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————— Sithole, Nkomo, Muzorewa, and the Birth of Zimbabwe

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————— Sithole, Nkomo, Muzorewa, and the Birth of Zimbabwe JAMES HLONGWANA, R.S. MAPOSA, AND THAMSANQA MOYO ————— º Sithole, Nkomo, Muzorewa, and the Birth of Zimbabwe A Reconsideration of Autobiography as a Literary Mode of National History A BSTRACT The process of writing national history is complex. It is even more complex especially when dealing with a critical historical period in which certain personalities possess vested interests in supplying political leadership. Zimbabwe’s journey to independence after 1965 has been examined from various perspectives, given the contested nature of the last events in the 1970s that shaped her independence in 1980. The point of departure in this study is the autobiography as a literary genre of communicating the history of a people or nation. In fact, the study posits that an autobiography, though it can suffer from both objectivity and subjectivity, is a crucial mode in transmitting national history. It is a window through which people can peep at the manoeuvres and shenanigans of nation- alist politicians. The study argues that autobiography can and does provide an alternative history to the narrowly patriotic rendition that we see today. Accordingly, the study is an appraisal of three autobiographies written by Muzorewa, Sithole, and Nkomo. These figures were intimately involved in the making of Zimbabwe as an independent country. The study concludes that there are glaring divergences and convergences in the narration of the history of the nation. Introduction HE MAKING OF ZIMBABWE, which came to fruition in 1980, was as a result of an arduous process and has been evaluated differently T by a number of contemporary historians, social scientists, and politi- cal theologians. Until a full account of its making is comprehensively docu- mented and interpreted, it will continue to be gaunt in the vast historiography of Zimbabwe’s second Chimurenga (armed struggle for independence). Whereas many blacks of every sociological profile participated in the armed struggle, it will be noted that there were certain personalities who were more intimately involved in the making of Zimbabwe as an independent country. African Cultures and Literatures: A Miscellany, ed. Gordon Collier (Matatu 41; Amsterdam & New York NY: Rodopi, 2012). 322 JAMES HLONGWANA, R.K. MAPOSA, & THAMSANQA MOYO a For instance, the likes of Ndabaningi Sithole, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, and Abel Muzorewa will continue to be luminaries in Zimbabwe’s historio- graphy. These personalities reflected different backgrounds. This study focuses on Bishop Muzorewa of the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe. Nkomo, a trade unionist and Sithole, a UCCZ Congregationalist minister. These per- sonalities helped bring majority rule in Zimbabwe in a unique way. The study seeks to analyse three autobiographies written by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, and Joshua Nkomo and how they try to re-order, de-compose, and even re-compose the past in a bid to influence the trajectory of events into the future. The study posits that a reading of their autobiographies mirrors the history of a nation at large. In view of the fact that Muzorewa, Nkomo, and Sithole were public figures and each of them per- ceived to have played, in their various ways, the role of the biblical Moses in leading the Africans from colonial rule to black majority rule, it means that they are ‘father-figures’ in the making of an independent Zimbabwe. There- fore, the study is a critical reflection on autobiography as a literary mode of transmitting national history. The Status of Autobiographical Writing First and foremost, autobiographical narratives are a literary genre of self- narration and reality-construction. In Foucauldian terms, autobiographical narratives are products of historical embeddedness and “the technologies of the self.”1 One of the most remarkable aspects of this genre is that it locates the self in a particular setting and in doing that re-locates others and recon- figures sites for this location. This strategy inaugurates the contestedness and polemical nature of both history and the narrating self. The implication here is that in its endeavor to construct reality, an autobiography becomes subjective. However, this subjectivity is essential in that it reflects different contours of meaning in the narrative of the nation. These autobiographical narratives are invariably disjunctive in that there is a split between the self telling the story and the self being spoken about. This act of telling is subjectively evaluative since it has the benefit of hindsight and experience. In this regard, the persona and his/her subject share the same name but not the same temporality. This genre is an act of configuring the self and representing memory selectively for the imagination of national history. It is an act of self-authoring and self- 1 Maria P. Lara, Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Spheres (Lon- don: Polity, 1998): 5. .
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