HomeOld_PostsDestroyed collective memory: A lost heritage

Destroyed collective memory: A lost heritage

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By Davet Muzvidzwa

COLLECTIVE memory is important as it determines the sustainability and longevity of a people.
Where collective memory has been tampered with; a people affected lose the battle.
Every people must protect its collective memory at all cost.
A people who are of the same origin and have maintained close physical contact and share a past develop collective memory.
The collective memory is observed through social mores, values, ideals, attitudes and traditions that are unique.
It is socially constructed through connecting the past with the present.
The collective past is brought to the collective present through institutions that include; museums, statues, monuments, archives, school curricula, national holidays, political life, sporting events and public displays.
Collective memory is also sustained through storytelling, dance, songs, myths and religion.
When a people lose their collective memory their bond that binds them together begins to decay.
They become disjointed and their identity fizzles out into other people’s identities.
The new generations lose attachment to their past, identity and heritage.
Indigenous Zimbabwe shares collective memory.
Their ancestry includes Tovera, Nehanda, Chaminuka, Mguni, Mushavatu, Salubimbi, Mambiri and many others.
More recently we relate to the Monomutapa, Mzilikazi, Lobengula and the current chieftainships.
Zimbabweans were subjected to slavery by Europe to give forced labour in the sugar plantations of Americas and this must never be forgotten in case slavery may come back in another form.
When the missionary Goncalo Da Silveira arrived in Monomutapa State around 453 years ago in 1561, the occasion marked the beginning of dismantling of our collective memory in preparation for colonisation.
The missionaries introduced a form of baptism targeted at eminent persons such as kings and other leaders.
In this baptism, an African was required to change his name to a European one. A baptised person broke ranks with his or her past and became a new person, European in nature.
Once baptised, African ways became regarded as primitive and ‘ungodly’.
Were African names not suitable before God warranting their removal at baptism?
In their determination to colonise Zimbabwe, the colonialists went on a rampage destroying, modifying and distorting our past.
The following examples show how far they went in their quest to erase our collective memory.
On September 13 1890, they raised the Union Jack to symbolically subject the minds of Zimbabweans to British rule.
They identified sacred places Zimbabweans attached significance and changed their names in order to distort collective memory.
The Great Zimbabwe capital was referred to as mere ruins and they erected in the vicinity a city named after the queen of England.
Dzimbabwe capital disappeared with its ruins into oblivion and replaced by a ‘modern’ European city called Fort Victoria.
Thus the significance of Great Zimbabwe as a monument of collective memory and heritage was eroded.
Another important natural monument which gave Zimbabweans collective memory was Mosi-oa-tunya Falls.
Again to erase its significance to Zimbabweans, its name was changed to the name of the Queen of England, Queen Victoria.
It became Victoria Falls and its attachment to indigenous Zimbabweans disappeared.
The Statue of David Livingstone was erected at the most strategic point to guard the falls against any ‘Africanness’.
Cecil John Rhodes died in Cape Town in 1902.
There were many beautiful places he could have been buried.
He could have been buried on top of Table Mountain, by the seaside in Cape Town, in Johannesburg, in Kimberly, or even in England.
If he so wished to be buried in Zimbabwe, there were a lot of beautiful sights he could have been buried.
We have the eastern highlands, Nyanga Mountains and Victoria Falls.
How he chose to be buried at a small hill of uttermost importance to Mwari religion particularly on top of it is a mystery.
Now the Njelele, Mabweadziva Holy Shrines are less known to its people, shrouded by a grave of the most greedy man known in southern African history whose spirit hovers over the Holy Shrine and continue to haunt Zimbabwe to this day in a spirited effort to erase our collective memory.
The colonialists expanded their onslaught on collective memory by naming our lands using alien names.
As you left Harava (Salisbury) on your way to South Africa, you pass through Beatrice, Wilshire and Hampshire.
In many instances, they named some of our places to immortalise their heroes. Hartley, Norton, Forbes Border Post, Mount Darwin, Fort Rixon, Fort Charter are some places named after their own.
Where they could not change the names completely, they simply distorted the names so that they lost their original significance for which they were named replacing them with names which had no meaning in any language.
Such names as Umtali, Gwelo, Marandelas, Sinoia and Gatooma lost all their meanings and significance in the collective memory of Zimbabweans as the new names had no relationship at all with the existing memory.
One can see a well executed operation to erase the Africanness in Africans.
Where they constructed new monuments such as roads, bridges, schools, buildings and other structures, they made sure such structure had very little or no Africanness at all in them in terms of design and name.
A traditional round house which held a lot of meaning to the Africans lost space completely in the design world.
Bridges such as Birchenough, Beitbridge and many others were named with alien names.
Buildings important to the country lost African content such as Elgrey.
Schools were named after alien heroes such as Prince Edward, Roosevelt, Allan Wilson and many more.
You would not have a school named to restore our collective memory.
Children who went to schools named after these alien heroes felt more superior than those who went to schools that had Shona names such as Shirichena School.
To immortalise colonialism, Cecil Square (now Africa Unity Square) was designed in the form of the British Flag, the Union Jack.
Collective memory destruction would not have been as effective without creating disunity among people who shared collective memory through a process called tribalisation.
In this tactic, the colonial agents looked at the tiny variations in our language, in our dress, in our food preparation, thought processes and marriage rites.
They pronounced these as cardinal variations that required official recognition. Official registration of citizens took note of such minute variations and captured them as important attributes that differentiated the indigenous people.
From these minute variations they produced tribes such as Karanga, Korekore, Zezuru, Ndau, Ndebele, Budya, Nambiya, Tonga, Kalanga, Shangani, Venda, and many others.
Why would people who share such a rich collective history need to be tribalised?
The major similarity in our language, traditions, and parentage is lost in pursuit of minute variations in a spirited attempt to tribalise us.
The created tribes lost their relatedness and sometimes turned hostile on each other because their collective memory was erased.
The situation would have turned a lot more in our favour if the construct of totems of our forefathers, Gushungo, Moyo, Shava, Dube, Sibanda, Siziba, Khumalo had been applied in identifying us on identity documents.
In the design of our great fathers, this construct was unifying.
A ‘Moyo’ would not be allowed to marry a ‘Moyo’.
Marriage would have only been permitted across totems.
Apart from preventing the deterioration of genes through inbreeding, cross totem marriage forged unity among us thereby sustaining collective memory. Tribalisation destroyed that entire scientific luminous construct by our forefathers living us disjointed and unrelated as a ‘Moyo’ in Beitbridge (muVenda) would not feel related to Moyo in Guruve (muKorekore).
That is how much we had lost our collective memory.
Our collective memory was erased and with it went our heritage.
It took a lot of our blood to recover part of the lost heritage.

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