Zimpapers Logo

Stephen Mpofu

When a span of oxen ploughing a field is swayed from the furrow by divergent interests, the plough is wont to leave behind ugly banks in the field.

The ploughman, any ploughman, is bound to revisit the improperly tilled land to destroy the banks so that no weeds grow on the land to choke the crops and with disastrous consequences, such as hunger, for the owner or family of the crop field.

Liken (yes, you) the Zimbabwean nation to a crop field and the Peace and Reconciliation Commission which swings into action this month to, for lack of better phraseology, a ploughman who goes back to the land to destroy the ugly banks on which unwanted grass is wont to grow and choke the crops, or better still, as the case in point, cause disharmony in the nation and with that retard political, social and economic emancipation for the country into a brave new future.

Since the role of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission would be to heal ugly wounds still festering in the hearts of some of our people or scrap off scars left behind by the wounds, it is patently important for all Zimbabweans to cooperate with the commissioners so that no space remains in our hearts for weeds to grow and choke national unity and in that way open the door for the enemy to come marching in to cause havoc among our people.

A book by this author probably provides a succinct description of the commission’s role.

For Little Hearts Can Also Dance, a book about land reform in Zimbabwe, the peace and reconciliation initiative is like “the story of love, agape love, and shows how a single act of unmitigated love drastically transforms hearts of granite for a bold new future of amity, harmony and transcendence by integrated beautiful humanity”.

By swinging the commission into action in Zimbabwe’s new political dispensation, President Mnangagwa wants Zimbabweans, all Zimbabweans to close ranks and move forward as an integrated beautiful humanity.

Persons against such humanity are weeds that seek to choke genuine Zimbabwean crops.

This pen feels strongly that going back on memory lane, like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be a simultaneous revisit to the history of the motherland to remove ugly banks deliberately created by colonial historians to distort the image and capacity of black people to tell their own true story.

There is therefore an urgent need in this country to clean up ugly banks in the historical journey that our people travelled through colonial repressions and to post modernity. Such a move must necessarily involve the cleaning up of historical accounts by foreigners that remain virtually immortalised in school history books as well as in the minds of our people who then look at themselves, that is, through the mischievous eyes of foreign observers looking at blacks as inferior beings.

Such liberation of the history of the black man in Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the African continent will result in an authentic account that will make us Africans, walk with our heads very, very high.

A particular historical distortion that immediately comes to the mind of this communicology and sociology student is one concerning the Ndebele King, Lobengula, whom some of his followers credit with the mystery of disappearing with no trace whatsoever. One account is known to claim that Lobengula fled north across the Shangani pursued by whites armed with guns while his soldiers bore assegais.

One account says he contracted small-pox and died in a cave to prevent other people getting the disease. Another account says he was “eaten by lions” during his flight. This latter account suggests that Lobengula’s white pursuers not wanting the world to know and to laugh at them for being outstripped by a native king — who was actually fighting against British imperial usurpation of our land and its people —– peddled the lie about him being devoured by a lion.

Another account prevalent among some Zimbabweans and which appears to bear indisputable veracity is that, when Lobengula reached Pupu as he fled towards the Zambezi, with the whites in hot pursuit, he chose a few men among his soldiers and proceeded in his flight to the Zambezi river.

This pen writes in Little Hearts that according to unpublished information in the hands of Lobengula’s white contemporaries, the Ndebele King crossed the Zambezi river at the Mfuwe flats, a place where the Mfuwe river pours into the Zambezi.

Once on the other side Lobengula reportedly ordered his soldiers to spear to death the Zambians who had ferried them across in boats so that none of them would inform the King’s pursuers of his whereabouts. He then proceeded to the Eastern province where he died living in an area under Chief Mpezeni, a Nguni like King Lobengula.

It is further reported that from Chief Mpezeni’s area Lobengula often returned to the confluence of the Mfuwe and Zambezi rivers and there stood or sat down to gaze longingly for home across the mighty Zambezi.

Other unconfirmed reports say that on the day that Lobengula died a granite hill beside which he gazed long and hard at his homeland across the river split in half, apparently signifying the passing on of a King.

[Among the people living in the Mpezeni area today are the Zulus, Moyos, Ndlovus (or Njovu), suggesting that some of them might be descendents of King Lobengula’s people or that their ancestors fled Tshaka Zulu in South Africa for refuge in then Northern Rhodesia.

This pen challenges descendents of the King’s royal family in Zimbabwe to revisit Chief Mpezeni’s area to be shown the place where the remains of the King were interred and to also verify the claim that a hill split in mourning the passing on of a King.

Cordial relations between Zambia and Zimbabwe will make it easy for descendants or relatives of King Lobengula to go on a pilgrimage to Chief Mpezeni’s area where the King died and was buried.

Overall, Zimbabwe’s historians, including academics at the country’s many universities, should consider themselves duty bound to clean up our history books or write complete new texts from which the psychology of misinformation is decanted and banished once and forever.

Generally our people should honestly motivate discussions on events good or bad that have characterised the birth and growth of our nation in order for an authentic history to be produced and guide our nation forward in the same way as a campus guides a ship at sea or an aeroplane in the skies.

Forgiving those who have wronged us and forgetting the wrongs is what makes a nation go forward united and successful in all its endeavours.