By Siyabonga Madayi

MONUMENTAL preservations go along with attempts to keep the history of a people alive.
They ride on the backbone of accomplishments which can never be wished away.
Enter the Zimbabwean people’s struggle and there entangled within it are a lot of figures and events which will forever be cherished.
It came as no surprise therefore that the legacy of a man called Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo had to be transferred to a statue whose presence shall forever evoke memories.
It was again no surprise that it took another nationalist, President Robert Mugabe, to descend upon Bulawayo and officially declare that the statue along former Main Street is now the point of entry for Zimbabwean history.
However, as one walks along that street and sees the unending number of people who walk, pay a glance and get a chance to be photographed alongside the statue, all the faces around beam with pride and for real, one gets the feeling that these people can never get enough of the iconic struggle icon.
At best there is a conviction that the statue will outlive many events which have characterised a colourful history of the man who has been upheld in the hearts and minds of many.
Here is a symbol of liberation transferred to a power packed reflection of how much people will appreciate a man who stood for their good.
The Joshua Nkomo statue does stand as a symbol of the breaking of chains and one sometimes is forced to think about another so-called Statue of Liberty which stands in America’s New York.
The difference can only be interpreted by those of a sound mind who understand what monuments of that nature carry.
To Americans who by their own nature have thrived on the substance of others, their own Statue of Liberty is a democracy symbol.
But really?
Whose freedom did that architectural piece truly capture and whose history has it preserved since the founding of that imperial nation?
When an analysis of history is done, it must be in the context of a sound mind devoid of emotion and attraction to purported understanding.
For beyond those two statues, one standing in New York and one in Bulawayo are contained two parallel stories that will never meet.
The question therefore is; which one is the real statue of liberty?
Founded upon the blood and sweat of an enslaved Africa and a dispossessed Red Indian community, rose America which redefined the history of other people without paying attention to their feelings or identity.
That so-called Statue of Liberty therefore now stands as a witness that a people’s history can be wiped away from the face of the earth as long as it brings material gain to the oppressor.
The two statues then stand symbolising different aspirations and aims.
While back home in my own land of Bulawayo all Zimbabweans walk past the Dr Nkomo statue and marvel at how their history has run its course, one wonders what the victims who moved across the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade transactions and were sold like commodities in a market would feel if they woke up today.
It is to a larger extent an abominable celebration that America looks to that giant statue and sees a democratic underpinning when in fact the world stands in the mess that it is in because of its own imperial designs.
There is still so much to be done to remind the people of colour that their own history is to be cherished more than that of other nations.
What is contained in civilisation is that which stands along Joshua Mqabuko Street because it is a story of walking towards liberation.
It is a story of taking that sacrifice which rejects those things which keep people enslaved.
On no single day should one of sound mind lift up their head and look at that American statue and see ‘liberty’.
That is a farfetched theory which does not suffice at all in how the Americans viewed and continue to view their place in world history.
One needs no reminder that as wars continue being waged in Syria, Central African Republic, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places around the world aspirations of a ‘world of liberty’, are never what America has ever envisaged.
A nation that has thrived on looting and justifying its stance will go to any lengths in ensuring that it gives a dosage of its crooked views to the world by veiling it in enticing schemes.
One therefore needs to stand up when they look at that statue and ask them a simple question, “At what cost was this structure put up?”
The answers are shocking because that statue came when millions died building an America which their own descendants running generations down have been denied a part of.
It is therefore a very important initiative which Zimbabwe took to immortalise the Father Zimbabwe contributions to the history of the nation.
The statue speaks of how far the freedom walk has been carried out devoid of any attempts to celebrate the subjugation of a another tribe, race or any difference.
The statue that has been a mark of one of Zimbabwe’s founding fathers is a piece that embraces all humanity in this nation without any blood tainted in to justify wrongs which can never be corrected.
Ours is a statue whose significance is that even those who maimed, jailed, hated and killed us have been given a right to call Zimbabwe their own.
As one looks at the fact that Americans want to label one not of their own as ‘foreign’, the wiser ones should ask whether that land is their own for real.
A land which was built on pain cannot stand as a testimony that it preserves any liberty aspirations as upon its soils lie hurting souls who cry out for being victimised by a system that now claims to love and embrace liberty.
In the context of these two statues, one needs no rocket scientist to realise that in our City of Kings stands the, ‘real Statue of Liberty’.
Ours is a story that we can be proud of because we are truly liberated souls, while up to this day, I am still wondering what liberty is captivated in that New York statue.