A ZIMBABWEAN historian recently said Africans love to tell stories but they do not like to read or write about their experiences.
This is a general statement and if this was said by someone who is not African himself, some of us Zimbabweans would take offence.
We would stand back and ask how dare he says that of his own people?
But this colleague was telling the truth that we do not want to hear about.
The Europeans write diaries and autobiographies.
When they die, there are documentaries, biography and thesis written about their war heroes and others.
In the past, we relied on oral history and storytelling from one generation to the other.
Because there was nothing written, some racist European historians went as far as saying we do not have any history to tell.
Oxford University historian, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper once claimed that “Africa has no history, merely the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes.”
In a much quoted statement, Trevor- Roper went on to say that: “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach.
“But at the present there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness … and darkness is not the subject of history”.
The Pioneer Column, the missionaries, explorers, hunters and many others who came to Southern Rhodesia wrote memoirs and essays to capture their experiences.
Likewise, Native Commissioners during Rhodesia were relentless in writing. Even though they could not understand Shona, Ndebele or any of our languages, they still wrote about what they saw or what they thought was truth.
Their wives also recorded information about our culture, history, religion and many aspects of our lives. Nobody checked if what they wrote was true.
Their diaries and stories were published here and also in England.
These writings continue to be read throughout the world.
The Internet has also helped people to read scanned documents lifted out of archival records.
We have struggled to find the account of the real events of the First Chimurenga because our people were not in a position to write.
However, we can find material from the writing of the colonial settlers.
We know that for a whole year Kaguvi and Nehanda courageously fought against the white settlers.
Their fight led to the deaths of men like Routledge, Blakiston, Fairbairn, Stoddart and others. In the end, Nehanda and Kaguvi were arrested, tried and hanged. Because there are places and schools in Salisbury named in memory of the white people killed in 1896, it is easy to trace their involvement in the fighting of our people.
That way, we are also able to gain an understanding of what happened to Nehanda, Kaguvi, Mashayamombe and others during the First Chimurenga.
Today, when you read the novels of Peter Godwin, the New York-based white Zimbabwean who has written several books about his experiences growing in Rhodesia, you can get quite upset or even angry, because his point of view is patronising and racist in many ways.
He is writing from the viewpoint of a privileged white boy, who has been taught that he is superior to black people.
His writing is shaped by the events he chooses to tell in his narratives.
We have not produced a counter narrative to challenge Godwin’s views.
During the Second Chimurenga, the lives of rural people were characterised by a lot of pain and suffering under the Rhodesian regime.
Still they collaborated with the freedom fighters in the liberation war.
In Mothers of the Revolution: Oral Testimony of Zimbabwean Women edited by Irene Staunton, we get in depth narratives or oral testimonies of women.
The women focus on individual trauma and the ways in which ordinary Zimbabweans suffered.
They narrate an account of the war as they recalled it.
We get to know that Rhodesian soldiers bombed villages and people were burnt alive in their homes.
Many others were beaten and killed for not divulging information.
One woman, Helen Karemba, gives an account of an event during the liberation struggle:
“We sang songs and the comrades told us about the war, their objectives and their wishes.
“The security forces said that they had heard that the villagers had been harbouring guerillas but we denied it.
“Then they burnt down the whole village… At about 11 o’clock … the soldiers, who were white with their faces painted black, began to fire at us. The comrades ran away but no one realised that they had gone… The firing continued until seven o’clock in the morning and we lay flat on the ground all that time. Two children, both from the same family, were shot dead … .”
It was a horrific war still to be narrated and written about so future generations can remember that this freedom from colonialism should not be taken for granted.
Some writers like Chenjerai Hove in Shadows and Shimmer Chinodya in Harvest of Thorns have already written about the war.
However, the most prominent writer who has captured the war experiences with amazing detail and clarity is Alexander Kanengoni in Vicious Circle (1983), When the Rainbird Cries (1988) Echoing Silences (1997), a collection of short stories, Effortless Tears (1993) and Writing Still in 2003.
Kanengoni writes from personal experiences based on his life as a liberation fighter. His narratives are remarkable and informative on the liberation war and its aftermath. He should write some more.
The trauma and violence are only part of a wide range of experiences and emotions surrounding the liberation war.
It cannot be avoided.
Many people who actively engaged in the war or supported it as mujibhas and chimbwidos have already died without writing anything.
Sadly, others are getting older and losing their memory.
Those who fought and witnessed the war have an obligation to tell their stories for future generation to read.
As Zimbabweans, we need to promote the culture of memory and promote the unwritten narratives of our heroes before it is too late.