Zimbabwe’s 21st Movement Birthday Celebrations: The Dangers of a Single Story

Dear Reader

I have decided to publish this article again. I published it last year, but the Zimbabwe 21st Movement is again, around the corner, and I am re-publishing it for political emphasis, lest we forget Rodriguez. Regai tirove bembera musati matanga kutijairiria. Here we go:

I am thinking of Chinua Achebe, the late Nigerian novelist, poet, professor and critic. In his magnum opus and first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), he writes about one African man, a Christian convert, baptised and renamed Enoch. Enoch was Mr Brown the white Catholic missionary’s right hand man and assistant. In my village they would call Mr Brown Muneri. The true meaning of Muneri is still unknown to me, except that he was the white missionary whose wife was called Jefuro. Whether the missionary and his wife were posted to another place and a new couple replaced them, they would still be called Muneri and Jefuro, permanent titles for important and distinct people. Obviously the terms were derived from some foreign language but that remains of very little significance to me and my people because we do not know the meaning of all this, and it added no value to our lives except to leave some of us yeaning to be called by names and titles that mean nothing to us. To this day our nearest mission school is called kwaMuneri (Muneri’s place), meaning that the missionaries came not only to preach the Gospel but also to take over spaces. One of my cousins who was born with a rare skin lightness was named Muneri - the poor parents were so brainwashed they wished he could pass for the other race’s power and authority. Call me what you like; call me afro-centric - I wont blame you, because the love of anything African has for long been considered a sin. Call me racist even, but like Leopold Senghor and his negritude sentiments, my violent past will always haunt me, and some of the traumas of that regrettable process of colonialism will obviously live with me and my writing to my death bed.

Achebe’s villagers had a problem with Enoch, and the problem was not that Enoch was a convert - because the new religion also gave hope and comfort to many Nigerians of those times, just as it still does in many spaces all over Africa, but only in those spaces where its agenda is pushed as a spiritual unifier rather than a holier than thou supremacist ideology. The villagers’ problem with Enoch was that his devotion to the new faith seemed so much greater than Mr Brown's, and in his overzealousness to please the white missionary for personal gains, he slowly degenerated into a Christian fundamentalist and puppet, quick to forget his own African values and beliefs. The villagers thus called him the outsider who wept louder than the bereaved.

I am also thinking of a modern classical writer and feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is well known in the readers’ and scholarly circles for her lecture on the dangers of a single narrative. True to Chimamanda, the ‘Single story’ analytical framework – besides being patronising and preachy, also stifles reality and debate, and tends to border on gross misconception and misrepresentation of issues.

I am reflecting on the two writers above in relation to recent happenings in my country, Zimbabwe. Of late Zimbabwe has become a theatre for polarisations and controversies, especially in matters relating to President Mugabe. So controversial has this gallant hero’s name become that you cannot write a sentence in recognition of his worth without being accused of being a bootlicker, puppet and intelligence operative. In my country you would rather praise all the ills of Adolf Hitler and colonialism combined than mention one positive historical truth about Robert Mugabe. In simplistic thinking, his worth has been eroded by time. Unfortunately however, for the blind critics, history cannot be undone, and will live to be told beyond ages and generations. Whether certain quarters of this country and beyond like it or not, President Mugabe, currently serving Head of both the Southern African Development Community and the African Union, is a gallant son of Africa, liberator, historical icon and adored hero who sacrificed his life for a struggle to liberate Zimbabweans from the grip of foreign powers and influence. Whatever has gone wrong in the country can only be put right in-house, and this can be done through making an honest assessment of the past to learn from and build on the lived mistakes. A denial of historical realities can never take us across the river.

Without digressing too much, I have been reading with interest stories and critiques around the Presidential 21st Movement Celebrations. Precisely, what has been of interest for pursuance in this article are sentiments from one Johnny Rodriguez of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF), an animal rights activist, who has expressed highest concern over the plan to slaughter some animals to be served to guests at President Robert Mugabe’s birthday celebrations this coming weekend.

The 21st Movement celebrations in Zimbabwe mark historic birthday celebrations for President Robert Mugabe. Thousands of people are expected to attend this birthday bash, and for this year, a game menu has been decided on for the celebrating publics. In this regard, in addition to all other pledges made to provide the animals for slaughter, a prominent farmer Tendayi Musasa of Woodlands Wildlife Conservancy has donated a herd of wild animals to feed the guests.

According to some media reports, the populace in Musasa’s community is crying foul, alleging that the farmer dispossessed them of their homeland when he took over the space for his wildlife ventures, and has not given back any proceeds from the Wild Life Management venture back to the community in any way, except to enrich himself. In the event that these allegations are true, honest analysis would have it that Musasa is using the President’s birthday as a platform to try and justify his selfish gains. Depending on how true the story is, Musasa obviously has answers to provide – and he must answer not only to his community but also to the President and people of Zimbabwe. Whilst his issue is also of interest to me as a legitimate Zimbabwean, and whilst I emphathise with the dispossessed community, it is however not the subject of my discussion in this article. I can only end at appealing to Musasa’s conscience to have good social cooperate responsibilities as a true son of Zimbabwe. The women and children of Victoria Falls would also benefit immensely from his considerate future actions.

In this article I am more concerned about the animal rights activist Johnny Rodriquez’s sentiments, which I am quick to share below, quoted from the electronic media. In his anger and disgust, Rodriquez has charged that, “They will kill elephants, buffalo, kudu, warthogs and so on to feed the guests. We are disgusted about this. (President) Mugabe once gave a speech on TV saying that he looks after all the animals in the country, right down to the insects. There are so many people starving in Zimbabwe and the people invited to the party will not be those who are starving.”

Whilst I appreciate Rodriquez’s love for animals, his sentiments to me smack of hypocrisy and a hidden agenda, because it is the first time I have heard him speak with so much concern about the welfare of Zimbabweans. There are serious water and sanitation problems in Victoria Falls, a tourist capital where proceeds of wildlife gains could have been chanelled way back for development purposes, but we have not read of Rodriquez's efforts around such initiatives in the past. His concern seems only to rise where Robert Mugabe's name has been mentioned.

Here in Zimbabwe, where I was born and bred, animals are truly important and sacred, but human beings are more important and more sacred than animals. In our lives as Zimbabweans, animals and human beings serve each other, but animals serve human needs more. Before the advent of colonialism, our lives depended so much on the forests and animals, and both were sacred, to an extent that I can list trees that were not allowed to be cut down, and animals that were not allowed to be tamed, or even to be eaten, but for the sake of time. Our ancestors knew the value of endangered species, reason why they taught us that Chizhuzhu was sacred, should not be used for firewood but only for decorating the graves of the dead. They knew that death was not an everyday event then, and preserving this rare tree only for rare occassions would help protect it. With advent of the ‘new order’ – Johnny’s colonial order, wild trees and animals ceased to be scared, and trees could be cut down and used without selection or consultation, it was considered barbaric to view a tree as sacred. Yet our beliefs in the sacredness of trees and animals was not baseless, but were founded on the knowledge of which specie were endangered and required more conservation. We conserved our animals and trees without confining them to camps and reserves, and our hunters would hunt at will, but taking care to leave the sacred specie alone, and they thrived better then than now when there are countless reserves and camps bent on profiteering a few.

I do appreciate the need to conserve animals in the current disorder wrought by foreign ‘experts’, but am not blind to the hypocrisies surrounding some of the initiatives, and will not hesitate to mention that countless animals are slaughtered in secrecy and their valuable parts exported for the ‘beneficiation’ of foreign economies at the expense of indigenous people. In original Zimbabwe, before colonial influence, people could still hunt and slaughter animals, but the animals never went extinct. It is only after the advent of ‘conservationists’ that our animals and trees now face annihilation (my emphasis).

I have been to Victoria Falls many times and have seen game meat on the menus of all the hotels and lodges there, but have heard no out-cries from the likes of Rodriquez. It therefore surprises me that the menu of a single day would require highly political sentiments as those aired by him, sentiments with potential to destabilise society and cause strife. We have seen enough strife in this country, and we guard joealosuly against cereless speeches ladden with foreign political agendas. We love our country so much we have learnt to turn ourselves into early warning gongs, especially in times like these when those bent on frustrating our efforts will turn any neareste possible stone to causes chaos. Since when has Rodriquez become so concerned about the welfare of starving Zimbabweans when over the years we have not heard any comment from him regarding using proceeds from the wild animals to develop Zimbabwe, feed women and children and pay school fees for orphans? Rodriquez is also concerned that the invited guests for the celebrations include other Zimbabweans other than those who are starving, and those supposedly moved from their homes to give way for Musasa’s farm, but what makes him think that inviting all the starving people and people from Musasa’s community to eat game meat for only one day during the 21st movement celebrations will make them better people? Why does he make himself spokesperson for the starving Zimbabweans, or is it because we indigenous Zimbabweans all belong to the Joseph Conrad's Dark Continent school of thought – we are all mutes whose superior light skinned brother Rodriquez should speak on their behalf? This Rodriquez conservationist, like Enoch in China Achebe’s novel, risks mourning more than the bereaved. Why he chooses to see issues from a single point of view proves that he is a replica of the colonial mentality that saw no good in anything African, and would rush to label processes as barbaric without pausing to think of their nuances and multiple layered meanings that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls for. Did he ever stop to think about why now than never, Zimbabwe has chosen to celebrate the 21st movement in style? Why can he not look beyond the table and say we are also ceebrating our ascension to the throne of the AU as Zimbabweans, therefore we require more on our tables than just the usual beef and chicken to celebrate? And why does he think that only chicken and cows should die, do they not also have blood? Is it about life rights only or about money Mr Rodriquez?

Johnny’s antics remind me of one funeral I attended in 2002, during the land upheavals in Zimbabwe. I happened to sit next to a Zimbabwean sister of British origin by coincidence. The sister was born here in Zimbabwe to a lineage that proceeded from those who accompanied Cecil John Rhodes from Britain through the South African mines to come and colonise Zimbabwe way back, and it had never occurred to her that an indigenous family would occupy the farm land she had known as rightfully hers for the rest of her life.

So we sat side by side, and suddenly I saw her weeping hysterically. I was shocked. She was only present at the funeral because the mother of the deceased was a sister in the writing fraternity, but that she would weep so hysterically, more than the bereaved mother refused to make sense to me. I nudged her and asked her if she was okay, and out it all came. Sob, sob! She had seen a puppy and cat in the house, and they reminded her. Sob, sob! They reminded her of how Chenjerai Hunzvi (the war veterans’ leader who led the land riots in Zimbabwe) had shot and killed her lovely puppies at her grandfather’s farm during the land repossession exercise. Sob, sob! How she missed the puppies.

So you see, this sister and Johnny are just the same, they love animals more than human beings, as long as those animals attatch them to our natural wealth and resources, and to my relief Chenjerai Hunzvi had only shot and killed her puppies and not her people, yet she sobbed the tears of 5 funerals put together. This sister,to this day - each time I meet her - always reminds me of Dorris Lessing’s character Mary Turner in The Grass is Singing, a novel set in South Africa. Mary Turner would rather hate and whip the black labourers on her farm with a passion that helped her descend into madness than accept the reality that these black men and women were equal human beings capable of making love to each other and of producing children while she maintained a sexual friidity originating from a long incestous relationship with her dad, a sexual frigidity that left her husband Turner feeling very cold every day and sentenced him to bouts of cold and influenza, weakening his immune system enough for malaria to send him to death despite the expensive treatments he received everyday, while the black farm labourers who had no mosquito nets, no bed linen and medication compared to Mary and her husband, but enough love and sentiment to cling together for conjugal rights to beat the cold and the mosquitoes lived on. This is Africa Mr Johny, we have our own ways of living.

What I am trying to say in short, and despite my rage, is that Africa has its own values, and individuals and organisations benefiting from our resources may serve us stress and trouble by seeking to understand those values first before they pass comments like Rodriquez’s, comments with potential to cause strife. Kings and Chiefs in Zimbabwe have from time immemorial received animal gifts from their followers as a sign of respect and worth as befit different occasions. This is so not only in Zimbabwe but in other African countries as well.

A quick example can be drawn from neighbouring South Africa in 2014, when their legend Nelson Mandela passed on. As a chief from the Xhosa ethnic group, there were lots of special rituals to observe, and many cows and bulls were lined up for slaughter on the day, to feed the mourners, but also as a sign of the Chief’s worth. According to reports from South African media, if any of the cows, oxen or bulls that was slaughtered made a bellowing sound during the slaughter, this was taken as a signal that ancestors were pleased and would welcome the departed person. In instances where an animal did not bellow, another one was slaughtered as a replacement for the one that did not bellow. The rituals are even more elaborate, for example, the coffin of the deceased is generally covered with a leopard skin if the person was a chief - like Mandela - and a lion's skin if the person was a king, and this has been so from time immemorial. So what Johnny would need to stop and ask himself is that if such ‘loss of animal life’ can accompany a dead man, how many more can be slaughtered to celebrate life? Maybe cows, cattle and oxen will not concern Johnny because they do not have valuable horns that his country back home so much want. And what is a handful of animals as compared to loads and loads of raw materials flighted to the West from the DRC every day in exchange for guns to cause more and more commotion – commotion to enable more and more looting? Sometimes I cannot avoid to say if Africa and its own are too backward and barbaric, the best thing is for the non-coping hollier than thou non-Africans who can't stand the heat in the kitchen to pack and leave us to strategise for a better Africa by 2063.