26 February 2010

SOMETIME IN 1997 that cartoon of a president, Mr. Fredrick Chiluba, came to Harare. He held a press conference where, clasping his hands and looking up to the sky as if in prayer he said:

“Tanzania has its father, Julius Nyerere, South Africa has its father, Nelson Mandela and Zimbabwe has its father, Robert Mugabe. Zambia has no father – our father is gone, Kenneth Kaunda has run away. Please bring our father back home.”

It was a surreal scene but then African and Latin American characters, in fiction and reality, tend to be just that. The occasion of Chiluba’s hysterics was the failed coup d’etat in Zambia and the subsequent finger of suspicion that the Short One pointed at Mr. Kaunda.

This scene came back to mind as two neighbouring countries celebrated two very contrasting “Fathers” – Mr. Nelson Mandela (20 years of freedom) and Mr. Robert Mugabe. (86 years on Mother Earth). For Mr. Mandela there was universal affection and for Mr. Mugabe the usual – beneficiaries of his well-oiled patronage system ululated, and us citizens and migrants despaired. 

As he turned 91, Mr. Mandela exuded his usual humour and with a twinkle in his eye spoke of the shorter journey ahead.  With Mr. Mugabe, 21 February was the occasion for the obligatory annual ranting on sycophantic television, ZBC or Dead BC – take your pick.

The elephantine retinue of hangers-on hung onto every word from the old warhorse. After all, it is heavenly to be a senior member of ZANU PF – despite having to sing praises for supper you harvest where you have not sown. Blessed be the earthly Father.

But who are these fathers of the nation? Who ordains these patriarchs? If there are fathers, who are the mothers of the nation? Are we citizens the children – forever children at that?

When Mr. Joshua Nkomo died in 1999 the Inter Press Service led with the following story under a blazing headline – NKOMO, THE FOUNDING FATHER OF MODERN ZIMBABWE, IS DEAD:

Vice President Joshua Nkomo, widely regarded as the founding father of the modern Zimbabwe, has died. He was 82. President Robert Mugabe, speaking to the nation in a live radio address today, said that Zimbabwe had lost a hero. Nkomo died after a long illness.
Nkomo, who celebrated his 82nd birthday on June 7, died at the Parirenyatwa hospital in the capital, Harare, today.

Mugabe described Nkomo as a father figure and founder of the Zimbabwean nation whose life was spent…

There are confusing messages in this story that also reflect the wider confusion in Zimbabwe. If we accept the patriarchal notion of the Big Man who founds a nation then who is the Founding Father of Zimbabwe?  Well prior to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, Mr. Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo was called Father Zimbabwe. And it seems he deserved it. He was the founder of the National Democratic Party (NDP) and when this was banned he formed the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).

The revision of Mr. Nkomo’s role and the Father title began in 1963 when Messrs Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe and others decided to split and form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Although the original split may have been along personality differences down the road this divide took overt ethnic tones – ZAPU became largely a Ndebele-supported party and ZANU a Shona one.

The vilification of Mr. Nkomo reached its nadir in post-independence Zimbabwe when in 1983 “Father Zimbabwe” had to flee the country via Botswana after being accused of wanting to overthrow Mr. Mugabe’s government. The  state media had a field day. I remember distinctly in 1983 seeing a cartoon in government’s The Sunday Mail by Jay Gee that showed Mr. Nkomo in a woman’s dress crossing a river by stepping on crocodiles.

The story of Mr. Nkomo escaping dressed as a woman was a lie peddled by the state and its apparatchiks – it meant to mock and humiliate. Now ZANU PF would never dare to repeat that lie – but I am running ahead…

In trying to understand this patriarchal concept of Nation Fathers that we seem to be stuck with I reached for a little book that turned out to be very well written – Kizito Muchemwa and Robert Muponde’s Manning the Nation: father figures in Zimbabwean literature and society (Weaver Press, 2006).

There is an excellent chapter in that book by Professor Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni entitled Fatherhood and nationhood: Joshua Nkomo and the re-imagination of the Zimbabwe nation and is a must-read for the latter-day chimurenga stalwarts (at home and abroad).

I will be reviewing this book next week.

In the meantime let us wish Mr. Mugabe a happy 86^th Birthday and hope that he will wish all Zimbabweans the same.  We don’t need cakes. Just bread, water; and some air to breathe.

Chris Kabwato

Note: Archival pictures sourced from Zimbabwe Epic, a book Edited by R.G.S Douglas and Published in 1984 by the National Archives of Zimbabwe.

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