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Appropriating Nkomo’s legacy, national symbols: Lessons from #ThisFlag

Opinion & Analysis
Last year saw the birth of the hugely successful #ThisFlag movement and to this day both the ruling Zanu PF and opposition parties must be scratching their heads trying to figure out why the movement gained so much traction so quickly.

Last year saw the birth of the hugely successful #ThisFlag movement and to this day both the ruling Zanu PF and opposition parties must be scratching their heads trying to figure out why the movement gained so much traction so quickly.

Candour: NQABA MATSHAZI

Nqaba Matshazi
Nqaba Matshazi

I do not know why the movement became so popular, but I can hazard guesses and there are lessons for the opposition.

What we have in Zimbabwe is a polarised political system, where one side postures as being the custodian of history — or what is now termed “patriotic history” — while the other side seems unwilling or unable to connect with the country’s past and their issues with the ruling party only seem to start in 1999.

What this means is Zanu PF has been able to identify itself with national symbols like the flag, the fight against colonialism, the anthem and other such symbols, while the opposition have been reduced to nothing more than “[President Robert] Mugabe must go” chanters.

With this, Zanu PF has been able to portray the opposition as revisionist, with no historical grounding and are not linked with the liberation war ethos.

Thus, Evan Mawarire and #ThisFlag were a shock to the system — both the opposition and the ruling party — as for the first time, probably since 1987, Zanu PF was being challenged on what it believes is its turf.

Mawarire took the fight right to Zanu PF’s doorstep and the party had no response to this challenge. He held the flag aloft and declared his patriotism to the country using the very tools that Zanu PF lays claim to and to this the ruling party still has no response to this day.

At some point, Zanu PF tried to use #OurFlag to fight back, but their feeble attempt at propaganda fell flat, #ThisFlag was something they were not prepared for.

Zanu PF’s response was at best poor and at worst clumsy, as the government responded by literally banning the national flag and national colours, as it suddenly remembered some long-forgotten law about the flag.

This shows the party was not ready for such kind of a challenge.

As fellow writer, Ranga Mberi once blogged: “They [opposition] totally failed to seize the narrative back. They did not seize the flag back and use it in their protests. They did not fight back for those appropriated symbols.

“To say, ‘these are ours too’. No, they just went out there and decided being opposition was to say the opposite, no matter what.”

I thought of this analogy when I heard there were celebrations to mark what would have been the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo’s 100th birthday and a lecture held in his honour in neighbouring South Africa.

While Zanu PF can lay claim to Nkomo, as he was a member of the party and one of the foremost nationalists, I am sure that were he to wake up today, he would not identify himself with the ruling party at all and it’s time the opposition appropriated his legacy for their cause.

Nkomo’s legacy is acknowledged across the country, and were the opposition to appropriate this legacy, Zanu PF could be in for a rude awakening and just like #ThisFlag, would not know how to respond or at least would be flatfooted for a while.

Let us take what Nkomo stood for. For example, Nkomo was worried, in the 1980s for that matter, about how the government was using neo-colonialism and imperialism as an excuse for its failures back then.

To this day, the Zanu PF government blames colonialism and imperialism for its failures and has also found the most convenient red herring in sanctions — its favourite scapegoat.

I could go and on about what Nkomo stood for, how he disliked Zanu PF’s “pasi” (down with) slogan, saying it had no place in modern-day Zimbabwe.

He was unhappy with Zanu PF’s use of fear to subjugate the population and warned that the country was hurtling towards certain destruction because of the then Zanu’s rule.

Nkomo lamented corruption and unemployment, which have become the hallmark of the ruling party.

Thus, the opposition has the perfect opportunity to use a Zanu PF icon to square off against the ruling party.

The opposition can appropriate Nkomo’s message and show that he was not just for Zanu PF, but for the whole country and had he been alive today, he certainly would have expressed his disquiet at the way things have turned out.

What we have now is not the Zimbabwe Nkomo fought for and he would have been disappointed with what his colleagues have done.

This presents a perfect opportunity for the opposition to rework their message and use liberation war stalwarts to challenge the ruling party.

Often, the opposition is accused of lacking people with liberation war gravitas in its ranks, but instead of rushing for Zanu PF rejects, they could start by claiming the ideology of the struggle, that frowned upon greed and avarice among leaders.

They could question Zanu PF on why they dumped their famed leadership code, which spoke against gross accumulation of wealth.

Zanu PF has left itself open to attack, but the failure to appropriate national symbols and monuments means the opposition is allowing the ruling party to have its cake and eat it too.

While the struggle was spearheaded by Zanu PF, the reality is they did not do it for themselves, but for the whole country and there is need for other political players to tap into this so-called patriotic history.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara tried to appropriate this history when he assumed the leadership of the MDC, with a speech saying he stood on the “shoulders of giants, on the shoulders of Alfred Nikita Mangena and Josiah Tongogora”.

For some unexplained reason, this line of thinking was never pursued and I will guess because either he or his party thought the message was too close to Zanu PF’s and was not expedient enough.

However, they let an opportunity slip with this one.

There are many people who genuinely believe the opposition will hand over the country to colonialists and imperialists because of the pervasiveness of Zanu PF propaganda and, as yet, they have no reason to doubt this.

But if the opposition were to start claiming national symbols, evoking Nkomo, Mangena or Tongogara’s names and memories, it will give this staunch lot something to think about and maybe win a few votes while at it.

The liberation history does not belong to Zanu PF alone and it presents a perfect opportunity for the opposition to remodel itself and go toe to toe with the ruling party in an area long considered its turf.

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