Rebirth of an African Genius: Four Centuries of Zimbabwe Europe Interaction

[XXPANTHAXX]

Rebirth of an African genius

Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Herald

THIS is the first part of a series of articles in which AMBASSADOR
CHRISTOPHER MUTSVANGWA traces the foundations of Zimbabwe and how four
centuries of Zimbabwe-Europe interaction have served to sap the country
of its ability to chart an independent and prosperous course in global
affairs.

THE history of Zimbabwe over the years has demonstrated an African
genius that thrived on opening to the outside in the medieval era.

It proved its resilience against two waves of European intrusion,
including a military defeat of the Rhodesian offshoot of the British
imperial army.

Zimbabwe has just successfully carried out the most far-reaching
restitution of indigenous property rights of the post-colonial era by
decisively reclaiming land for the majority.

By once again refocusing on the natural human development task of the
conscious creation of a genuine African middle class, Zimbabwe is poised
to recover its role as the sub-regional driver of civilisation to the
benefit of the African Renaissance.

The Founding of the Zimbabwe Nation

Zimbabwe today is a geographical entity that is between the Zambezi and
Limpopo rivers.

In the east are the Eastern Highlands that form the boundary with
Mozambique. The fringes of the Kalahari Desert form the western border
with Botswana.

MaDzimbahwe, stone-walled citadels worthy of Unesco heritage sites

The fabulous wealth was used to build granite stone citadels that are an
enduring testimony of the stability of Shona Kingdoms over a period of
900 years starting from 800AD.

Mapungubwe, on the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashi rivers in South
Africa, was the first such citadel. It has become famous because its
artefacts escaped the deliberate if philistine destruction of Cecil John
Rhodes and other latter day European marauders.

The most famous and majestic is the Great Zimbabwe at Masvingo, also a
Unesco heritage site.

Their scope and splendour are testament to a pinnacle achievement in
architecture and granite stone-working which awed the merchants from far
off lands who visited the rich kings of the time.

Others are Naletale, Dhlodhlo and Khami. These citadels have no parallel
in sub-Saharan Africa.

Seen in their totality, they are a testament to a political order of
general and sustained stability that could spawn enduring achievements
in agriculture, mining, commerce, military arts and language.

This was to mark the golden era of the Dzimbahwe civilisation.

These imposing granite citadels tell a story of advanced scientific
tilling of the lands to produce abundant surpluses that freed the human
mind and body to pursue other skills in gold mining and other
metallurgical activity.

This in turn spawned a great increase in commerce that soon went beyond
the Indian Ocean to attract Monsoon seafaring merchants from Egypt,
Arabia, Persia (Iran), India and even far off China is indicated by
archaeological Ming Dynasty beads.

The law and order of his day, the sense of peace and tranquility was
such that gold and other items could be traded at great fairs.

More so it could be safely transported by human porters to the coastal
ports to an extent that it assured the monsoon dhows of sure and
unfailing cargo.

This type of accomplishment should put to shame the modern day gold and
diamond smuggling in Zimbabwe.

The stories of the gold of the Munhumutapas reverberated from the near
Orient all the way westward to the ears of the kings of the rising
maritime powers of Europe.

There it kindled imagined legends such as the biblical "King Solomon’s
Mines" and the "Empire of Prester John.

It was not long before Portuguese seafarers made the groundbreaking sail
around Africa on the way to the spices of the East. Such was the pull of
Zimbabwe’s fabled gold that they also made a sojourn into the interior
of the land of the Munhumutapas and took no time in setting up an
embassy at his court.

Greed soon overcame the Portuguese guests as they found the interior of
Zimbabwe quite hospitable to those from temperate zones.

Their superior firepower and their increasing numbers soon led them into
land grabs. Estates or prazos (mapurazi) were claimed especially along
the Mazoe valley.

The military adventurism incurred the wrath of the Shona people. With
stretched supply lines of the mercantile empire 17th Century they proved
no match to the reorganised Rozvi armies.

The Portuguese interlopers were routed and confined to the coastal zones
while their occasional warlords formed ad hoc alliances to retain
varying degrees of influence all the way to the arrival of the British
challengers two centuries later.

Portuguese mercantilism and the first trade sanctions against Zimbabwe

They in turn retaliated with a naval grip of the coastal ports that
destroyed free trade in the Indian Ocean. Arab, Persian, Indian and
Chinese traders were banished from trading with Zimbabwe, which was
effectively now under blockade.

This isolation was the first sanctions ever applied by European power
against Zimbabwe.

It is the only plausible explanation of why the stone citadels
afterwards never reached the pinnacle of Great Zimbabwe at Masvingo.

Zimbabweans should thus dismiss with total contempt, the lies and
deliberate confusion by British colonial historians as to the real cause
of waning Shona influence.

Starved of external trade, the Rozvi Empire went into steady decline
effectively marking the close of the golden era of Shona civilisation in
the sub-region.

Shona as lingua franca

Historically, the people of modern Zimbabwe have been part of a bigger
social grouping which extended further into adjacent Mozambique,
Botswana and northern South Africa.

They spoke the Shona language, which is used across varying tribes
indicating the overriding influence of sustained socio-political
integration over a long period.

Clearly the flourishing internal trade led to the emergence of common
lingua franca, more so as that trade expanded beyond borders and across
oceans raking in immense wealth.

The heritage of a common medium of communication across tribes and
region is perhaps the greatest gift left to modern Zimbabwe by our
ancestors.

Courtesy of the Shona language, Zimbabwe was to emerge a more united
viable entity in the wake of the 1884 Berlin Conference when European
conquerors carved Africa using the age old tactic of ethnic, tribal,
religious and linguistic divide and rule.

The glue of a majority language has also made it possible to easily
foster national consciousness. Modern Zimbabwe has thus been able to
withstand determined efforts directed at national fractiousness by
Britain, the post imperial power in concert with its allies.

Monotheistic religion and ‘Vadzimu’ intercession

Closely related to common language was also the practice and belief in
the common Mwari religion of one God across the sub-region.

It worshipped one God, Mwari through the intercession of "mudzimu" or
"svikiro". It was non-sexist and women could also wield great religious
influence.

The departed ancestors acted as the angels. The traditional chiefs
performed the role of chief priests. Shrines and burial places all
played their part as the physical anchors of worship.

The religious and administrative structure of the Shona chieftaincy was
to ensure the survival of this centuries-old tradition.

The resilience and power of traditional religion was so strong that it
managed to survive the separation of the people from their historical
homes when British colonisers violently expropriated land from the
people.

Ndebele Nguni and the new Zimbabwe nation

The capacity of the Zimbabwe nation to withstand external shock and
absorb new ideas was to be tested with the arrival of the Ngunis in the
wake of the Mfecane of the early 19th century.

The pressure of advancing British imperial power that had finally
subjugated the Xhosa after a long series of wars forced the Zulus of
King Tshaka to forge unity of the Nguni nation through forced military
integration.

One unforeseen outcome was the Mfecane or Diaspora by reluctant smaller
tribes who decided to escape even northwards across the Limpopo and
Zambezi rivers.

The first group to cross the Limpopo River was that of Zwangendaba.

He raided and killed the Rozvi Mambo before proceeding to cross the
Zambezi and settle in parts of Malawi, Tanzania and eastern DRC.

Mzilikazi and the Ndebele followed shortly after. As he wandered
northwards, Mzilikazi had incorporated Swazi and Sotho elements into his
regiments.

He finally headed for western Zimbabwe.

There he quickly blended Nguni social structures, superior military
arrangements and language with the dominant Rozvi traditions of the
Shonas to form a powerful kingdom with Bulawayo as capital.

To its credit, within just three generations the new society had become
part of a Zimbabwe that would ally with the majority Shonas across the
whole plateau into formidable resistance to encroaching British imperial
hegemony.

Soshangana and the Shangani in the East

Another Nguni offshoot, the Shangani moved into the Mozambique- Zimbabwe
border. Here they fought great anti-colonial battles against Portuguese
rule under the great chief Gungunyana.

The British and modern Zimbabwe

The present day Zimbabwe is a product of British imperial rule for over
90 years. Unlike other African countries where the English sent
administrators, Zimbabwe was turned into a home by the colonisers.

The fertile soils, the equable climate off the plateau was simply too
enticing to the new European invaders thus vindicating the great sense
of human geography in the original Shona who had made the plateau home
at about the same time as Vikings invaded England and well before the
Norman conquest of the British Isles.

At their population height in 1970s, the white settlers were less than 3
percent of the total population. Yet they wielded great power
concentrated in a racial minority.

Their numbers have dwindled mainly because of lack of allegiance to
Zimbabwe. Britain, the metropolitan power has consistently and
persistently manipulated their loyalty to serve a selfish, neo-colonial
and increasingly out-dated agenda of pernicious influence on the
Zimbabwe body politic.

The British tradition continues to wane as their numbers have decreased
in the aftermath of their military defeat a decade before the 21st
century.

But their influence in ushering in the concept of a modern state to the
Zimbabwe nation is still there and will endure long after their present
if flippant sulkiness.

The English language and international discourse

Besides the management of a modern economy, advanced commercial law and
other aspects of a modern state, the enduring contribution is the usage
of the English language in national discourse.

With the emergence of the USA as the dominant superpower of the 20th
century and beyond, Zimbabwe could ride on the worldwide acceptance of
English as the premier lingua franca of international interaction.

The liberal democratic tradition

Another remarkable feature of English colonial rule was the introduction
of the liberal democratic mode of governance.

At home, British rule had done its part in advancing constitutionalism
as a mode of modern governance. Yet as it went abroad, British
imperialism practiced class discrimination that would lead to rebellion
by the American colonists. Worse it was the pioneer and practitioner of
modern racism against the people of colour.

Nevertheless, with the eventual demise of the imperial adventure, the
concept of liberal democratic governance has been avidly adapted by the
former subjects.

In Zimbabwe, it took one generation before the black majority shook off
the stupor of the shock of military defeat by British conquerors at the
end of the 19th century.

Agitation for workers’ rights in the new towns soon coalesced with rural
demand for stolen land.

The aftermath of World War II saw this political activism morph into the
demand for the non-racial voting and majority rule.

Political parties were formed in the face of growing resistance and
increasing white minority settler repression. This was the incubation of
the future political leadership that would culminate in a successful
military challenge to British imperial rule.

Heroes and the anti-colonial tradition

Just as Walter Rodney postulates in his celebrated book, "How Europe
underdeveloped Africa", the natural development of Zimbabwe was stunted
and even temporarily arrested by aspects of its negative interaction
with Europe.

Changamire Dombo of the Rozvi

The Portuguese who had set up legation at the court of Munhumutapa did
not take long to see an opportunity in occupying the well-endowed
Zimbabwe plateau for their far away king.

Through the ruse of dabbling in local succession politics, the
Portuguese interlopers did not take time to ensconce themselves as
imperial arbiters of the Munhumutapa Kingdom.

Though outnumbered with stretched supply lines, they soon turned
themselves into rulers taking courtesy of their advantage of superior
firepower. However, their imperial adventurism was very short lived as
the Shonas from the interior organised a counter offensive.

Changamire Dombo of the Rozvi was the first great hero in the long
history of painful encounter with European imperial invaders. His
warriors drove Portuguese armies away from the interior plateau to the
Indian Ocean coastal zones.

He thus spared the country the fate of present day Mozambique which
became a colony of Portugal for so many centuries.

The respite of freedom was to be challenged by more modern and better
armed British imperial troops. Under the guise of dubious and deceitful
treaties, Rhodes and his Pioneer Column occupied present day Zimbabwe in
the wake of the 1884 Berlin Conference on the Partition of Africa.

Lobengula and the Ndebele War

This brazen act of imperial conquest forced King Lobengula of the
Ndebele nation into a war against the marauders.

Though he was defeated, the spirit of resistance took another dimension
when both the Shona and Ndebele organised a joint resistance that would
stretch the new occupiers.

Nehanda and the First Chimurenga

Nehanda, Kaguvi, Mashayamombe, Chingaira and many other Shona and
Ndebele chiefs carried out co-ordinated attacks at isolated settler
outposts all over the Plateau. Facing stark prospects, imperial Britain
had to dispatch fresh reinforcements from Port Elizabeth to go to
Zimbabwe through Beira in order to save its embattled settlers from
imminent annihilation.

European advances in military technology such as the Gatling gun and the
invention of dynamite tilted the equation against native peoples who
still fought with spears. Their numbers were rendered useless against
such firepower and the war of resistance collapsed into painful defeat.

Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and modern nationalism

The defeat of the people of Zimbabwe cowered a whole generation into
submission as fear gripped the land and white settlers did as they
wished. They appropriated large estates for themselves while forcing the
majority natives into marginal lands.

Indentured labour was the order of the day. So were onerous taxes and
other administrative measures intended to force the majority into a new
proletariat designed to serve the new masters.

Working conditions in new urban centres, farms and mines were as
appalling as the low wages.

The sheer weight of oppression was such that it could only revive the
spirit of resistance. By the 1930s the people had taken to strikes and
agitation against colonial excesses.

The outbreak of the WWII forced a stretched Britain to recruit Africans
and other colonial subjects into its war effort against Hitler’s
Germany.

The battle cry of freedom had a resonant effect. At the end of
hostilities, many were demobilised without as much as a thank you by a
broke and penniless England.

To their consternation they noticed their erstwhile battlefield white
colleagues being rewarded with even more land which was being
expropriated from fellow Africans. The resultant anger and alienation
fuelled the spirit of popular resistance eve more.

In the meantime, missionary education had nurtured a more conscious
African elite, which could eloquently articulate the issues of concern
to the black majority.

This new elite also benefited from interaction with other Africans when
they went to South Africa to further their education.

After all, South Africa had the oldest liberation movement, the African
National Congress which had been founded in 1912 in reaction to nascent
apartheid as the British co-opted Afrikaners into a white ruling
condominium.

Joshua Nkomo, the Father of the Nation became the voice of Zimbabweans
as he articulated their grievances and formed political parties that
urged majority rule and one man one vote.

Robert Mugabe an uncanny intellectual, austere revolutionary and
visionary statesman started his political career as Joshua Nkomo’s
lieutenant but came into his own as the demands of the drawn out
struggle rose.

The two combined into a formidable duet that scaled new heights in the
fight for freedom. They did not hesitate to the ultimate choice of armed
confrontation with the entrenched settler minority in order to dislodge
it from power.

Repeated proscriptions of political parties, imprisonment and detention
of the leadership, brazen violence meted out to the agitating populace
exposed the futility of non-violent confrontation of the entrenched
settler minority.

The nationalist movement came to the painful conclusion that to win
freedom and sovereignty, the people had to organise their own defence
against the colonial state machinery.

Zimbabwe had to reverse the defeat of Nehanda, Kaguvi and others before
they could once again come into their own.

One man one vote, majority rule, a people’s constitution and all that go
with the trappings of a modern democratic state were only possible after
the people had been organised to answer the settler insolence and
intransigence with potent armed power. A terrible new beauty was about
to be born.

Herbert Chitepo, J Z Moyo and the people’s war

The challenge to chart the new territory of founding a revolutionary
army fell on two, on lawyer Herbert Chitepo of Zanu and Jason Ziyaphapha
Moyo of Zapu.

In the relative safety of exile in newly independent Zambia and
Tanzania, both took it upon themselves to embrace current thinking on
national liberation theory and practice.

They rightly deserve the credit of the formation of an armed political
cadreship for the defense of a people under colonial bondage.

This army was built on the bedrock of love of the country and its
people. Those who were its initial cadres sowed a tradition were the
well-being of the individual was subsumed to that of the nation.

The prospect of one’s life was subordinated to that of a country and its
people for eternity.

Good schooling, rewarding work, marrying and bringing up own family as
well as quest for self actualisation, including any anticipated fame:
all these were to pale in significance and value to the call of
patriotic duty.

A great calling that could not reward the self. It inevitably led to
maiming, loss of sight or hearing.

Most horribly, it often ended with the brutish claim of that invaluable,
once only gift of life. And for the survivors there is the lifelong
trauma of war and the consequences of foregone opportunity in a
competitive society.

It is no wonder that their invaluable philosophy and praxis of nation
building so frightened the enemy that he dedicated all his effort to the
personal elimination of both Herbert Chitepo and J Z Moyo among many
others of their proud ilk.

Josiah Tongogara, Nikita Mangena and the Samora Machel generation

Zimbabwe’s military genius came into its own under the command of the
incomparable Josiah Tongogara of the Zimbabwe African Liberation Army
(Zanla) and Nikita Mangena of the Zimbabwe’s African People’s Army
(Zipra).

Their military mettle came to the fore courtesy of a new wave of
recruits who left the country at the inspiration of the political and
military exploits of Samora Machel and his Frelimo of Mozambique.

The armed victory of the people of Mozambique that helped foment a
revolution against fascist Portuguese rule was to fire the imagination
of youth in the whole of Southern Africa.

All the classrooms of the region starting with those of Soweto burst
into open defiance of colonial rule spilling into the streets to
demonstrate.

More potently, thousands others melted into the African bush to trek to
neighbouring independent countries to seek the much loved gun. Defying
the prospect of imminent death they fervently embraced arms with the
sole desire to train and go back home to settle the final score with a
well-armed and dug-in armed racist oppressor.