SOMETIMES it is wise to give the devil his due.
The way our former Western colonisers use symbols and monuments to honour people and events critical to their history is something worth emulating.
This is not to say there is a convergence of views in the interpretation of some of these relics.
Take the statue of Rhodes for instance.
From the Oxford University in Britain example, a rigid dichotomy between those who see Rhodes as a hero and those who see him as a villain can be discerned.
Surely it would be the height of naivety to expect the British Chancellor of Oxford University to condemn Rhodes for his role in building a British Empire.
Rhodes is indisputably a British icon.
At national level, it is the values of those who govern that determine national icons that are deemed to be the country’s historical beacons.
Thus before 1980, the racist white regimes saw it fit to display statues of Rhodes and other imperialists like his business partner Alfred Beit.
The statue called Physical Energy makes clear what Rhodes thought about the relationship between whites and blacks – the black man being the horse and the white man, the rider.
And the whites liked it.
To Ian Smith, it was Rhodes who had left the whites in a privileged position at the expense of blacks , after founding a whole country named after him.
But the values of the African government that took over at independence were very different.
That is why colonial statues of Rhodes, including the infamous Physical Energy, were removed from public view and dumped either at museums or national archives.
Though the idea of statues is a borrowed concept, now that we have adopted it, let’s go for it the whole hog.
Placing statues of Kaguvi and Nehanda indoors because the material they are made of is not strong enough to withstand weather vagaries is unacceptable.
Why come up with poor imitations of colonial masterpieces!
The excuse that there is no money to make appropriate statues is not good enough.
Apart from Kaguvi and Nehanda, there are national heroes like Herbert Chitepo, Jason Moyo, Josiah Tongogara and Nikita Mangena, among other liberation icons whose statues should be a common sight throughout the country.
Our erstwhile colonisers are aware that statues tell a people’s history.
The Americans were quick to destroy the statue of Saddam Hussein on entering Baghdad, because they knew chaos would soon follow their invasion.
And Saddam’s statue would constantly remind Iraqis of their better lives before the invasion.
One area where colonialists’ ideas and ours converge is respect for the dead, to the extent that the grave of a whiteman’s ‘hero’ like Rhodes has been turned into a shrine.
What boggles the mind is why the bones of a racist like Rhodes are carefully interred at the entrance to Njelele, the spiritual centre of our ancestors.
The dignity of Njelele is compromised by the presence of graves of Rhodes and his colonial racists like Jameson and Allan Wilson Patrol.
And yet it is the conviction of these colonialists that a leader whom they feared and chose to kill had to be destroyed without trace.
This explains why Patrice Lumumba is said to have been dissolved in acid, while Gadaffi was buried at an unidentified place in the centre of a desert and bin Laden was buried somewhere at sea.
They fear that their burial sites might be turned into shrines which might turn out to be rallying points against the imperialists.
That is the same fate which befell our own Nehanda and Kaguvi.