HomeOld_PostsLand and the role of protocols, rituals: Part Three

Land and the role of protocols, rituals: Part Three

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By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

AS the nation of Zimbabwe prepares for Heroes Day which we mark in August, it is important to foreground the living African law which made it possible for freedom fighters to wage the liberation struggle and win, despite their being demonised and defamed as terrorists and outlaws in terms of Roman Dutch Law and English Common Law.
In the build-up to Heroes Day, it would be important to foreground tsika, mhiko, miteuro nezvirango (the protocols, rituals, oaths and passwords) which distinguished the African freedom fighter from the sell-out and the oppressor and made possible the victory which Julie Fredrikse described in None But Ourselves: Masses Versus Media in the Making of Zimbabwe and David Lan recognised in his Guns and Rain.
But where do we find these tsika, mhiko, miteuro nezvirango zvevanhu?
We find them on the land, mundau, munzvimbo, where the people live; we find them in the pungwe as revolutionary institution.
The pungwe in the liberated zones was meant to be the prototype for the new Zimbabwe.
When the constitution making process which preceded writing of the current constitution started, it recognised this pungwe by organising a nationwide outreach programme encouraging the people to re-enact pungwes in their villages and to use their tsika, mhiko, miteuro nezvirango zvendau in order to shape the new supreme law of the land.
The people responded in their own languages, the same languages now recognised in Sections Six and Seven of the new Constitution.
But ZANU PF, as the revolutionary party inheriting the pungwe institution, made a fatal mistake.
In most countries, it is the people’s philosophers who design and write constitutions.
In Zimbabwe the Constitution was given to operators, Roman Dutch Law operators and English Common Law operators and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), to design and to write.
What came out was not only anti-pungwe, but also illogical.
On page 15 the Constitution document recognised, ‘the supremacy of Almighty God’ and ‘the guidance and support of Almighty God’ only to abandon these on page 16 by declaring that, “This Constitution (a mere piece of paper) is the Supreme Law of Zimbabwe.”
But that Constitution is not the product of the pungwes of the outreach nor is it from the minds and pens of the philosophers of the people, varidzi vetsika, mhiko, miteuro nezvirango zvavanhu.
So, as we get closer to Heroes Day, it is important to remember how the white settler regime of Rhodesia responded to the impending victory of African living law as embodied in the liberated zones and the pungwe institution.
Rhodesian Minister of Foreign Affairs P K Van der Byl on January 12 1979 remembered that the United States of America was founded on the anti-pungwe principle of progress as escape.
The North Americans were the most successful anti-native invaders who killed off most of the owners of the land (vandau) and permanently placed the survivors on ‘reservations’ which Ian Smith called ‘Keeps’ or ‘Tribal Trust Lands’ while Verwoerd and Botha called them ‘Bantustans’.
Of all powers on earth, the North Americans would definitely understand the plight of white Rhodesian settlers threatened by a revolution based on tsika, mhiko, miteuro nezvirango zvevanhu.
So, P K van der Byl penned an emergency appeal which went to the US foreign relations committee (chaired by senator Jesse Helms) which had a Sub-Committee on Africa which supported UDI and apartheid.
Van der Byl’s strategy was to make the African pungwe and revolution an abstraction and a cliché, the very opposite of the people-based and people-grounded movement which it was.
Van der Byl wrote:
“The attacks which are presently being mounted on Rhodesia, a Christian nation, are by terrorists trained and supported by Anti-Christian communists.
“Determined to root out and destroy Christianity wherever it is found, these terrorists have targeted many of their attacks on innocent missionaries and their families in Rhodesia.
“The future of Christianity in Rhodesia will largely be influenced by the actions of the United States government in supporting the majority rule government of Rhodesia.
“As a fellow Christian, who with others is trying to stem the onslaught of our mutual Marxist enemy, I appeal for your support in this critical hour.”
The pungwe-rooted revolution of Dzimbahwe was presented as an alien and unrooted communist-terrorist intrusion into a tranquil country called Rhodesia.
Those who have read, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People, by Oscar Handlin, will understand that Van der Byl’s appeal represented one rootless British offshoot (Rhodesia) appealing to the most successful Anglo-Saxon offshoot (North America.)
These people do not only celebrate escape as a permanent condition; they are hostile to homecoming and the pungwe.
They fear the Murenga-Chaminuka-Nehanda legacy because it celebrates the space-clearing and land reclaiming bodies that we find in so-called Shona sculpture which preceded the African land reclamation movement of the Third Chimurenga.
l To be continued

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