IN last week’s article we looked at African reluctance or even refusal to accept themselves and their own, preferring their erstwhile colonisers’ culture and religion.
Over the long Easter weekend, a motor mechanic who I asked to fix my tractor’s braking system made a remark that set me thinking. He said that black people were yet to take possession of the farms they had reclaimed from our white colonisers. Do you think that is why drought and hunger are with us, I asked. I do not know, he replied.
I did not think much about that remark as I assumed he was referring to the fact that many farmers still worked in town and only visited their farms occasionally. What could that have to do with drought and any other challenges on the farms?
On further reflection I realised that there must be more to the low farm productivity scenario prevalent especially in the resettlement areas, than meets the eye. Here we have been talking about sanctions and climate change-induced droughts as major factors that explain poor performance on previously white-owned farms and other areas. Were there other aspects of chivanhu or even chirungu for that matter that could explain some of our challenges?.
We have previously advised that Africans need to re-connect with their culture and religion in order to seek Musikavanhu’s (God) intervention to ameliorate their food insecurity and other woes. We even observed that in parts of the country, rainfall patterns seem to track African compliance with traditional rainfall-enhancing practices such as mukwerera and observance of chisi, the weekly day of rest and that white farmers used to comply with these traditional practices to advantage.
But the big question is: Have the Africans really re-possessed their ancestral lands? Are the Africans back from the colonial reserves to which the white man had permanently banished them but for the successful ancestral spirits-inspired and led Chimurenga Liberation War!
Let us look for evidence to see if the Africans are back in charge of the land.
First we look for the black man’s physical presence on the farms. On the smallholder A1 model farms, yes, the Africans are present in large numbers. More are still resettling themselves in the pasturelands of those officially allocated land, a headache the Government must tackle with urgency to prevent chaos.
On the A2 model larger farms, except for a few relatives and one or two hired workers and the black farm workers left behind by the expelled white colonists, there are hardly any people to speak of. The new black owners are occasional visitors. They are yet to fully settle in.
Now all black African people know that when you establish a new home you have to install a peg called hoko to mark and designate the said territory as belonging to you. Wild animals do the same and will fight a stranger who trespasses onto their territory.
People also mark territory by giving it a unique name just as they do with a new-born child.
When whites came to Zimbabwe, they re-named all places and Anglicised the few where they could not find a suitable name for one reason or another.
Gweru became Gwelo, Zvishavane became Shabani and so on. They named schools, streets and various prominent infrastructure after their famous heroes like Lord Salisbury, Lord Malvern and Beit Bridge. These are the stakes or hoko that they used to peg and mark as European territory our beloved Zimbabwe and its environs. Most urban schools are still white 36 years after black people took over, or did they?
Our stolen country itself was named Rhodesia, after the chief imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, an Anglicised Jew whose family originated from the Greek Island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea.
When the black people liberated our land we immediately named it Zimbabwe, a name we had already identified and agreed long before the armed Second Chimurenga.
The new Zimbabwe Government renamed many places. However this enthusiasm seems to have waned as we began to enjoy the soft life of independence. We must have yearned to be like the white man. Did we decide to keep his names if we could not keep him physically close? We have since refused to rename many schools and streets and other places whose names sound distinctly out of place in Africa.
No wonder some want us back in the British Commonwealth as early as yesterday! Dzoka uyamwe!
Giving African names to places is the best way to mark our territory, kurovera hoko. It is the loudest and most emphatic assertion that we are here and this s is our territory.
The British invaders of our country raised the Union Jack, their flag, to announce they had taken over the country. There too, many Union Jacks we have left flying all over Zimbabwe! Do we want the British back?
Every family allocated land must move swiftly to raise their flag, kurovera hoko, by giving an appropriate African name to their farm. They must erect appropriate signs to announce the new names. That way we will exorcise the white man’s ghost or a good part of it! Taneta naye!
The ghosts of the white man still haunt our farms because we have kept their old names. What could we possibly achieve by hiding our identity from public view?
I want to boldly assert here that a major cause of our lack of progress on the farms (never mind the sanctions and all other ills) is that we have not driven a bold clear stake, hoko, into the ground to claim and assert our total control and suzerainty over the stolen lands of our ancestors that we now occupy. What and who are we afraid of?
If you have not already done so, go invite your elders, parents, grandparents and relatives to the farm. Make available the required tobacco (snuff) and African beer and officially inform your ancestors that you are, on their behalf and on your behalf, the proud owner of the farm.
The ceremony is the equivalent of ground-breaking done at the start of major infrastructural projects in most societies the world over.
Immediately announce the new name of your farm. A family or ancestral name is appropriate, not an English one. Let everyone, including workers, know the new name and insist on its use, the same you do for your new child. Europeans do the same too!
This way we will exorcise the ghosts of the white people haunting our farms and thwarting our development efforts. If you use the former owner’s name you will never get anywhere. It will remain their farm, not yours. Unenge uchitova poacher!
Zvevarungu nemazita avo hazvisi zvako. Apa ndinokupikirayi! Musina kurovera yenyu hoko hamupabude. Zvinoramba zvichingomonyoroka. Ane nzeve dzokunzwa ngaanzwe!
If you are naïve you will dismiss what I am saying but if you ask any sane whiteman he will tell you that is exactly what he would do. That is what they did when they came to the farms. So what are you waiting for?
In the context of the above discussion, there still are very few or no black people’s farms across most of Zimbabwe today.
In the next episode we shall look at how Europeans in general and white farmers in particular staked their claim (kurovera hoko) on their farms and properties. We shall also look at how some of these hokos were uprooted by our spirit mediums (mhondoro).
The struggle against hunger and food insecurity continues!