowledge that is perpetually not your own to keep. 

In your profession, in your unionism, you know that it has to be passed on.  Even if you were not adequately rewarded for it.  It is unavoidable.  As a teacher, young or old, the raison’ de ’etre of your work is essentially to pass on and create knowledge to the best of your ability. 

Let me turn to Pan Africanism as a concept as advised by the organisers. It is both geographical and more significantly ideological. By this I mean that indees you are physically in Africa but it does not mean you exude Pan Africanist consciousness. The latter is all about intellectual and cultural fortitude of what it means to be African. And what you infuse in your work about being African. 

Locations of where you teach remains important. But what you teach is even more important. Young African cdes need, want to be infused with their own African being. 

The teacher is therefore a harbinger of historical knowledge about African being and African identity. But as alluded to earlier, the teacher is also like a weather forecaster about what the future holds. 

The specifically young teacher in the contemporary has a lot more pressures beyond patriotism and nationalism.  Both at a personal and a professional level.

But the default Pan Africanist knowledge in the young teacher is also about contextual presence, being, analysis and foresight. 

You have to ask yourself, “ Why do we teach?Is it only for the money or for a newer Pan African Educational Consciousness?”

 Indeed teaching is a profession but it remains beyond meagre salaries.  I know some of you young cdes want to quit it to pursue for example care work abroad.  But even in your departure your students look up to and  yearn for your knowledge and expertise. 

Yours is a noble profession.  It is a profession that helps shape Zimbabwe’s future.  Even if you are in the deepest of a rural area. You matter.  Never forget that.

Let me conclude my brief remarks by way of encouragement. Times are tough in the teaching profession.  They may even get tougher.  Hold fast to the future.  You are always going to be organic to this country and its future.

I will end with a Marechera quote about teaching.  He was asked why he does not want to be a teacher.  He replied, and I am paraphrasing here, “I would not want the next generations’ mistakes on my conscience”.

If you read and understand between the lines, what Marechera recognised was the historical burden you have on your shoulders. Even when you are frustrated, dissapointed, keep at it. 

Young teacher cdes, you will rise. I am confident. Believe in your work and the future of Zimbabwe. 

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

 

 

 

 

Why Zimbabwe’s Global Narrative/Story Appears Negatively Set in Stone.

 By Takura Zhangazha*

I have on occasion grimaced in international fora when Zimbabwe is mentioned.  Or when watching a media programme about any new developments that will have occurred in the country.   From a cholera outbreak, to a naturally occurring tropical cyclone, a general election or even a visit by one or the other international celebrity. 

This is mainly because Zimbabwe’s narrative and placement in global discourse appears to be set in stone. 

Its without doubt a negative narrative.  One that is neither preferable nor always truthful.  But one that has become somewhat almost run of the course, pre-ordained perception of what our country was, is and will ‘inevitably’ be.  Unless specific and somewhat pre-approved  ‘things’ or ‘events’ happen in it.   Especially as they relate to our recent history. Be it in relation to the globally derided fast track land reform programme (FTLRP), our continually contested general elections and as with many other countries on the African continent, a perceived failure to meet the requirements of a global capitalist economy. 

Our narrative in global spaces however remains particularly unique.  We pop up in narratives of failed states as though one cannot land an aeroplane at Robert Mugabe International airport. Or stories about cholera outbreaks that have a unique angle to them when it comes to Zimbabwe when this is clearly a general sub-regional problem with the same occurring in neighboring countries.  

Never mind stories about our Diaspora when again, across the whole African continent we have very serious problems with emigration to the global north where it is now increasingly clear we are not wanted.  Even, in some cases, for the cheapest of our labours.  All the while losing precious lives in the Sahel or in the Mediterranean sea on what are more perilous journeys than a flight via Dubai to Europe or North America. Or an illegal crossing of the Limpopo river to South Africa.

Even when we crosscheck how the Zimbabwe story is perceived by those that are our neighbors such as South Africa, they also look at us through lenses that assume a Conradian ‘darkness’ about us.  Even as they lynch us.  While this also happens to other African brothers and sisters living and working in South Africa, we, thanks to social media, generally get falsely blamed for issues we have no inkling about. 

The key question is why does this narrative persist?  Moreso when we have one of the most neo-liberal governments since 1980 under the present Zanu Pf leadership of Emmerson Mnangagwa. The latter has been attempting to tick all the neoliberal boxes as it were under his engagement and re-engagement policies.  Something that it appears private global capital appears not to have a major problem with.  Except where and when it comes to political matters such as elections, human rights- and where it concerns in particular the human right to private property. 

So the first reason why Zimbabwe’s narrative in the global arena will probably not change in the lifetime of persons my age is because of the fact that our country defied that one most seemingly sacrosanct right to private property with the FTLRP.  And also former president Mugabe’s ‘indigenization’ economic policy.  Hence we now have a national ‘compensation’ policy for former white farmers.  And also a courting from the highest national levels of global financialised private capital into our mining industry in a relatively clumsy attempt at ‘normalisation’ of the national political economy.  I use the term ‘clumsy’ here because it is a mixture of nationalism and profit, two elements that in a globalized economy are not good bedfellows.

The second reason why our negative narrative persists is because it has become almost a given culture when people in power in the global north look derisively at African and/or global south states that they definitively do not agree with ideologically or in some cases, historically.  Or at least those that will not side with them.  Be it in favour of their erstwhile rivals such as China, Russia or any of the left leaning governments of South America. 

And this is where the global media comes into the mix.  Zimbabwe has been lumped with almost propagandistic comparisons with countries where there has been or is existent outright conflict/war.  So much so that when you watch cable television or view clips on social media you ask yourself, “How am I still in this country?”  Yet there are still millions of us here. With variegated understandings of our own existence and futures.  But no, we are not dying in numbers or in the equivalent of concentration camps that we are now clearly seeing in some parts of the Middle East.

The third and final reason why our house of stone’s narrative appears set in stone, is that in most cases, out of general naivety, we will it on ourselves.  In contrast to the rebelliousness that for example Fanon and Biko among many others so desired. It is regrettably almost as though a good number of influencers want this negative narrative on Zimbabwe.  Even where it has no factual basis but fits a specific twenty-plus year narrative. 

You may ask is there a contrary narrative to what obtains.  My answer is yes.  It is a narrative that relates to facts and not what you feel you want to hear.  Zimbabwe is not by any stretch of comparison a ‘failed state’.  It is not at ‘war’.  We need to counter these ‘set in stone’ narratives. We may not be up there in terms of various neoliberal global indices, but we will be alright.

I will end with an anecdotal comment.  Upon arriving in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s, a British cde asked me if we had an airport back at home.  I asked him why? He said based on what he had seen on the media and heard from his local MP and the asylum seekers, he thought I had arrived by ship from Zimbabwe! I replied, no I came on British Airways.

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

 

 

 

 

 

Belief, Passion and a Newfound Functionalism in Zimbabwe.

By Takura Zhangazha*

On occasion you get asked the awkward question, “What do you believe in?”  In most cases this is a question that relates to religion and religious affiliation.   With an assumption that religion is largely Christian in Zimbabwe the question also has connotations about which version of the same religion do you follow.  With the caveat question, “Why”?

You rarely get asked about any other forms of belief. Or derided if you indicate that this is a private matter that requires no personal intrusion or judgement. 

You may also get asked, on rare occasions, your political beliefs.  In relation to which party you support, and again also, why?  Most Zimbabweans choose to wait for their day at the ballot box and depending on the result and their happiness or sadness it is easier to discern after the electoral event.  But again without having to explain why they hold specific political beliefs if they can be called that at all. 

In all likelihood, when it comes to political beliefs, these mutate into “political passions”.  Motivated more by either personal experience or by following fashionable populist political opinions as they occur.  Or as they relate to available electoral leadership positions (council, Parliament and even the Presidency). They are rarely about any organic ideological persuasions.  At best and only by default they mirror and mimic culturally popular ones that will for example laud big business while at the same time not realizing that a majority of our major global or local wars stem from the cultural, political and military industrial complex as controlled by global superpowers.

But this does not just apply to political ‘passions’ as it were.  It also applies to personal and materialist desires.  The car, the house, the job, the individual family recognized ladder of success that one has achieved contributes to your own understanding of “passion”.  Or things that you are willing to either personally fight for in multiple social conversations or attend an online convoluted and neoliberal motivational speech about.  Even if the latter ‘motivation’  is as racist and ‘mimicry’ driven as they come. 

It is when you combine both your abstract beliefs and mutative passions that they then become functional.  And I use the term “functional” in a very sociological and socio-psychological sense (crosscheck Emile Durkheim on this one.)   That is when both of these, your abstract religious or other superficial beliefs and passions serve to make you a somewhat ‘normal’ human being.

Where one who shares these beliefs and passions through the gaze and cultural practice of those that you either value the most or those that you envy in relation to their, again, assumed measurements of societal success.  Be it in your local church, where your kids go to school, what your work boss recognizes/affirms about you and your salary or what your extended family values the most about your capacity to get things done.  Even what your friends think is the best societal practice about being successful.  Not only material success but the way in which you should think, act, behave and interact with those that are like minded.  

In my view, Zimbabwe is now what one can call a “functionalist” society.  This is in the social, political, economic and probably socio-psychological sense.

It is almost as though everything must sort of fit together in a specific way.  Your beliefs (mainly religious), your passions (mainly emotive political/ politicized and economic status anger) and how all of this leads one into a functional mode of existence as a Zimbabwean.  In a comparative sense.  That is, checking out what it means to be as successful as your next door neighbor including how they again, have a car or multiple urban or other properties while affording to go private medical centres. Even at the height of the then Covid 19 pandemic.  Or oddly enough, which church they go to and its concomitance with material success.

It is a functionalism that creates a specific national ‘survival’ culture.  One that focuses more and more on the individual and less and less on collective well-being. Almost like arguing that anything we are doing, we are doing for our “own” children while forgetting that the same said “own” children will grow up and be part of a collective society, let alone a country with those that we will have neglected.    

There are therefore at least two issues that we need to reflect on about our long duree “functionalism” as Zimbabweans.  Indeed historically we have been through the worst of economic and political times with many pitfalls that have shaped our reaction to not only the state but to matters concerning our individual (and individual family) well-being.   We have had to live almost in a survival mode that has brought forth some of the most individualistic values of who we think we are or we can be as a country. From the rural to the urban, the middle to the working class and from the educated to the uneducated or even to those with proximity to the political and capitalist elite. 

We need to shed off the proverbial skin of “societal functionalism” and return to a value based progressive societal pragmatism that makes each life important and gives a fair opportunity for all.  Especially where it relates to basic social services such as education, health, transport, water and energy. 

And finally, we need to understand that we all have specific belief systems.  While we may want them to be individually self-definitive about our lifestyles and desires, unfortunately if they become “blind passions” they return us to being “functionalists”.  People who do not think beyond what they feel or who do not feel beyond what they consider their own personal experiences. 

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

 

 

 

 

Africa Should Talk Back on Regressive Politics in the Global North.

By Takura Zhangazha* 

 So I have had friends or at least academic classmates from at least four continents. And in no particular order, Africa, Europe, America and Asia. In the majority of cases all of my friends were halfway between being leftists and also being liberally progressive. They would hear me out on my Pan Africanist views and support them on the basis of the assumption that human rights were universal. More-so after Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States of America. In conversation, we would argue late into the night about the meaning of a progressive universality of human beings and how we could consolidate it beyond race, color and class. 

 While keeping in mind the fact and reality of the global historical injustice that was not only colonialism but also the global resistance to the same. From the late 19th century home grown anti-imperialist struggles against nascent imperialism such as the Maji Maji In Tanganyika (present day Tanzania), the Mau Mau in present day Kenya or the Chimurenga in present day Zimbabwe to the multiple modern anti-apartheid movements’ in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique. For many of my liberal friends, this history was of limited consequence in the present. 

 The narrative was one where progress after historical colonial injustices were a thing of the past and how I and my black African colleagues’ needed to “move on”. And indeed we sought to move on. We argued about how the world had sort of found itself in a ‘progressive space’ even after the millennial invasion of Iraq. We assumed as Africans that liberal interventionism’ based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its attendant United Nations' infrastructural system would eventually make the world political and international relations system much more peaceful and progressive. 

 We were wrong. 

 Both liberal interventionism as a global domination strategy of Western superpowers and our own assumption of universal equality of not only nations but the principle of sovereignty was easily shattered by events that happened in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Egypt, Palestine and Burkina Faso.

 And these examples are where physical warfare in one form or the other took place. Also bearing in mind where economic warfare and sanctions remain intact in many parts of the globe for those that do not easily accept either the hegemony of the global West and its allies or those that would otherwise not tow specific UN General Assembly resolutions. 

 What we however did not realise was that this was not just international politics/relations at play. This was and probably will be for the foreseeable future, a direct result of domestic sentiment in the same said global superpowers. All foreign policy stemming therefrom is almost now predetermined by domestic political sentiment. 

 Whether on the eve or aftermath of general elections which are now also surprisingly beginning to be disputed in their self-proclaimed citadels. And where racism and racist attitudes toward immigration have come to hold sway over a majority of voters in global north source countries. 

 To explain a bit further by giving an example of the #BlackLivesMatter movements that swept the United States and Western Europe in the last few years, we assumed that an anti-racist movement would lead to progressive politics in the global north. On the contrary, it appeared to exacerbate its opposite. 

 More right leaning if not right wing governments have either retained power or become more influential in domestic politics. And are worryingly still in vogue. This can be taken to mean that the direct influence of domestic politics and international relations is much more organic in a more negative sense than we initially assumed. And that assumptions of global north exceptionalism are less about a foreign ministry’s approach but ingrained in the mindset of the country where that foreign ministry emanates from. 

 Where we thought ‘democracy’ or ‘human equality’ to be universal, we are beginning to read between the lines in our newfound global realities and wars that we are seeing or experiencing. Both as they relate to emergent forms of discrimination and nationalist gatekeeping in the global north as evidenced by electoral outcomes in a number of countries. As well as neoliberalism or its more direct form of resource capitalism as a potential reason why this is now beginning to be more frequent with every change of government or election. 

 These are conversations that fewer and fewer of us as Africans are willing to have for many reasons. The main one being that we are losing our critical consciousness of global events and how they are increasingly presented in a way that places us at the bottom rung of the global opinion shaping ladder. Unlike in the heydays of Nkrumah, Nyerere, Cabral, Machel, Neto, Nasser and others. And the other one being a form of self censorship in order to retain either the ability to get a visa or alternatively retain a job in one form or the other. 

 This has also been compounded by what I refer to as the “departure to leave” syndrome that we are daily confronted with when dealing with our young African colleagues. Almost as the equivalent of the “bright lights syndrome” that we had to read in Urban Geography about rural-urban migration. 

 A development that has been weaponised in the politics of the global north to either retain or gain power. Even as multitudes die in the Mediterranean Sea or crossing treacherous mountains, deserts and rivers in North America or the Sahel regions. 

 Africa needs to begin to find a brave voice and call out progressive cdes in the global north about the turn of political events in their own backyards. It may not appear to be as important now, but it will matter for posterity. And to paraphrase Nyerere on electoral politics with a my own personal focus on the global north, “The mechanisms of democracy are not always the meaning of democracy.” And without global exception.

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

We Are Not Abstract Thinkers: Critical African Consciousness Still Exists

We Are Not Abstract Thinkers: Critical African Consciousness Still Exists.

By Takura Zhangazha*

 

There are certain things that will always remain politically abstract.  Except for your own political choices and what they may mean to you personally. 

Many of us are almost politically predetermined.  By way of individual experience.  Either we were involved in the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, lost lives close to us in the same or experienced Gukurahundi in the early to late 1980s. 

We are therefore shaped by what we emotionally consider our own personal opinions as based on our own, again, personal experiences. 

There is never time for a holistic approach.  Everything is almost as written in historical stone.  Almost as though we are going to be arguing about ethnic issues concerning, where you were born, what your ancestors did to mine, and why we should continue fighting over the same. 

These are things that cannot be wished away.  It is part of our very abstract national consciousness.  One which we have allowed to exist within the ambit of an equally shallow desire for universal recognition of a false recovery at meeting the requirements of a the proverbial “white gaze”. 

One of the most infamous lines from the famous Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera that I still cannot fully understand is the one that reads, “ We are what we are not, that is the paradox of fiction. ”  

As complicated as that literal line may sound, it is would remain evident that we do indeed leave ambiguous “consciousness’ lives.”  Almost like a battle between personal, other regarding and familial desire. 

Like we have to lie to ourselves about what matters the most about who we are, who we can be and who we ideally should be. 

There are things you have to crosscheck about what you have to be ‘essential’ about.  It can be about money, keeping your partner happy, your extended family satisfied at your role or even ignoring all of the above.  But existentially you need a value system that transcends your own personal desires.  It must somehow find a way to be shared.  For personal or work related validation.   Moreso where it relates to your own personal health challenges that others may not know or care about. 

So you can walk into a library and crosscheck your African history.  Or alternatively link up how Rodney wrote on “ How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”  and use one form or the other of a scientific method to prove that he was not entirely accurate.  But principally he was correct. 

The triple C’s ( three C’s) of David Livingston, Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation were never a good idea for the black peoples of Zimbabwe.  Let alone Southern Africa.

I have referred to a critical African National Consciousness.  And it indeed exists.  It is under pillows, in workshops, in dry satirical humour, but most Africans, particularly black Africans know who they are. 

It is almost as abstract as asking a question like “ Did we fight a liberation war in Zimbabwe?”  The evident answer is, Yes”.  And that it’s not even a rumour. It happened. 

Or asking us, again in an abstract sense, “ Did black people have a contradictory envy of white people?” Reply would again be yes.  Except for different reasons.

We would have to repeat/argue the sensitive topic raised by Marechera, and for purposes of clarity, “We are what we are not. That is the paradox of fiction”. 

Even if we wanted to dismiss ourselves we remain confronted with the reality of who we meet, who we make deals with and who we share the same ideas with.

Sadly there are fewer and far between cdes that we still share similar social democratic and democratic socialist values with. 

It gets awkward with each passing year but its understandable.  Even Bob Marley sang that we lost god friends along the way.  But to be honest, “ Zvimwe zvacho, mazvokuda mavanga enyora”.

You have overnight conversation with cdes, laugh, lean, learn and remember those gone on.  You also over intellectualize what others don’t really prioritise and you learn to handle yourself.

But at the back of your mind you remember that “Fuck it” you never owed an explanation to anybody except your mom and father about who they think, thought you became.

I have never argued myself out of existence.  Nor tried to argue another human being out of the same.  Occasionally I get bored. I also get broke. Like a scholarship power and promise of the future thing. We will get lost either way.  I am still waiting for the sort of assumed rain. Out of Respect.

 

Being Zimbabwean Revisited on a Road Trip

By Takura Zhangazha*

So I recently went on a road trip to Bulawayo. I had not been to the second city in years.  And road trips that long, are amazing insights into how much the country is changing.   They are almost reminiscent of both youth and the transcendence of time over individual “main actorism”.  Or alternatively how time does not in the proverbial sense “wait for no man”. 

Because this was a journey that I have traversed over many years, it was more about reflection than it would be about basic arrival.  Getting out of Harare on the highway would not, over five years ago given sights of an expanded Kuwadzana or Dzivaresekwa.  Let alone a sprawling Norton and shockingly expansive housing construction in Chegutu, Kadoma, Kwekwe, Gweru, Shangani and on the outskirts of Bulawayo. 

Like I said, it had been a while since I had done a long road trip  out of the capital  city which is not not in the direction of my rural home in Bikita, Masvingo.  The issue was not the evidence of the rapid evidence of an increasing urbanization of Zimbabwe ironically based on what was the still controversial fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) of 2002.  Which ostensibly was about the reclamation of land for agricultural and mining purposes by black Zimbabweans but now turns out to be more about a rapid urbanization programme while at the same time promising to “feed the nation” through new methods of industrialized farming that the Dutch are now fighting about. 

The trip was essentially a reminiscent reminder about “belonging”.   In a very nationalist sense.  You explain to a fellow traveler that you are crossing the Manyame, Munyati, Sebakwe, Vungu and Shangani rivers almost based on your backhand previous knowledge of travel or high school geography.  With a silent knowledge that you belong to this land, rivers, mountains, vleis and all. 

You even go further and explain that the rivers you have pointed out flow toward the Zambezi and that Harare is situated on a watershed which is a source of water for both the Save and the Zambezi. Both of which flow into Mozambique. 

With the added rider that the other major river, the Limpopo, flows from the west of Zimbabwe and ends again on the Mozambique coast. 

In typical travel fashion you crosscheck whether you have mobile network data connection and put your mobile phone battery on “power saving” because you need to ensure you can catch  up with family and friends.   But at the same time you look out the window and see the open farmlands trying to remember who owned what during the FTLRP?

And you mentally crosscheck the past with the present when you last traversed the Harare-Bulawayo highway.  Comparing what you used to see and what now obtains.  Sometimes its barren, sometimes its lush with newly planted crops and you try and understand the complexities of the historical contradictions. The blacks took back the land you think to yourself. The whites had mined and farmed on the land since the onset of colonialism.  And you ask yourself the driven question, so what does it mean now?

By the time you are getting to Shangani, you are remembering the possibility of elephants crossing the highway. Like they did one of the last times.  But you are also looking at the railway line (Stimela) and recalling Ngugi’s narrative of the “Iron Train” in his “Grain of Wheat” novel.  And you try and explain to your contemporary passenger the history of the steam train and how it runs all the way, eventually, to Cape Town.  Or how Cecil John Rhodes always wanted conquest of the Ndebele Kingdom. So much so to be buried in the combined sacred hills of the Matopo. 

There is always however a sense of a very real foreboding.  Almost a fear of fact.  That being as you look across the undulating terrain, you realize that you belong here.  That this is your country of birth.  Not necessarily in a patriotic sense, but just that.  A sense of belonging. 

Not in a Wilson Katiyo “Son of the Soil” sense  (amazing novel) where departure is a big theme, but in a manner in which the landscape speaks to you. The people you watch as you travel with their scotch carts or stalls selling fruits and vegetables make you think deeply about.  Or even the restaurant and toilet people when you make that recess break.  Or the other cdes that you can tell are spending big money from illegal mining in the middle of the country (Kadoma, Kwekwe , Gweru) And that their new business investments are evidenced by the newest fuel service stations, bus companies and accommodation lodges.

In observing all of this you shrug your shoulders and realise that we are living in many different but one Zimbabwe.  You do not, cannot lose your sense of belonging.  You just ask yourself about the sum-total of our national consciousness.  And then you post a picture of yourself on Facebook. You are Zimbabwean. Wherever and however you are.

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

 

 

 

We Do Not Write, Think for Ourselves.

By Takura Zhangazha*

I recently got lectured about my being off the Zimbabwe and African political opinion radar.  I would have shrugged it off had it not been for the fact of where the criticism was coming from. The accusation was made by cdes form the left who are also incidentally long standing trade unionists. And they talked about ‘narratives’ and how those that remain dominant in Zimbabwe are either populist, religious or  non-ideological. 

I retorted that one of the primary challenges of writing opinion is that you always have to ask whether cdes still have time to read.  Moreso in a time of audio visual social media content which is there at the press of a mobile phone touchscreen. 

Then I also remembered a conversation in rural Bikita where I was asked, "So why do we not read you in newspapers or see you on Al Jazeera or hear you on radio stations anymore?  I informed the cdes that I was tired of writing let alone analyzing issues in a way that did not have resonance with progressive cdes or populist affirmation.

The response was relatively abstract, almost as a desire for entertainment and information.  They argued that they do read though they cannot comment or social media their opinions.  Mainly because its not necessarily what is desired or what fits into populist echo chambers. Or that it would in one way or the other affect their livelihoods. 

The key point was they do read. They do listen to the radio or watch televisions and other videos as and when they are available.  And their political opinions on matters written or commented in newspapers, radio or television appeared to matter to them.  The only catch was that if they don’t see, listen or read those they are familiar with, they get disappointed.  It does not change their general opinion, they said, but at least it informs them. 

The essence of their arguments was pretty straight forward.  They are not my personal supporters.  They just need to read, watch or listen to varying opinions.  With an intent to make their own judgements even if they disagree with them. 

And that’s where I learnt my small lesson.  Freedom of expression is not just about who agrees with you.  Its more about the fact that it has occurred.  Where it does not, you short change society and the national consciousness. 

How we act is generally determined by how we think or are led to think. Wherein in a majority of cases we think because of what we learn or consume culturally, intellectually or by way of lived experiences.  Which still comes down to the same thing, the written, sung, spoken, televised or even “videoed” representation of our contextual societies matters.  

This, at least for me, means that narratives must clash on a regular basis. Be they dogmatic, abstract or based on what we know to be very real materialism in a capitalistic context.  And this should be beyond the political.  Its also about lived everyday ideas.  

Almost like telling a cde that it is ridiculous and unsustainable to be part of a ‘share your pay’ monthly Ponzi scheme.  Or that where it comes to for example, the rural-urban divide, the rural remains more pragmatic for a Zimbabwean.  Beyond the “bright-lights syndrome”.  One that has crossed over from just about being from Bikita to Harare, to being from Harare/Bulawayo to London or Ontario.

The key point that I get from all of the aforementioned conversations is the importance of avoiding political correctness and wading into the murky waters of even self-censorship.  And to understand that a holistic view of Zimbabwean society requires a lot more candidness than what we are currently experiencing from our mainstream and social media platforms. 

We need to learn to stop lying to ourselves.  And for this, we need to write, think, vlog more, even if for egoistic purposes as is the current majority of cases with those that would influence us and our perspectives on our own society. 

I know that there is no uniform ‘national consciousness’.  More-so in the materialist times that we live in.  Its in part due to the fact of our Christian evangelist culture that has been exacerbated by Pentecostalism.  Including our political economy’s mimicry of western culture (the things we enjoy, the holidays’ we seek, the cars/houses/schools/hospitals we desire and assiduously work toward)

The reality of the matter is that this is a false national consciousness.  Yes, you can get into a car, or aspire to have one. Build a double story mansion on agricultural land that was urbanized under the fast track land reform programme.  Or get a job in the global north that is more about your status than economic reality (bright lights syndrome) or get a trophy husband or wife.  But that is not the essence of our national Zimbabwean being. 

That is why we need counter narratives.  That is why we need to write or express them.  That is why we need to fill a specific ideological gap that I was informed about by longstanding labour leaders.

That’s why I promise to write again.

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