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Zim publishers’ attempt to suppress blacks’ achievements

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ONE of the strategies the whiteman used to dominate Africans was to use books that portrayed him as a superior being while transforming the African into a self-hater.
The objective of their books was to undermine all aspects of African culture.
Prior to independence, there were a few publishing houses that took scripts from African authors, a few such houses included Mambo Press, which published novels and books from authors whose works spoke of African and Zimbabwean folklore and liberation war experiences.
However, today, due to Western-imposed sanctions, only a few such publishing houses exist, while a lot of Shona and Ndebele novels have disappeared from bookshelves.
As a result, most authors have turned to foreign publishers who in most cases have attached stringent conditions for one’s works to be published.
Most of these foreign publishing houses will take scripts and books with a regime change tone.
Authors whose agenda is biased towards ‘Africanness’, the struggle and persecution of blacks by whites, will have their scripts or books rejected.
This has resulted in some desperate emerging authors running to publishing houses abroad to publish their works.
Today, any book that talks about the political disturbances in Matabeleland will likely be published than a book about the successes of the Land Reform Programme.
Publishing houses such as Amabooks, Weaver Press and others, are publishing books whose scripts have a regime change tone, or are against the gains of the liberation struggle.
In a bid to have books published, many authors have turned to these publishing houses, penning books with regime change themes and critical of the Government.
Authors such as Noviolet Bulawayo whose book, We Need New Names, has won awards from some Western countries that imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe was published outside.
John Eppel’s book, The Curse of the Ripe Tomato, published by Amabooks denigrates black people and portrays the whiteman as a superior being.
Other books by the same author also celebrate the successes of the whiteman over the blacks in Rhodesia.
Another Bulawayo author, Christopher Mlalazi, has penned books that also have themes supporting and bootlicking whites and denigrating his black brothers
Perhaps the most interesting of all books is by MDC legislator and former Rhodesian Selous Scout, David Coltart, whose attempt to demonise the liberation struggle through his memoirs The Struggle Continues – 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe is an attempt to vilify the liberation struggle while hiding some colonial injustices perpetrated by the former Rhodesian regime.
Launched early this year, in South Africa, the book attempts to highlight the Matabeleland disturbances (Gukurahundi) yet ignores the Chibondo atrocities where thousands of innocent civilians and former freedom fighters were murdered and dumped in disused mine shafts in Mt Darwin.
The mentality supported by these regime change publishing houses somehow purports that Rhodesia was a better colony compared to other colonies.
One stark fact, however, is that most of the construction in the colonial era, physical or mental, was for the benefit of the white minority.
These authors advance the myth that Rhodesian rule was justified and better than other forms of colonialism on the continent.
Most of these books offer a historical reflection of the hostile competition that existed among the colonisers of Africa.
Each one of them viewed themselves as better than the next plunderer.
The other tragedy that faced Zimbabweans through the writings of the whiteman was the account of the Great Zimbabwe.
Although evidence clearly showed that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans, the Rhodesian Government did everything in its power to cover up this knowledge.
The first European account of the Great Zimbabwe was written in 1871 by German geologist and gold prospector Karl Mauch.
He had been lured to the ruins by rumours of stone palaces and buried treasure. Legend had linked the ruins to Ophir, the biblical land of King Solomon’s mines.
The sophisticated stonework of the Great Enclosure — quite unlike the humble thatched huts of the local Shona — convinced Mauch that that the Great Enclosure and the Hill Ruins could not have been built by the Africans, in particular the Shona.
In fact Mauch decided in his writings that the ruins were the remains of a colony built by white workers from the Mediterranean for the Biblical Queen of Sheba. Cecil John Rhodes and other white settlers refused to believe that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans.
Rhodes employed a miner called Theodore Bent to dig up bits of the Great Zimbabwe in 1891.
Rhodes believed if Bent could uncover traces of previous white civilisation that had built Great Zimbabwe; this would provide scientific justification for the colonisation of African tribal lands by white settlers.
Bent excavated a number of areas inside the Great enclosure and the Hill Ruin.
But his discoveries were puzzling.
He found many fragments of African pottery mixed with Chinese porcelain vessels, Arabian glass and gold beads.
Bent was cautious about linking the ruins to the Queen of Sheba and concluded Zimbabwe was very ancient.
Bent’s successor, Richard Hall, a British journalist and strong supporter of Rhodes, was far bolder.
He shovelled his way through the Great Enclosure in 1903, paying little attention to proper archeological excavation techniques.
He concluded in his writings that Zimbabwe had been built by Ancient Arabians. Africans, he argued, were mere squatters among the ruins, incapable of such architectural skill.
Hall’s white fellow settlers were delighted with his theories, which lingered long after what he did.
In a bid to demystify and correct the biases by some authors, one of the publishing houses supporting the production of books that seek to liberate the mind and make black people love their identity, Heritage Publishing House, has published books that have liberation war history as well as books that promote the use of local languages and black consciousness.
According to Cde Pritchard Zhou, the Chief Executive Officer of Zimbabwe Heritage Trust, Heritage Publishing House’s guiding philosophy is to provide books that expose the greatness of the African ancestors in agriculture, mining, engineering, science and governance; books that seek to inspire Africans to appreciate themselves.
He said black people’s inferiority complex can only be cured by exposing them to literature that shows African ancestors were as good as any other and not villains that the whiteman has presented them to be.

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