In the traditional Shona or Tonga political system, or many others across Africa, everyone had a voice in the chief’s dare and each person’s voice counted because a good chief remembered that Mambo ndimambo navanhu. Of course, there were bad chiefs, but as long as the chief wasn’t powerful enough to become a dictator, he had to either learn to listen or find that most of his people wanted someone else to be their chief.
We have all seen examples of good traditional chiefs, true “fathers of their people”. One I remember was Rekayi Tangwena. When he became chief, the Smith regime was trying to drive his people off their ancestral land. Smith offered Rekayi a modern house (rare in those parts) a car and a course in how to be a “proper” (RF-approved) chief. Chief Rekayi said no, his place was with his people, hiding out in the hills. His people wanted him to support them, not to tell them what someone else (the settler regime, in this case) thought was good for them. He accepted that a good chief was chief only as long as he was with his people.
Modern Western politics introduced new challenges and new opportunities, for good and for bad. Superior weapons gave some people more power to dictate, which led to colonialism. People reacted in different ways to the new power. Few just accepted it. Many conformed outwardly and tried to find space to be free within it. Some didn’t only look for a space to exercise their freedom, they did all they could to enlarge it for themselves and others.
One man I knew who had tried to enlarge the space for freedom was Charles Mzingeli. He was one of the first trade unionists in Harare, so his first field of action was helping workers to organise for better working conditions. He soon discovered that everything that oppressed the people who were coming to Harare to work was his concern. Their living conditions, housing and drains were certainly his concern. They didn’t have to be members of his union; if they had a problem and he could do anything to help them get justice, he would do that.
He was rather clever at using phrases the colonialists invented to cover up what they were really doing, like Cecil Rhodes’ “equal rights for all civilised men” (which carefully avoided mentioning race) to campaign, by appealing to sympathisers abroad and even in the Southern Rhodesia Labour Party, by suing in court and by traditional union methods like strikes for the rights of black people to be recognised. Some cases he won. Those he lost were also victories, because they showed up the hypocrisy of the oppressors and strengthened people’s will.
When the “wind of change” started to blow through Africa, a new breed of activist emerged. They began to call the people “the masses” and to claim to speak for them. Not people to listen to, but masses to be led. The township violence of the early 1960s arose as leaders tried to force people to follow them. It got more vicious when leadership contests became battles between parties, each fighting to “lead Zimbabwe to independence”.
That may have been the short cut to independence, but I still wonder whether Mzingeli’s method would have brought freedom to the people such as we do not enjoy yet, even if it took a bit longer to get us to independence.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis