3. Severe Conflicts: Frustration-Deprivation
5.2. Managing the Nationalist Discourse: From Revolt to Rule
5.2.1. The Tidiness of Revolutionary Scripts
The ZANU liberation movement had relatively tight control on the ‘ordering’
ideological narrative which gave them discipline and guidance throughout the struggle
449 Docherty, J. 2001. Learning Lessons from Waco – When the Parties Bring their Gods to the Negotiation Table. New York: Syracuse University Press, 50-51.
450 Ibid: 57.
451 Raftopoulos, B. 2004. “Nation, Race and History in Zimbabwean Politics”. A paper presented at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies International Conference on States, Borders and Nations: Negotiating Citizenship in Africa. May 2004.
163 movement. A descriptive appeal for the ‘ordering’ narrative is well-articulated in the words taken from a speech delivered by Robert Mugabe in 1979:
“…political and ideological consciousness must, as it enhances our great
understanding and appreciation, also invoke in us unswerving loyalty to the Party and the just cause it champions. The Party charts the political and ideological line which must provide us, if we are its loyal and faithful members, with the only correct direction worth following and the only valid basis on which we can all become united as fighters with a common cause…[this] prompts within each true member an inner sense of order and orderliness that dictates conformity in behaviour and regulates our inter-actions and relationships with each other as revolutionaries bound by the same objectives.”452
This rhetoric was not only in words, it was acted upon wherever there appeared to be any mutiny within the ranks of ZANU / ZANLA: “Through the war, we have submerged whatever minor contradictions have existed among us and we have done so out of our recognition of the need to completely destroy the common principle enemy in pursuance of our immediate common objective – the establishment of a national democratic
state.”453 In this script one immediately identifies the contradiction between the ‘means’
(to submerge by force any minor differences) and the ‘ends’ (in order to build a democratic nation). Also, here is a phraseology that is bound by the discourse of a monolithic enemy assuming that all the oppressed masses comprehend and agree on a hegemonic image of their ultimate foe (in this case the white Rhodesian government and its people).
The notion of a tidy revolutionary script is not to insinuate that there were no deviations of thought or defiance in action against the dominant ZANU narrative during the time of the struggle. It is to say, however, that the management (cause and effect) of the public and private scripts was notably different. The public narrative expounded by the ZANU leadership not only attempted to propagate one text (one way of thinking for all) it demanded solidarity both in word and deed from the popular domain (among the masses) in order to fortify its ‘united patriotic front’. Writing about the Geneva
Conference, a failed attempt at a negotiated Zimbabwean peace settlement in 1976, David Moore states:
452 Mugabe, R. 1983. Our War of Liberation – Speeches, Articles, Interviews 1976-1979. Harare: Mambo Press, 146.
453 Ibid: 128.
164
“In fact the conference served only to help the relatively unknown Mugabe. In the hotels and halls of Geneva – paid for, of course, by the imperialists – he patched together an alliance of Zimbabwean nationalists and convinced the west he controlled ZANU’s soldiers. In 1977, with the failure of the conference and the newly elected Carter regime [USA] in confusion about matters Zimbabwean (they thought Muzorewa was worthy of support) the British tried to start an election.
However, Mugabe was busy eliminating his perceived opposition within the ranks and was hard to find.”454
Yet, the public narrative from the top-down was unable to completely control the private narratives which were known to spread rapidly through the on-the-ground socio- political networks, communities and prison cadres in exile, as evidenced in the Nhari uprisings discussed in Chapter 4. However, these uprisings were short lived and the full weight of revolutionary-sanctioned violent retribution was utilised to quell all
insurrections. Speaking to these internal ZANU splinter movements, David Moore contends that:
“Mugabe appeared to be working hard to gain American educations for the
‘Marxist’ soldiers over whom he was trying to gain control. Yet when he returned to the Mozambican front, wherein these youth were training, he and then
Mozambican president Samora Machel – not a very old man either – agreed to put the leaders of these youth in Mozambican prisons, where they remained until the 1980 elections for Zimbabwe…The Mugabe regime was only starting at this moment (some might say in hindsight that this was the beginning of the end), but it seems it has remained true to its origins today.”455
In relation to the Nhari rebellion in the ZANU military camps in Zambia, the following texts summarise its violent and subjugated closure as such:
“By all accounts, the party executed Nhari and Mataure and several others at once. Hove, Mutambanengwe, Sanyanga, Mukono, and Madekurozwa were sentenced ‘to death in their absence’. Sanyanga and Dziruni went into hiding in Lusaka; others sought police protection…What is known is that many ZANU officials who had left Zambia, like Mukono and Mutambanengwe, did not return...”456
454 Moore, D. 2009. Mamdani’s Enthusiasms. Retrieved from the web 10/04/09.
http://concernedafricascholars.org/mamdanis-enthusiasms/ , 6.
455 Moore, D. 2009. Zimbabwe 1997-2007: A democracy of diminished expectations. Retrieved from the web 10/04/09. http://www.africafiles.org/printableversion.asp?id=17002: 3. See also Moore, D. 1995.
“Democracy, Violence and Identity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation: Reflections from the Realms of Dissent”. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 29 (3): 375-402.
456 White, L. 2003. The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo – Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 40.
165
“A few people were arrested and some were killed actually, some were killed. So I think there’s always a problem, I think there has always ‘been’ a problem with liberation movements, especially those which participated in a bloody war, you know, because for them, the ‘process of elimination’ was to them solving a situation. So they carried over even when they’re in government that ‘okay, we don’t want to have too many voices so we’ll silence these ones.”457
Thus, it is clear that these internal ‘treacheries’ which frequently erupted into violence were carefully contained within the structures of military disciplinary procedures (‘tidy’
systems); although highly punitive in nature they had an ordering (albeit forceful) effect nonetheless.