What makes a Zimbabwean hero?

In Zimbabwe, it would seem that the definition of heroism is controlled by Zanu PF alone.

Last week Gibson Sibanda was buried at his home town of Filabusi, having succumbed at the age of 66 after a long and painful battle with cancer. Zimbabwe is no doubt poorer for the death of this extraordinary man who was, as Arthur Mutambara stated, ‘an icon of the trade union movement, a freedom fighter, soldier of soldiers, and a hero of heroes.’ Gibson Sibanda was a prominent trade union leader before independence, was arrested several times by the Rhodesian government for his liberation activities and was a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change. More recently he acted as one of the three ministers responsible for national healing, reconciliation and integration. It is little wonder that so many Zimbabweans consider Sibanda to be one of our greatest men.

Nevertheless, when colleagues of Sibanda petitioned the president to accord Gibson Sibanda national hero status, their request was abruptly denied.

The Sibanda snub comes only a few weeks after President Mugabe’s sister, Sabina, was unilaterally declared a heroine by the Zanu PF politburo. As well as being involved in politics, Sabina was among a number of senior Zanu PF politicians who were directly implicated in the violent farm invasions that began in 2000. MDC politicians have expressed outrage that her heroine status was decided without their consultation. Sibanda’s snub also comes only a day before Mugabe declared his late brother-in-law, Robert Marufu, a liberation war hero. Marufu is likewise a controversial character. After he retired from the CIO, he spent most of his time at the Bindura farm he grabbed in 2002, having forcibly acquired the farm equipment and chased away the manager. Marufu also controversially claimed huge sums of money from the War Victims Compensation Fund, after claiming 95 per cent disability from war injuries. In response to the controversy generated by his state-conferred hero status, Mugabe said it pained him that there were people actively working to erode what the likes of Marufu had sacrificed for. Needless to say, Mugabe has few qualms about actively eroding the extraordinary efforts of Gibson Sibanda.

Hero designation has always been in the hands of the Zanu PF Politburo, though non-Zanu PF parties have recently demanded that the designation process be made more inclusive to reflect the multi-party political reality. Mutambara is one of many who have registered extreme indignation at the apparent favouritism over hero designation; ‘We do not recognise the Zanu PF politburo as an authority in determining who becomes a national hero, so we reject the decision by the Zanu PF politiburo that Gibson Sibanda is not a national hero,’ Mutambara said. There are those of us who might wonder why he petitioned Mugabe in the first place. National Heroes Acre has become a veritable who’s who of those who excel in towing the Zanu PF party line. Under Mugabe, ‘heroism’ has become synonymous with demonstrating unswerving acceptance of the Zanu PF status quo. Gibson Sibanda is just one more name on a list of valiant and distinguished Zimbabweans – including Ndabaningi Sithole, James Chikerema, Patrick Kombayi and Henry Hamadziripi – who appear to have been denied hero status primarily because they dared to disagree with Mugabe.

It has been clear for a long time now that Mugabe is disseminating a version of history, patriotism and heroism that simply has no place for those who disagree with him. Owen Maseko is another Zimbabwean who is currently learning what it means to challenge Mugabe’s simplistic definitions. The accomplished painter will find himself on trial later this month for exhibiting realistic depictions of the Matabeleland massacres that took place in the 1980s under the regime of Robert Mugabe. Needless to say, his paintings do not maintain the one-sided, singularistic narrative that Mugabe has sought to sustain. Maseko’s depiction of the violence exacted against Joshua Nkomo and his supporters hardly accords well with the nationalistic documentaries that play on ZBC, where Joshua Nkomo is referred to as ‘the father of Zimbabwe’ without any mention of the fact that he had to flee for his life in the 1980s.

In a further attempt to consolidate the myth, a statue of Nkomo has recently been erected in Bulawayo, ostensibly to commemorate his role as a liberation hero. But the statue remains mysteriously shrouded. A second statue in Harare has courted controversy, mainly because it has been erected at the Karigamombe centre, which is a Shona word meaning ‘he who fells the bull by its horns’. Since Nkomo’s Zapu (Zimbabwe African People's Union) political party symbol was a bull, the controversy is unsurprising. Once again Mugabe loudly embraces Nkomo into the fold with one hand whilst covertly stabbing him in the back with the other. Zapu supporters have called the move ‘a reminder of the Gukurahundi atrocities and… a repetition of the same thing through a new form of ideological attack’. But for Zanu PF this ability to propagate myths and control a narrow history has been central to redefining simplistic boundaries of exclusion and inclusion that offer political benefits.

If you can define who’s in and who’s out, and control their legacy, you can dictate who has the legitimacy to oppress and who has no right to ask questions. Zanu PF operates on the basis of categorising Zimbabweans into traitors versus patriots, enemies of the nation versus authentic national subjects, puppets and sell-outs versus heroes. In short, Zimbabwe’s politics is the politics of subtle exclusion. Arguably, Mugabe’s whole regime survives because it is predicated on excluding men and women exactly like Gibson Sibanda from the category of ‘hero’.

In anticipation of the suggestion that I may be inferring an exclusionary agenda where there is none, it is probably worth quoting at length from The Herald, Zanu PF’s media mouthpiece;

‘…what MDC leaders have done and willed on Zimbabweans can never be considered heroic; it’s treasonous which is why it came as a surprise that Tsvangirai would have the temerity to write to President Mugabe seeking National Hero Status for Gibson Sibanda… MDC leaders have to be told in no uncertain terms that the National Heroes Acre is not for everybody. It is for those who distinguished themselves in liberating this country, and those people can only be found in the ranks of the former liberation movements Zanla and Zipra that came together under Zanu-PF… MDC leaders may be heroes in Whitehall and the White House but they are not heroes here.’

In Zimbabwe, we have been unequivocally told that heroism is Zanu PF and Zanu PF is heroism and there is no room for anyone else. So much for this farce of ‘inclusiveness’. Trudy Stevenson, the MDC-M’s policy co-ordinator and Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Senegal, has insisted that Sibanda’s death was a golden opportunity missed by Zanu PF to do some national healing. ‘They should have taken this opportunity and declared him a national hero to move things forward in a polarised nation like ours,’ Stevenson said. Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the MDC-T, said Mugabe’s Zanu PF party was now showing their ‘true colours.’

Perhaps Mugabe did miss a golden opportunity. Or perhaps polarisation has become the only way that Zanu PF can maintain its survival? Perhaps they are like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, ‘in blood. Steeped in so far that, should [they"> wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’? Yes, theoretically Mugabe could have confirmed Gibson Sibanda’s heroism. But in doing so he would have risked sending the message that difference is healthy, that critique is welcome and that pluralistic narratives will be tolerated. Could Zanu PF survive such openness? If one’s rhetoric is only a thin disguise for self-serving motives then embracing difference is hardly a risk worth taking. A content-less populism cannot bear the revealing light of open debate. Its method of operation must remain the very antithesis of democracy if it is to survive politically. So sayeth Machiavelli, the father of Realpolitik. To maintain a dictatorship, the despot must suffocate the possibility of dialogue or transparency, he must slander and silence his opponents and completely erode all chance of healthy discussion. He must extinguish the possibility of choice. In short, he must operate exactly as Zanu PF has been doing. Where opposition parties in healthy democratic polities are viewed as offering valuable intelligent dissent, Zanu PF’s model allows for no recognition that the opposition might have a useful role or any views that should be given consideration. Difference in Zimbabwe exists only as an enemy to be initially oppressed and ultimately vanquished. So, under the legitimising guise of an inclusive government, Mugabe works tirelessly to exclude men like Gibson Sibanda from gaining any aura of acceptability.

Mugabe would like to have us believe that men like Sibanda and Maseko are traitors and disloyal Africans, purely by virtue of their persistence in challenging the status quo. But I would counter that those are the only type of heroes worth having. Zimbabwe needs men and women who challenge oppression wherever they see it, regardless of colour, party, or ideological concerns.

Zimbabwe needs men and women who courageously refuse to fit the mould.

Since a burial in Hero’s Acre has come to signify blind conformity with the same people who committed the Gukurahundi atrocities in the 1980s, who ruthlessly suppressed food riots in 1998, conducted Operation Murambastvira in 2005 and orchestrated the post-election violence of 2008, there are many Zimbabweans who will consider Sibanda’s very exclusion from the National Hero’s Acre to be less a denial than a confirmation of his true heroic status.

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* This article first appeared in Sokwanele.
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