HomeOld_PostsThe ‘name’ as a sinister shackle of the African mind

The ‘name’ as a sinister shackle of the African mind

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IN our last two episodes of this discussion on the things that shackle our African minds, we looked at the English language and the Western Christian Church and its teachings.
We argued these two institutions, language and church, have shackled the African mind, preventing it from freely expressing itself and allowing the people to chart their own destiny according to their own culture and religious traditions.
The English language and Western church continue to maintain a powerful stranglehold on the minds of the majority of so-called educated Africans, keeping them permanently disconnected from their African culture and religion.
In this article we identify a third and more sinister shackle of the African mind – the name.
It is more sinister because it represents a surrender of what should otherwise be the Africans’ own geographical territory to which they can retreat and re-strategise.
African-Americans, constantly harassed by their white compatriots in the land stolen from the Red Indians, now called America, would want to flee and find rest in Africa.
But alas, there is no longer any African space on the continent.
The Africans have surrendered most of their God-given geographical space to white colonisers.
By surrendering geographical space, the Africans, especially in Zimbabwe, have become even more tightly shackled up.
We refer to the problematic issue of names: names of places, people, schools, buildings and streets.
Virtually all the African names were deleted and new Anglicised ones put in their place by the white colonisers.
These colonial names persist today and Africans have no space of their own.
People were duped into abandoning their own God, Musikavanhu and worshipping a foreign deity whose rules were contained in a book called the Bible.
All who were caught in the trap were immediately baptised and deprived of their most important identity symbol: their names.
At baptism, each African got a new meaningless name just to make sure he would remain disconnected from his religious and cultural roots.
The missionaries rolled out long lists of Biblical names they used to label each African.
Some of the names belonged to thieves and harlots; it did not matter as long as the African name tag was removed and replaced with the Biblical one.
This shackle of meaningless foreign names has remained firmly in place.
We shall discuss its implications later.
Apart from re-labelling the Africans, their places were overrun, occupied and also re-labelled.
Colonial names that were given to farms, districts, town suburbs and streets dating back to the arrival of the Pioneer Column sponsored by Cecil John Rhodes in 1890 are still in use 36 years after Zimbabwe attained independence.
Our ancestors Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, Mkwati, Mashayamombe, Chingaira and many other gallant sons and daughters of the soil fought and died to defend our land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo Rivers.
Many had their heads cut off and taken to museums in Europe as trophies.
In the Second Chimurenga, even more thousands laid down their lives to liberate this land, which by then had been turned into a second England with every suburb, every city and street bearing English names.
The names said it all: the white invaders were in charge; they were the new owners of the land.
All land was packaged and labelled with names that the owners could recognise.
Strangely, when the sons of the soil reversed the tables and defeated the white intruders, they seem to have forgotten to take back the land, towns, streets, parks and buildings.
They did not package and re-name their newly-recovered lands.
Thirty six years later, Zimbabwe is basically what it was before independence; English land.
The comrades ‘forgot’ to re-label their land to show that they have taken it back.
The situation is so bad that even new suburbs are being given English names although the residents are black Africans.
What is the symbol of ownership?
The name is the most important.
Failure to re-name all repossessed land, buildings, schools and farms means we have not yet asserted our African authority.
This is the most terrible shackle because it has prevented the people from taking back their land.
If they had done so they would have re-named all the streets, suburbs, towns, districts and holiday resorts.
Tourists may be forgiven for wondering if Rhodesian rule ever ended.
The Africans, despite dying for their land, are too scared to reclaim and re-label it.
It is as if they still expect the whites to return and occupy their former places.
The Africans fear they may get in trouble for disturbing the whiteman’s places. It is a fear that was common among former farm workers who thought their former masters would return.
But the comrades? Ah, no, they should have done better!
The same story goes for the schools.
All schools in the formerly all-white suburbs have European names of heroes of their wars.
Churchill the war-time Prime Minister of Britain, Roosevelt his American counterpart, Cecil Rhodes, the arch-imperialist and all his Pioneer Column fighters (Jameson, Selous, Allan Wilson, Blakiston, Col Pennefather, Alfred Beit and so on) are immortalised in the names of schools, streets and buildings dotted across the country.
We must boldly change all colonial school names and other places.
Surely our departed comrades must be rolling in the grass where they remain unburied among the raging veld fires wondering why we, the living, have failed to recover and re-label our geographical space and why we have prevented our children from enjoying the freedom of a liberated African country unshackled from colonial trappings!
What of the revolutionary ruling Party?
Surely with a street called Pennefather, a mass murderer of our forefathers in First Chimurenga, running to the Party Headquarters, one would have thought the anomaly would be corrected
Saka nyika yatakatora ndeipi?
Borrowdale, Glen Lorne, Greendale, Avondale, you name them were the very farms pegged out and so-named by the original Pioneer Column members.
And now in the new suburbs we are also retaining the same colonial names.
This ridiculous contradiction must be corrected without delay.
I must mention again the efforts of one Cde Aeneas Chigwedere, former Minister of Education to change and name schools after our own African heroes.
He did not get support from parents and Cabinet colleagues.
We heard then that one senior Government official who went to school at Fletcher High in Gweru bemoaned the fact that if the name was changed, he would lose the chance to boast to his children that he had been to Fletcher.
This is the kind of colonial mentality that we cannot afford in 2016.
The party and Government must give guidance.
We have a revolution to defend; let us not make mockery of it!

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