IN this month of October we remember the great Chief Rekayi Tangwena.
As a people we are guilty of not doing enough celebration of our great moments, inspiring events, achievements, heroes and heroines.
Many should be our celebrations for many are our heroics, contrary to notions peddled by the West that we are clueless people that cannot do without them.
The story of Chief Tangwena is an inspiring one.
I will repeat exactly what I said about Chief Tangwena some time ago.
Our detractors often hold the mistaken view that the Third Chimurenga was some spontaneous explosion without a historical past.
They see it as some violent process against a saintly people who were predestined to hold the land until the end of time.
They often claim ownership of the discourses of land giving the impression that there were no other voices that demanded land reform before 1980.
The stories of Chief Tangwena in this edition got me reflecting on the deep historical roots of the Third Chimurenga with events of the past.
There is a picture of the University of Rhodesia class of 69 in which Chief Rekayi Tangwena features.
He is surrounded by student activists who supported him as he resisted removal from his ancestral land.
To many whites and, even some blacks, he was a mad radical who was supposed to obey the colonial law, a law that deprived him of his heritage.
Seventy years of colonial power had mentally conditioned some to accept that our own estrangement from our land and our resources was a divine truth.
It was leaders such as Chief Tangwena who saw through the colonial hypocrisy and resisted eviction.
What makes Chief Tangwena important is that evictions had been going on for decades with very little resistance until this witty little man from Kaerezi decided to engage the colonial power.
Chief Tangwena was harassed, criminalised, labelled a squatter and invader in the land on which he was born and had been handed down to him by his ancestors.
Rhodesian media deliberately strangled any discourses on land that questioned European authority, effectively silencing Chief Tangwena.
For Rhodesia, there was one ‘unassailable truth’ in discourses of land, the notorious Land Tenure Act of 1969.
They made it the Bible of land distribution as if it was ordained by God.
The truth is that Chief Tangwena became part of the Second Chimurenga long before most Zimbabweans decided to take the gun and liberate their country.
For this cause he went into the trenches in 1975 with President Mugabe (then secretary-general of ZANU) reflecting his fierce determination to physically engage the enemy.
While age forbade him to take up the gun, his wisdom and spiritual guidance were important in the later years of the Second Chimurenga.
On the other hand, many at the time saw the struggle as some wild pipe dream and took refuge in our books locally or abroad.
For others, it was sheer fear of war that drove them as far as possible from the struggle, but old men such as Chief Tangwena were at the frontline. This is why he is a cultural icon and is the cornerstone of any discourse of Chimurenga and land in Zimbababwe.
Whatever we say about the Third Chimurenga and all its benefits, we should always remember courageous and selfless efforts of a little Samanyika who saw far ahead of his time. He was already in the Third Chimurenga even as the first bullets of the Second Chimurenga were fired.
We must celebrate Chief Rekayi Tangwena.
We will never forget Mambo Rekayi Tangwena.