HomeOld_Posts Barriers to African homecoming

Barriers to African homecoming

Published on

By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

IN the second week of June 2014, newspapers and law magazines were awash with celebrations of the judgment of the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe saying that defamation should no longer be a criminal offence.
This judgment was based on an interpretation of Section 61 of the new Constitution of Zimbabwe which provides for ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘freedom of the media’.
What is not reported or discussed in the euphoric celebrations of this judgment is the fact that Section 61 and the Constitutional Court’s interpretation are based on a foreign philosophy and they are part of a long-established programme to suppress and erase umtheto wemvelo and umtheto wesintu, that is living African philosophy and African law and to replace them with white culture, Roman Dutch Law and neo-liberal philosophy and culture.
From an African relational perspective (or pungwe point of view), freedom of expression is guaranteed by the whole society, family and community.
Freedom of expression in this African sense is an integral part of sovereignty and autonomy: That is the capacity to own and occupy real space which one can defend and in which one is able to work, to come and go, in one’s own time and at one’s own pace.
The Biblical cliché about the land of honey and milk expresses a relationship of bliss and plenty, a relationship between a people and their land/space.
Our ancestors first and foremost expressed themselves on clay, sand, rock, tablet and water.
The cave paintings of Southern Africa, the Great Zimbabwe Monuments and the pyramids of Egypt also represent a fundamental, collective freedom of expression which comes long before the alphabet, paper, ink and computer.
The African freedom of expression cannot be lumped together with press freedom. African freedom of expression is first and foremost an optimal relationship with the land, giving rise to towns, cities, farms, homesteads, flowers, medicines, architecture, shrines, temples and cuisines.
In simple terms, the courts first ruled earlier in 2014 that it is no longer a crime to insult and degrade the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
In June of the same year the Constitutional Court then ruled that defamation is no longer a criminal offence and that citizens who are injured through defamatory lies should seek remedy through the civil (and not criminal) route.
The court did nothing wrong in terms of Roman Dutch Law, in terms of the white liberal interpretation of the new Constitution.
But the people in whose name the Constitution was made, the African majority who are supposed to be served by the constitution and the courts are the biggest losers.
First of all, it remains a crime to scandalise and attack any court and any judge of any court.
It remains a criminal offence to scandalise and attack the institution of Parliament. These crimes are called ‘contempt of court and contempt of Parliament’.
Why does Parliament therefore not amend the Constitution and say from now on it is also no longer a criminal offence for anyone to attack or scandalise any court, any judge or the Parliament of Zimbabwe?
If the court, the judge or Parliament wants a remedy in case of malicious, reckless and defamatory attacks, would they too go to a civil court to seek remedy?
But that is not where the problem ends.
The biggest problem has to do with the cultural, philosophical, ethical and aesthetic understanding of freedom of expression in the white liberal tradition and in Roman Dutch Law on one hand, and the understanding in terms of unhu, umtheto wemvelo and umtheto wesintu.
Human freedom of expression should not be placed on a par with or beneath press freedom.
One way in which the Lancaster House Constitution for Zimbabwe was seriously unjust was that it granted every citizen the theoretical right to freedom of expression in Section 11 while denying the dispossessed African majority the right to repossess their stolen land in Section 16.
Section 16, the longest Section in the Lancaster House Constitution, guaranteed the white minority settlers and their descendants at independence the right to keep all the property they possessed regardless of how they came to ‘own’ it.
That Constitution denied the African majority the one fundamental basis for their self-expression: land and its resources.
By placing the right to freedom of expression so far from the section on land, and by placing self-expression in such an entirely different context from the question of land, the Lancaster House Constitution promoted a middle-class and that freedom of expression was just a matter of conscience, writing, speaking, publishing, producing or broadcasting programmes.
This was a scripto-centric and euro-centric definition of the right to self-expression, which meant that it centred on written, printed or published messages and was based on a racially biased European settler view and experience.
Almost all the media seminars, conferences and workshops in this country from 1987 to 2000 included the right to freedom of expression on their agendas. Without exceptions, all of them assumed and defined freedom of expression mainly as an individual right, either to write, speak, publish and produce some message; or to have access to what is written, spoken, published or produced.
Indeed, when I look back at the scores of media seminars I have attended since 1987, when I examine the history of our national debate on freedom of expression, I see glaring paradoxes which the so-called ‘home-grown’ Constitution of 2013 should have resolved in the interest of justice for the majority.
The new Constitution did not resolve that paradox.
It compounded it.
The most graphic, powerful and lasting manner in which Cecil John Rhodes and his white followers expressed themselves in Zimbabwe was not on paper or tape, but on the land stolen from Africans.
And whatever Rhodes wrote or published was not self-expression for the sake of expression; it was to defend the colonial white theft of African land and its resources.
It is therefore not surprising that the journalists, editors, media activists and lawyers whom the Anglo-Saxon world has showered with prizes, scholarships and donations as champions of press freedom, media freedom and freedom of expression are all associated with efforts of the Rhodesian rump to prevent Madzimbahwe from reclaiming and redeeming their land and its resources.
The champions of media freedom, human rights and freedom of expression who have been so rewarded and honoured for trying to stop Madzimbahwe from redeeming their stolen land and its resources include: Jestina Mukoko, Beatrice Mtetwa, Goeffrey Nyarota, Basildon Peta, McDonald Lewanika, FaraiMaguwu, Ray Choto and others.
They have never recognised the struggle to reclaim land as the most basic struggle for freedom of expression for Madzimbahwe.
l To be continued

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest articles

FOZEU’s call for strike…an attempt at provoking anarchy

By Elizabeth Sitotombe IN an attempt to sow anarch across the country by calling for...

Chitepo’s fight for land

This story was first published on 21/03/2016 By Patience Rusare LAND ranked highest among the grievances...

Winning mindset in post-elections

WE, in the village, are known for our resilience, we never give up and...

Import of US illegal sanctions

By Jonathan N. Moyo TWENTY-ONE years ago, on March 6 2003, US President George W....

More like this

FOZEU’s call for strike…an attempt at provoking anarchy

By Elizabeth Sitotombe IN an attempt to sow anarch across the country by calling for...

Chitepo’s fight for land

This story was first published on 21/03/2016 By Patience Rusare LAND ranked highest among the grievances...

Winning mindset in post-elections

WE, in the village, are known for our resilience, we never give up and...

Discover more from Celebrating Being Zimbabwean

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading