Of Beasts and Beings
By Ian Holding
Published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd (2011)
ISBN: 978-1-84983-014-0

AMERICAN novelist Michael Crichton once said, “If you do not know your history, then you do not know anything.
“You are a leaf that does not know it is part of a tree.”
For a people that value the importance of history, it is baffling to note that when it comes to Africa, they would rather have Africans forget about their history.
Why?
It is obvious they want us to forget the ills the whiteman perpetrated on the black man from slavery to colonialisation.
They want Africans to forget about the racists’ horse and rider theory,
Indeed a person’s past helps shape and defines their future, but the whiteman would rather have the black man walk blindly into his future forgetting where he has been, but Africa will never forget where she has been.
In the book Of Beasts and Being, the author Ian Holding preaches about the need for the people to forget the history of the liberation struggle.
The book is divided into two parts, one set in an African country where an ‘innocent’ captive is seized by the militia and forced into slavery with the other part chronicling the experience of a white schoolteacher in Zimbabwe.
“Just once I’d like to stand up and tell some fat party boys that we both have common links –more, comrade, than you’d like to think,” writes Holding.
“I’d say: you who fought the British in the bush 35 years ago and never let anyone forget it.”
To him, there is no justification for the elders of the country to keep reminding the people of the liberation struggle that birthed the country’s independence.
Well, Holding, Zimbabweans can tell their story to their children any time, after all it is ours and we are proud of it.
We will continue singing praises and songs of victory for generations to come.
For Holding and his kinsmen they would rather have the story swept under the carpet after all they lost the war and would not want to be reminded of their failures.
But to Zimbabweans it is a reminder that once we beat the whiteman and we can always do that in order to safeguard our sovereignty.
Typical of a bitter white, Holding exaggerates events during the time when the country was faced with economic challenges.
“I write of blood and violence and untold misery,” he says.
“Of hacked corpses littered on the ground, lifeless terrains and starvation.”
One wonders if Holding describes the period between 2007 and 2008 as bloody and violent how he would describe the untold suffering of the blacks at the hands of the white man during the colonial era and liberation struggle.
Surely if Holding was sincere he would acknowledge that the bloody and violent eras include the Nyadzonia and Chimoio attacks where thousands of blacks were massacred by the Rhodesian army.
Indeed the country faced economic challenges, things got tough, but not to the extend Holding portrays.
As expected, the writer pins the blame on the Government for failing to run the country.
He scoffs at the glaring facts that the country’s woes were as a result of the illegal sanctions imposed on the country by Britain and her allies.
“And all they rant about is how the British imposed illegal sanctions against their nation,” writes Holding.
If the author was true to himself he would acknowledge that indeed it was the whiteman again through sanctions that once again brought misery for the black man.
As expected, Holding disputes the 2008 election results in total and maintains that the opposition MDC-T won the election.
Once again the writer is economical with the truth.
“The opposition were mad to do a deal, sign up for this abuse, water down their principles by hopping into bed with the enemy,” he writes.
“Everyone seems to forget – I think they forget too – that they won the fuc***ng election.
“One is tempted to grab them by the scruff of the neck and yell, ‘Get off your timid bloody arses and fight for your rights.
“The people spoke loud and clear.”
It seems Holding missed the news that revealed the 2008 June Presidential Re run election results.
Perhaps he was already celebrating the MDC-T ‘victory’ that never was.
That is expected, after all, that is what Holding and his kinsmen wish for Zimbabwe, for it to be run by a Government it can manipulate one that does not serve the people, but the West.
Well for Holding and his kith-and-kin, the sooner they swallow the bitter pill that Zimbabwe will never be a colony again the better.