THE healthy and necessary debate around Joshua Nkomo’s costly political blundering and the very insulting proposal to locate his statue at Karigamombe Centre in Harare reached dizzy poetic and philosophical heights a few weeks ago.
It has since been reported that the courts have barred the erection of the statue at the proposed site. It is my strong feeling, however, that some points raised in that debate must not go undebated, lest the truth be lost in the thick dust of opinions and feelings.
Mthulisi Mathuthu raised a compelling argument that, contrary to popular fears and concerns, the location of Nkomo’s statue at Karigamombe Centre, a building whose name laughs at Nkomo’s defeat by Zanu PF, would represent a symbolic victory and defiance of Nkomo against his haters.
For a brief while, I was totally bewitched by this alternative and optimistic way of looking at it. The celebration lasted as short and as long as I did not consider what a symbolic victory means in politics where victories are better realistic, concrete and tangible.
I would like to vigorously contest Mathuthu’s persuasive thinking that Nkomo’s stubborn moral aura and defiant symbolism compelled the powers that be to acknowledge his legendary legacy by proposing to mount his statue at Karigamombe Centre where the towering monument will overshadow the Karigamombe insult.I concede that there is symbolism involved, but that there is victory, I am unconvinced.
That statue is a trophy of Zanu PF’s victory against ZAPU and its blundering hero Joshua Nkomo. The Karigamombe Centre together with Nkomo’s statue signify to Zanu PF psychology a museum of relics of the vanquished and finished. To imagine victory for Nkomo and his ZAPU followers here is dangerously misleading, more misleading than a promise of some pie in the sky.
Before I supply my considered reasons why I think the symbolism of locating Nkomo’s statue at Karigamombe Centre is at best unhelpful and at worst vulgar, I would like us to visit the classic ancients.
The fierce fall-out between student and teacher, Plato and Aristotle, was over the uselessness or the usefulness of symbolism. Plato insisted that symbolism was “poetic unreality” that emphasised empty imaginism and illusory beliefs that discourage reason and truth. He went on to propose that in an ideal republic, representational poetry and its symbolism should be banished.
On the other hand, Aristotle argued that symbolism and its meanings was more important than history and concrete reality. He even proposed that representational poetry should be given more attention than history. On this one, I stand with Plato.
To believe that leaders of nations who carelessly disarm their armies and blindly pursue grand messianic dreams -- exposing their followers to genocide like Nkomo did and lost hands down to Zanu PF -- will have victory achieved for them by brass and clay statues after their death is hollow thinking. Not only that, but have we started believing that statues will free us from oppression and marginalisation?
The reason why Sibagilizwe Nkomo has argued that his father’s remains be removed from the National Heroes Acre and be taken to Kwanyongolo in Kezi is because he sees to what abuse Zanu PF and its followers is putting Nkomo’s name and symbolism.
There is also a possibility that Robert Mugabe’s fear of Dumiso Dabengwa and the recently revived ZAPU has sent him into such a panic that he desperately thinks that a statue of Nkomo will symbolically contest the revival of ZAPU.
It could be a symbolic announcement that Nkomo is the property of Zanu PF. In life, in sickness, in death and as a statue, Nkomo continues to be used by Mugabe as a captive that must serve the political ends of Zanu PF. In the name of all the gods, where is victory in all this abuse of a dead man?
There were also painful pleas from Thandiwe Nkomo and others that Zanu PF and the former ZAPU leaders in Zanu PF should show Nkomo some respect and gratitude by locating his statue anywhere but Karigamombe Centre. I sympathise with her, and her expected daughterly pains. But in reality, and not in poetic symbolism, to Zanu PF history, Nkomo belongs to chapters of the vanquished.
Nkomo and ZAPU got into Zanu PF by surrender after a humiliating defeat and genocide. What, besides superstition and pathetic imaginism, will make us expect honour and glory for Nkomo from Zanu PF? Are we not living in the high skies of symbolism and illusion and not in the real world of our genocidal massacre and defeat by the same people we are begging respect from?
I think in the real world of blood and flesh, the starting point for Nkomo’s supporters is that they were defeated by Mugabe and his followers and they are living in deserved contempt of their victors. What they need to do is to strategies for a future victory.
The biggest blunder that Nkomo made was to ignore the fact that though unlegislated, Mugabe and his followers were like the Batswana -- a British protectorate. The fact that they ganged up to assist the British in overthrowing Lobengula testifies to this. Nkomo was unwise to imagine that he could rule over them without the use of force of arms. It was a fatality for Nkomo to disarm ZIPRA at a time when Mugabe was arming Gukurahundi. In his life, sickness, death and his symbolism as a statue, Nkomo continues to be punished by his conquerors for his blunders and blind trust in his enemies.
David James Smith, the writer of an interesting book, “The Young Mandela”, narrates the chronicles of a young and amorous Nelson who beat his wife black and blue, kissed girlfriends in alleys and street corners and did not only wink at, but spent warm nights with other people’s wives. In answer to his critics who were protesting such dark exposure of the South African legendary icon, Smith said his job as a writer is to “rescue Mandela from the dry pages of history” and present him as not only a legend, but also a human being with some weakness.
I believe the same of Nkomo. I think journalists and other writers should rescue Joshua Nkomo from the captivity of messianic myths and legendary symbolism that puts him beyond scrutiny and criticism. I think Nkomo should be recovered from symbolism and be surrendered to observation and analysis as a politician who did not only eat pap and stew but blundered and in the process exposed his followers to massacre. Failure to do this will create a bad and very dangerous precedent where other young politicians might follow in Nkomo’s footsteps and lead their supporters to more servitude and colonialism.
Nkomo’s legacy of the politics of appeasement and surrender must urgently be revised and shunned in favour of the alternative revolutionary politics and robust engagement. Like Nkomo, Mahatma Gandhi’s “non-violence” and Martin Luther King’s “moral force” approaches were unhelpful “turn the other cheek” political philosophies that are politicidal when dealing with Maoists like Mugabe and Zanu PF.
The approach that Nkomo needed to borrow and one which his supporters need to consider is that of Malcolm X’s “eye for an eye”, Paul Kagame’s “gun powder” or Yoweri Museveni’s effective, protracted guerilla engagement. Those are the approaches that liberate a people and build nations not surrender, appeasement and beliefs that wars that are lost in life will be won by statues after the death of defeated heroes.