One man, one vote: The Alpha and Omega of Zim’s nationalistic project?

By The Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard | Jul. 19, 2017 | 4 Min read

On June 1, 2017, Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo speaking in his personal capacity at the Southern Africa Political and Economic Series (Sapes) meeting accused the so-called Team Lacoste — a Zanu PF faction — of wanting to seize power, by hook, or by crook, in the party, and in government. In the process, he lamented, the faction wanted to abandon the nationalistic project that gave impetus to the war of liberation. He gave a “schematic” definition of the nationalistic project before demonstrating how, according to him, each of the seven measurable components of the project are being wilfully violated or ignored by Team Lacoste in its quest to seize power.

Was he right? Do the seven components genuinely represent the thinking of the nationalists, who launched the liberation struggle at the time of the launch? The seven building blocks of the project are as follows:

An aspiration for a unitary State and national unity. Moyo said this was the most fundamental aspiration covering the desire for a “unitary, democratic and sovereign developmental State”.
The desire for the equitable ownership of land and the sharing of natural resources. The rallying cry that land is the economy, and the economy is land, he proffered, was based on this aspiration.
The aspiration for “all persons to be equal before the law, and have the right to equal protection and benefits of the law”.
According to Moyo, the quest for democracy, based on the principle “that those who govern must have the consent of those whom they govern”. That consent was to be given through the ballot box in elections.
The aspiration for sovereignty or self-determination.
The maintenance of law and order and finally,
Increased access to education and acquisition of skills.

While it may be true that the leadership of the people had these components of their project written down in some charter or strategy document, the rallying cry, both in the African townships in urban areas and in the rural areas was “one man, one vote!” As far as the motive for the liberation war was concerned, that was the Alpha and the Omega — the beginning and the end. Everything else would follow that.

However, on April 12, 1986, in an emotional graveyard eulogy to the late Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) Lieutenant General Lookout Masuku, the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo all but said the nationalistic project, as viewed either by Moyo or himself, had died. Zapu leader and former Home Affairs minister Dumiso Dabengwa, to this day, agrees. In his speech at WitWatersRand University in South Africa, in June 2017 at an inaugural memorial lecture in honour of the late nationalist Nkomo, Dabengwa, a retired ZNA general, seemed to say as much, tracing the call for one man, one vote back to 1962 or thereabout, during the era of the National Democratic Party and the founding of Zapu.

Offering an alternative viewpoint, Nathaniel Manheru in his column in The Herald [June 17, 2017] credited the concept of the nationalist project to Zanu chairperson Herbert Chitepo’s contribution in 1970 to a publication titled The passing of Tribal Man in Africa, edited by a Canadian academic, the late Peter Gutkind. The opening article of the publication, titled: The passing of a Tribal Man: a Rhodesian view, the chronicler, Chitepo argued that oppression by colonialists had destroyed the tribal man, replacing him with the nationalist.

It was a point reiterated by the current Commander of the Defence Forces (CDF), General Constantino Chiwenga as published in The Herald [June 27, 2017]. The current CDF, though, traced the project as far back as the first Chimurenga citing the alliance between the so-called tribes in a national uprising against the settlers. The General, asked rhetorically: “But what is it they were fighting for? They were fighting for their heritage — the soil, ivhu. … so they fought and this is the same spirit that 60 years later inspired the people to start the Second Chimurenga, .What is it that motivated the [second] war? There are two things. They wanted to be independent like any other country that has got self rule, to determine who should rule you, one man, one vote, as our elders would say”.

“The second grievance was economic emancipation, and land is at the core of that emancipation”. He concluded: “So you see the issue of the land, the issue of independence goes back to 1890 when the settlers first came here. Those two reasons never changed”.

The jury may still be out on the passing of a tribal man as considered by the learned advocate Chitepo. His life may have been taken by a black tribal hand after all, as did the 20 000 victims of the so-called Gukurahundi massacres that took place after one man, one vote was attained. While the chairperson may have been wrong on the end of tribalism, he was correct in his assertion that a nationalistic man had been born. That man, a bit more conscious than the tribal man, wanted the vote and the rule of law. The vote was to correct the wrongs of the colonial era. It was acknowledged that he who wields the vote makes the laws. The laws, in turn, would improve access to education, skills acquisitions, jobs, markets, the finer things of life and natural resources, land included. It was the vote that was to end discrimination.

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Last, but not least there is need to listen to an enduring clip at ZBC featuring the late Zanla General Josiah Magama Tongogara. In it he says something to the effect that when he asks his forces why he is sending them to the front, the answer was invariably “to fight the whites/settlers. “No,” he would correct them, “to fight ignorance!” Had he included treachery/betrayal, lies and corruption, he would have hit the bull’s eye.

He may be the one closest to the spiritual motive of the Nationalistic Project. To this day, the nation labours in vain.

Tapiwa Nyandoro writes in his personal capacity.