Correcting the Colonial Wrongs

20 SEP, 2020 - 00:09 

Major Allan Wilson (third from left) and some of the men of his patrol (Shangani Patrol).

Garikai Mazara

Zimbabwe Sunday Mail 

CHRONICLES from the 2nd Chimurenga

IT has been 130 years since the so-called Pioneer Column arrived and raised the Union Jack in present-day Harare, which they re-christened Salisbury.

Lord Salisbury was the sitting British Prime Minister when the white settlers arrived.

This they did on September 12, 1890.

The Union Jack was raised where the Africa Unity Square presently sits.

Building a city around the square, they immortalised their “victory” by ensuring that the design of the Africa Unity Square, which used to be called Cecil Square, after Cecil John Rhodes, took the form of the Union Jack.

If you take an aerial picture of the square, all the footpaths in the square form the stripes of the Union Jack.

That was a tattoo on our national psyche, and over a century later we are still stuck with that symbol.

Not content with what they had achieved by raising the Union Jack and etching it onto our sacred ground, they went on to make sure the architecture of most of the buildings represented those from back home, hence you find the Anglican Cathedral and Parliament lie not so far away from the Square.

Because they wanted leisure as well, Harare Club was built to the east and Thomas Meikles, with a little bit of help from cattle looted from the “uncivilised” Shonas, built the hotel to the south.

But this was not the first time the settlers were naming and re-christening places in Zimbabwe after their “icons”.

Roughly some 35 years earlier, on November 17, 1855, David Livingstone had arrived and “discovered” the Mosi-oa-Tunya, which he immediately changed to Victoria Falls, after his reigning queen.

The name has stuck with us for all these years.

Having satisfied themselves that Harari was not good enough as a name but good enough to settle, what with the expansive swathes of “unoccupied” land, they sought to “conquer” all territory that “had no roads, farms, mines or industries”.

To them, the Shona, occupying much of the north of the country, and the Ndebele, concentrated to the south, were so backward, uncivilised and “without any form of government”.

As Cecil John Rhodes led the “all-conquering” column that then occupied the land north of the Limpopo, they found it in their wisdom to christen it Rhodesia, a name that would be stuck with the country till independence in 1980.

There is a joke, widely circulated within the white settler community soon after independence, that if all what the blacks wanted was to change the names of streets, buildings, towns and cities, then the blacks should have just said so.

“What’s in a name, after all?” they seemed to ask.

Truth is, there is everything in a name.

That is why after settling, the first thing they did was change our names — they were erasing our history, our culture, our norms.

There was a pattern to everything the settlers did when they arrived.

Either they were renaming our natural features (Victoria Falls), were corrupting the existing names to suit their pronunciation (Sabi River, Umtali, Gatooma, etcetera) or were honouring their icons (Queen Elizabeth, Prince Edward, Allan Wilson — in fact, this list is rather endless).

The Tonga called it the Mosi-oa-Tunya.

And, as if re-naming it was not just enough, for years they went on to teach us in schools that Livingstone “discovered” the falls — how can one “discover” something that lies within a community?

Just like they taught us that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America.

Like, really?

What about the Red Indians who were indigenous to the land?

They called Rhodes’ men “Pioneer Column” — how can you pioneer where there are people already resident?

By definition, a pioneer is a person who is among the first to settle in a new country or area.

But the area these people claimed to have “pioneered” already had settlers.

The time is now to correct all those historical imbalances, those colonial hang-overs.

President Mnangagwa, speaking in Gweru last weekend, announced the conferment of National Hero status on General Mtshana Khumalo, a fighter of note during the annihilation of Allan Wilson and his troops in the Battle of Shangani.

Leading a grouping of 34 men, Allan Wilson faced a battalion led by General Khumalo and all the 34 were killed in that battle.

But if you visit Matopos today, Allan Wilson and his men have been immortalised into our history by a sky-high cenotaph.

And not only that, Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson lie nearby.

Despite losing that battle, right up today, Allan Wilson’s name is immortalised in our memory through not just the cenotaph but through a prominent school.

In fact, two years after that defeat, the white settlers declared December 4, the day they were annihilated, a public holiday, until 1920.

But for most readers, the name Gen Khumalo does not ring a bell, neither has he been immortalised.

Speaking at the same event, President Mnangagwa said going forward, we should celebrate, honour and immortalise our heroes, especially those from the First and Second Chimurenga.

He cited the glaring disparities between the grave of King Mzilikazi and that of Cecil John Rhodes. Whereas King Mzilikazi lies in what would pass for an unmarked grave, Rhodes lies at the top of the World’s View and every visitor to Matopos gets a chance to visit his grave.

The debate on whether to exhume his remains for burial elsewhere is a discussion for another day, but that Rhodes lies immortalised whereas the resting places for Mzilikazi and Lobengula have been trivialised by history are some of the colonial injustices that need correcting.

Because Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi were beheaded and where their remains lie is still unknown, it is thus befitting that their roles are immortalised through efforts such as the construction of statues, as is being done in Harare.

If anything, there is more work that needs to be done to ensure that our history is entrenched in our almost everyday facets of life, the same manner we are hit by David Livingstone, Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth, Allan Wilson, Roosevelt, Admiral Tait, Cecil John Rhodes, et al.

While the white settlers had the advantage of documenting their history, thus have ease of reference, we have to rely mostly on oral history, especially for the recollection of events of the First Chimurenga, which places the onus of historians and writers to keep the nation, and the world, informed and educated of where we came from, our heritage, our culture, our norms and our history.

It is only a people who are not informed that mock their own history.

The site of Mbuya Nehanda statue was chosen because she used to stop over by the stream that runs down present-day Julius Nyerere Way to quench her thirst.

Very few know that Julius Nyerere Way, as it stands today, was built over a stream, which runs into Mukuvisi.

As much as very few people know the significance of Dzvivaresekwa in our political history — that it is the place where Mbuya Nehanda, seeing that her troops were being over-powered, surrendered to the white settlers.

Writing and documenting such places and people is not just enough, their places in history should be immortalised through ensuring that almost every day we encounter their names — be it a school, hospital, road, building, street or statue.