Two words whose meanings overlap — presumption and assumption — came into my mind this week when I read some hostile reactions to the revelation by the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo’s chief security aide that his boss was an avid supporter of Harare football giants Dynamos.
echoes: CONWAY TUTANI
The disclosure, published this week, came from none other than Nehemiah Nyathi, who served as part of Nkomo’s security team from May 1980 until July 1, 1999, the day Nkomo died. Not to suggest that Nkomo had his own indiscretions, but that bodyguards, due to the nature of their work, are perfectly placed to know the most intimate details about those they provide security to, secrets which the spouse would not even get to know.
According to the Sunday News, Nyathi said: “He [Nkomo] didn’t love football that much, but I wouldn’t say he hated the sport as well. What I know is that his favourite team was Dynamos. He would always ask us to keep him posted on Dynamos fixtures and results. It was part of our duties to keep him updated.”
In Zimbabwe, it’s most rare to talk about Dynamos without mentioning or juxtaposing Highlanders, and Nyathi duly obliged, pointing out: “Of course, he [Nkomo] loved Highlanders, but not as much as he did Dynamos. He knew that most of us were Highlanders supporters and when Highlanders were playing at Barbourfields (BF) and Dynamos were playing elsewhere, he would say: “Asambeni eBF, manje iDynamos ke kuzwakalani, madoda, kumi njani?’ (Let us go to BF, but what is happening with Dynamos?’” Now you hear something questioning Nyathi’s credibility and asserting that it’s a Central Intelligent Organisation disinformation job. Do they want Nkomo to turn in his grave?
The disclosure is exactly what was needed in view of some delirious elements blowing things out of proportion following the violence that broke out during the league match between Highlanders, the home team, and visiting Dynamos at Barbourfields Stadium in Bulawayo in May.
Some of what we are witnessing today could be the unfortunate manifestation of ethnophilia. Ethnophilia is defined as the unnatural obsession with ethnicity or race, possibly the result of trauma. We have seen that among extreme right-wing and ultra-Orthodox Jews whose obsession with their Jewishness — possibly from the traumatic scars of the persecution of Jews going back centuries — has made them too insular to accommodate their Palestinian neighbours.
The Gukurahundi massacres in Zimbabwe during that dark period from 1982 to 1987 when speaking Ndebele made you marked for death should be viewed as having engendered or spun off ethnophilia. These things need to be said in order to be understood, not misdiagnosed. And when they are properly diagnosed, a lasting cure or solution will be found.
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That said, Nkomo being associated with Dynamos was not exactly new to me as I had first heard such talk when I was a mere boy in the 1960s growing up in the then Salisbury (now Harare), far, far away from Nkomo’s Bulawayo base.
Adults would refer — in hushed tones — to Dynamos as “Team yaMdhara” (“The Old Man’s Team”) because they did not like us excitable kids to get used to hearing that too often as we would innocently blurt it out in the neighbourhood and the next thing was that the Rhodesian Special Branch could come calling to arrest your parents because at that age one would not have developed that sense of discretion, that tactfulness. The mere mention of Nkomo and the slogan “Zapu! Puza!” would land one in jail as a subversive element against the Rhodesian regime. We were too young to understand what Nkomo stood for, but, like all impressionable youngsters, we took our cue from the adults.
Yes, most — not all — of the Highlanders supporters are based in Bulawayo as their home town team. And also naturally and equally, Dynamos supporters are mostly — but not exclusively — in Harare. And, logically the biggest number of Highlanders supporters outside Bulawayo are in Harare, and the biggest support for Dynamos outside Harare is in Bulawayo as the two biggest cities in the country with the two largest populations. The makes the two at home both in Harare and Bulawayo as their supporters are packed to the rafters in their respective sections of the stadium, whether at BF or Rufaro in Harare. Following the violence at Barbourfields, I posted this on Facebook: “Does anyone still remember that Highlanders specifically invited Dynamos to play them in the closing event of their 90th anniversary celebrations last year?” I got a response: “So what, Tutani?” I replied: “So what? These two sides need and respect each other.”
Yes, it’s important to note that Nkomo was not an unhinged supporter. Preferring Dynamos was not a cue to hate Highlanders; and backing Highlanders should be not like a matador throwing a red rag at a bull to enrage Dynamos supporters into attacking Highlanders fans. Nkomo proved that you cannot presume or assume that a Ndebele automatically supports Highlanders and a Shona automatically backs Dynamos. It’s not cast in stone.
This was also the same in Nkomo’s political career where he did not make destroying — literally destroying — his opponents his ideology, but was very much accommodative of others. That’s why he found contemptible and detestable the slogan: “Down with so-and-so!” which some party takes sick pride in, earning that party the uncomplimentary nickname “Opasi” in isiNdebele, or “Anapasi” in chiShona. Today a whole Head of State unleashes misguided youths as his attack dogs screaming right next to him: “Down with the MDC!” and all sorts of inflammatory crude insults.
This drove war veterans secretary-general Victor Matemadanda in 2016 to say: “Stop dividing and confusing the nation through tribal sentiments. We fought for this nation as one, leave us alone as one. In as far as I know, there is no family which is still purely Karanga, Zezuru or Ndebele because of intermarriage”, after divisionism again reared its ugly head at First Lady Grace Mugabe’s rallies with that offensive song,“Zezurus Unconquerable”, and Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko and Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo jiving feverishly to it like teenagers dancing to the latest hit by their favourite singer, in total disregard of what tribalism did to their own kind.
So, as the nation marks the 17th anniversary of Nkomo’s death tomorrow, one of the greatest legacies he left us as a nation is that we are all one. That we should discard that stereotyping of viewing Ndebeles or Shonas as a monolithic group with total uniformity and unanimity of thought and views.
May I say happy football viewing from the vantage point of heaven, Mdala Wethu!
Conway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist. Email: [email protected]
