We Liberated Ourselves!

by S. Chifamba-Barnes and T. Tut Tsanga

In light of the political quagmire and ZANU-PF intransigence that have brought down the nation to its knees, Zimbabweans ought to take umbrage with Mugabe's widely acclaimed liberation of Zimbabwe. We don't dispute the fact that he played a big role in the liberation struggle, but at the point where he is given total credit for the liberation effort is where we beg to differ. According to historical truth, as opposed to ZANU-PF hagiography and agitprop over the past three decades, this claim is very tenuous. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have milked this cow for nearly three decades. It is true that he was part of the liberation movement but, more significantly, the claim insultingly portrays the Zimbabwean people as passive bystanders during the liberation war.

The lately deceased Eliot Manyika had a widely played song, Nora, in which he says, and we quote; "Kuenda nokudzoka vakomana zvinoda vakashinga – only the brave went to war/exile and came back." It is implicit in the lyrics that those who perished during the war and those who participated in that war while at the home front were cowards. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

Nikita Mangena did not come back, was he a coward? Since Josiah Tongogara did not come back, are we to believe he was a coward? Herbert Chitepo never came back but did that make him a coward? Are we expected to accept that Jason Ziyapapa Moyo was a coward because he never made it to a free and independent Zimbabwe? What about the numerous and since-forgotten young men and women who perished during the war, those whose bones have yet to be given proper burial rites in their villages? They never made it to Zimbabwe. Were they cowards, too? What about Edson Sithole?

If a lie is repeated over and over again, to the point of immortalization in highly partisan songs and self-adulating slogans, that lie eventually evolves into a self-evident truth. It is incumbent upon Zimbabweans to offer a rebuttal. In this opinion column, we attempt to piece together counterfactual evidence to the claim that the African nationalist movements have cited to justify their reluctance to tell Mugabe to muster enough dignity to go into retirement. By no means is our effort exhaustive but we hope to initiate a nationwide introspection into our country's history and ultimately let truth stand on its own merit, as it always does.

It is imperative that we do so in light of the infuriating political noise coming out of South Africa. The ruling class of South Africa insistently tells everyone the problems in Zimbabwe are a result of the intransigence of the entire spectrum of the Zimbabwean political leadership instead of a specific and very discrete clique arrayed around Robert Mugabe. Obviously the South Africans don't get it!

Mugabe is the locus of all the problems facing Zimbabwe; a debilitating flight of skilled labour, a collapsed economy, deteriorated health infrastructure, a decayed educational system, a crippling lack of clean water, an unforgivable shortage of food, a corruptly engineered shortage of fuel, avoidable starvation, treasonous government neglect that has led to death from preventable diseases and the systematic abuse of the rule of law. To blame the opposition is absolutely incredible. The opposition – one has to wonder why the South Africans still call the MDC the opposition when they actually won the election - will not stop this rot by jumping into the ZANU-PF cesspool. Only a clean break from ZANU-PF and Mugabe will do!

The source of the problem cannot be part of the solution to that problem. Mugabe and ZANU-PF are the sources of the maladies afflicting Zimbabwe and for anyone to publicly state that ZANU-PF should be part of the solution shows complete callousness and contempt for the Zimbabwean people. The good thing about the Zimbabwean mess, if anything good can be sifted from this epic tragedy, is that it is going to spread throughout the region whether the South Africans like it or not! They can try to offer Mugabe political insulation but that will not stop them from bearing the brunt of the consequences of Mugabe’s abuse of the Zimbabwean people.

The FRELIMO government in Mozambique and the South African government led by the remnants of the ANC should brace themselves for the cholera that is going to hit their slums. That is the price they are going to pay for mollycoddling Mugabe. Foolishly, they think that they are immune from the ills affecting Zimbabwe. South Africans may not like to believe it but Zimbabwe is the pacemaker, nay, the heart of Southern Africa. Temper with that heart and South Africa's Caucasian-stabilized economic muscle will inevitably lead to irreversible atrophy.

We hear that some African leaders are loath to criticize Mugabe because he liberated Zimbabwe. Like we stated earlier, that is absolute nonsense and an insult to every Zimbabwean. To disabuse these African leaders of the notion that Mugabe liberated us, we categorically state that the liberation of Zimbabwe was a collective effort and every Zimbabwean knows it. Far from being an emotive declaration, we are only stating a simple observation of a self-evident and unvarnished truth.

Just because a handful of individuals are shameless enough to give themselves the credit for the success of the liberation war does not give an iota of credence to the far-fetched and absurd self-proclamation. During the war, did the ZANLA and ZIPRA forces bring along their own food, water, clothes and medicine when they left Mozambique and Zambia? Please, somebody remind the Zimbabwean people, because some of us do not remember them coming to our villages with anything but the clothes on their backs.

We, the people, supplied everything except the guns and the bullets. At times the guerrillas took people's clothes, shoes, hats and food by sheer intimidation and brute force. They would boast about guerrillas not being fond of okra – gandanga haridye derere. To add insult to injury, the guerrillas often forced people to sing songs praising this elitist dietary taste during sleepless nighttime gatherings – pungwe dzakange dzisina mabori - but those fighting for our liberation never owned a single goat or hen. The guerrillas enjoyed filet mignon and chicken breasts, which everyone in rural Rhodesia personally witnessed. Woe to anyone who attempted to give magandanga cooked chicken feet – nzondora - instead of chicken drumsticks - zvidya. Bare buck-naked and without food and medicine, the guerrillas would have been defeated like their contemporaries in Malay were defeated by the British. Without the people, as Wilfred Mhanda put it, "Mugabe on his own could not have liberated Zimbabwe".

Where was Mugabe when all this was going on? At the beginning, he was in jail. As soon as he was freed from jail, Mugabe hightailed it out to Maputo. Edson Zvobgo, upon release from jail in 1971, went straight to the land of the Great Satan, the United States of America, to drink from the very same Harvard Square fountains of knowledge that have provided nourishment for America's ruling elite.

While in Ian Smith’s jail, Mugabe had enough time to get a whole raft of degrees, none of which he has been able to put to good use on behalf of the country. In the UDI jails, he and his fellow prisoners had a square meal for breakfast, a square meal for lunch and a square meal for supper. When ill, they could be treated for free. By contrast, prisoners in Robert Mugabe’s disease-infested jails wallow in feaces and urine. Incarceration in a Zimbabwean jail is condemnation to a slow and painful death from hunger and disease. Truth has a sinister way of coming out into the open. When the time comes, we should not be surprised to learn that there are more deaths in Zimbabwean prisons than the ZANU-PF government admits.

Spare a moment’s thought for those who were unfortunate to be in the rural areas of UDI Rhodesia. As Mugabe was getting his degrees, free meals and free medical care in jail, black Rhodesians were forced to dig contour ridges – makandiwa or madhunduru – from sunup to sundown; see page 116; PDF. At times they had to do it on empty stomachs or boiled grain of maize and cowpeas – mutakura wemangayi nenyemba. When ill, they had to dig up roots and leaves to make inefficacious medicinal concoctions. We are sorry but, unlike Mugabe and his fellow political prisoners, the black rural Rhodesians were in a bigger and less-forgiving jail that did not have all the benefits available to Mugabe, Zvobgo and company.

People in some rural areas like Mt Darwin and Chiweshe, to name but just two, were forced into concentration camps – makipi – but had to fend for their own food. People were forced to abandon their properly built huts and houses for overcrowded makeshift dwellings in these concentration camps. Anyone caught after the curfew could be killed with impunity. Was it not equal to imprisonment to be forced into these concentration camps? While Mugabe was in jail, did he have to fend for his own food or was he ever forced to toil in a chain gang breaking rocks or digging makandiwa?

Come to think of it, we were all political prisoners. Some will posit that the rural folk, egregiously named povo by ZANU-PF, came out of the entire ordeal as losers despite their unrecognized toil and ignored effort. While others were in de jure jails getting degrees and international recognition, those in de facto wall-free prisons simply suffered in obscurity. The povo did not come out with any degrees but poverty.

The same is true when we consider the ZANLA and ZIPRA grunts at the front. They were busy fighting in the bush so much so that they never had ample time or the comfort to get formal education while fighting at the same time. Liberating a country and getting degrees at Harvard or in jail are mutually exclusive activities. So, please, do not come and tell us you were fighting to liberate us and then boast about your big degrees that you received while you were supposedly fighting for our liberation.

Unlike the black South Africans whose independence was handed to them on a silver plate, we Zimbabweans liberated ourselves! We do not need the ANC leadership, or whatever the hell is left of it, to tell us who should rule us. The ANC can boot out an elected but hapless president, Thabo Mbeki, and yet they expect us to be ruled by the losing candidate, one Robert Mugabe, who was given a red card by more than 55% of the electorate (Tsvangirai's 47% and Makoni's 8%) during the March 29 election.

Just as Mugabe has justified his enduring grip on power by citing his contributions during the liberation war, so are we justified to tell the African nationalist movements that we do not want Mugabe and his crew holding us hostage anymore. If in 1966 the African Union, then called the Organization of African Unity, found the Rhodesian internment of opposition politicians objectionable enough to warrant the removal of Ian Smith from power, why is it now acceptable for the very same organization to acquiesce with Mugabe’s incarceration of political opponents in 2008? We find it strange that those who rightly condemned Ian Smith for unleashing terror on unarmed civilians now accept terrorism exercised on the same population by a black government.

To the African leadership we say, the blatant denial of basic human rights of citizens of Zimbabwe must be the primary source of your concern not the race, colour and creed of the perpetrators. If you are genuinely concerned by the plight of our people, you ought to know that Zimbabwe needs a clean break from Mugabe and ZANU-PF. It is our right. You must never forget that we, the people of Zimbabwe, contributed to our liberation, too.