A CAMPAIGN rooted in the global ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement is brewing in Zimbabwe.
The Rhodes Must Fall movement, which began in the University of Cape Town in 2015 before moving to the University of Oxford, has mainly been centred on protests for the removal of statues of imperialist Cecil John Rhodes from university grounds, and the decolonisation of higher education.
The newly launched Zimbabwean campaign focuses its attention on Cecil John Rhodes’ gravesite in the Matobo Hills in southern Zimbabwe.
The Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe campaign, or alternatively Rhodes’ Grave Must Fall campaign, is seeking to have Cecil Rhodes’ remains exhumed and his grave removed from the highly sacred Matobo Hills. The Matobo Hills, also known as Matopo or Matonjeni, are a national historical shrine and the centre of the traditional Mwari religion.
The particular area in which Rhodes’ self-chosen burial place lies is known locally as Malindadzimu, which means the burial place of the ancestors, and is the resting place of important pre-colonial Zimbabwean kings and rulers, such as King Mzilikazi.
The Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe campaign is arguing that the presence of Rhodes’ grave in Matobo Hills is a grievous form of desecration which defiles the sacredness of the national shrine, especially considering the manner in which Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company subjugated the African population and demonised their indigenous culture in the then-Rhodesia.
The campaigners are adamant that the uprooting of Rhodes’ grave is a necessity.
“This campaign is about protecting and defending our cultural heritage. All over the world sacred sites are honoured and cherished, but here in Zimbabwe we have allowed our holy shrine to be polluted by this grave which is unacceptable. Our ancestral heritage is more valuable than maintaining the legacy of an unapologetic colonialist and capitalist,” said Cynthia Marangwanda, a co-founder of Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe, who is also a writer and poet.
Academic, artist and co-founder of Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe Tafadzwa Gwini added, “By calling for the removal of Rhodes’ grave, we are simply reclaiming our cultural heritage that was confiscated from us through physical and spiritual conquest, against our foremothers and forefathers when Rhodes and gang conquered them.”
Such calls for the removal of Rhodes’ grave from Matobo Hills are not a new phenomenon in Zimbabwe. Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe is following in the footsteps of earlier predecessors, such as the pressure group Sangano Munhumutapa which was active in the late 1990s.
This group made hardline calls for Rhodes’ grave to be removed from the sacred hills. Sangano Munhumutapa leader Lawrence ‘Warlord’ Chakaredza threatened to personally exhume Rhodes and throw his bones into the Zambezi river if his remains were not repatriated back to the United Kingdom.
In 2012 veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war protested against the grave and threatened to remove it, but were blocked from doing so by then-president Robert Mugabe.
In December 2021 Zimbabwe’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa called for the exhumation of Rhodes’ remains and their repatriation back to his homeland.
Mnangagwa told traditional leaders who had gathered to meet him: “We still have Rhodes’ remains in Matobo…His remains must be returned to where he hailed from and we can also have our ancestral remains, which are being kept in Europe.”
This push to have Cecil Rhodes’ grave removed is in line with a growing worldwide movement aimed at tearing down colonial statues and monuments. It was triggered by the global Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man, at the hands of a white police officer in May 2020.
During this period and its aftermath many colonial statues have been brought down and colonial monuments defaced, including the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in the British city of Bristol, and one of imperialist King Leopold II in Belgium.
One of the four people who pulled down Edward Colston’s statue, Sage Willoughby, denied they were trying to alter history by doing so, according to BBC News. “We didn’t change history, we rectified it,” he stated. Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe is representative of a contemporary pattern of unresolved and ignored colonial legacies being challenged in Africa and its diaspora.
Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe is spreading the message and mobilising support for their cause through different avenues.
They recently published a freely-accessible academic paper online titled The Significance of Rhodes’ Grave in Light of the Global Rhodes Must Fall Movement.
They have plans to tour universities and higher education institutions presenting their arguments about why the removal of Cecil John Rhodes’ grave is a necessity.
Public discussions with interested parties in the historical and heritage sectors are also lined up.
They are also deploying their artistic talents to reach the masses through poetry and music. Their grassroots approach is tailored to push their movement forward and accelerate progress towards the removal of Rhodes grave. They are also working closely with Rhodes Must Fall South Africa, the parent movement, to make a broader impact.
Rhodes Must Fall Zimbabwe’s end-goal is to see the full restoration of the sanctity of Matobo Hills as Zimbabwe’s indigenous spiritual centre once Rhodes’ grave is removed.
They also believe the removal of the colonial grave from its position of prominence will have a psychologically liberating effect on Zimbabweans and Africans as a whole. “Removing Cecil John Rhodes’ grave is a psychospiritual exercise.
“If the removal succeeds, it can be a potentially profound act of mental decolonisation which tears down self-hating strongholds in the collective Zimbabwean and African psyche.
“It can help challenge the colonially-induced inferiority complex that still plagues many of us today,” Marangwanda said. The controversial gravesite is under the legal custodianship of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe.
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