IT is difficult to imagine a more compelling historical account of the journey that Zimbabwe has undertaken from her struggle for independence to the attainment of that independence in 1980 and the hopes that it gave to millions, to the struggles that we are faced with today.
Mary Ndlovu’s aptly titled memoir provides a refreshing view of Zimbabwean history, which departs from numerous narratives that we have encountered. It is both a factual reflection on events as she remembers them and a frank assessment of the challenges, many self-afflicted, that Zimbabwe has faced since independence.
It is not only a biography of a family but also a biography of a nation, with personal and family agonies and anxieties intertwined with those of a nation similarly undergoing testing times.
As we read through, we cannot help the sense of sadness that comes with the realisation that things could have turned out very differently; that, instead of the failed state that is so afflicted with crises that it has become impossible to describe them, we could be living in a functional middle-class country.
While we witness events through Mary’s probing eyes, we are at the same time given a window into the pain of ordinary people and leaders alike, especially in her adoptive region of Matabeleland, where the revolution began to eat its own children, to use a common cliché.
We see how individuals and families shaped the history of Zimbabwe while at the same time getting to understand the impact that the story that is Zimbabwe has had on the lives and fates of many forgotten heroes and heroines.
Perhaps more than other historical accounts before, this book shows how Zimbabwe hit the rocks right from the start, such that many of the problems we face today – a violent state buttressed by a political culture of intolerance, rampant unrestrained corruption, poor governance characterised by an uncaring political elite, and an all but collapsed economy – can be traced right to independence.
Offering a ringside view of political developments from the time Zimbabwe’s nationalist liberation struggle careened towards independence, Mary details some of the critical moments in the country’s history with the eye and meticulousness of a seasoned historian.
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Combined with serious advocacy for social justice and human rights, this memoir is enriched with special sensitivity for the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans especially as the country entered what we now refer to as ‘the Zimbabwean crisis’, which mainly describes the economic implosion in the 2000s.
The book also offers much-needed insight into some aspects of Zimbabwean society, which are important but tend to be suppressed in many historical books, such as the nature of race-relations in Zimbabwe after independence.
With much dexterity, Mary uncovers the impact of lingering racial supremacy attitudes in Zimbabwe’s relatively small but influential white community on post-independence racial integration.
She further puts the spotlight on the prejudices suffered by the country’s mixed-race community, witnessed in the experiences of her own children.
Importantly also, the book provides a biographical profile of one of the more influential but perhaps little-known nationalists in the Zimbabwean struggle for independence.
Edward Ndlovu, a senior Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) official she met by chance at a dance in Lusaka and later married with life-changing consequences, is central to this biographical account.
Not as popular or high-profile as historical figures like Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, Herbert Chitepo or Josiah Tongogara, about whom much has been written, Ndlovu’s life offers an important glimpse into the lives, and the role, of those who did much of the work in the background, which enabled the successes of celebrated leaders like Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. These were the engines of the nationalist movements, about whom not much is known.
As a native of Matabeleland, this book is also very important to me in one neglected aspect of Zimbabwean history; that is, Zimbabwean independence was not a euphoric occasion across the entire length and breadth of the country as sometimes Zimbabwean historiography and also popular cultural expressions tend to suggest.
For a significant majority in Matabeleland, independence felt like defeat, made worse when the state turned on the region barely two years after this important day.
The biggest impression for me in the memoir, however, is the careful way in which Mary explains the transformation in service provision from the birth of Zimbabwe to this day. In a very critical sense, she explores the early developments and changes in Zimbabwe’s much celebrated education system.
This is first as a teacher in one of the country’s boarding schools and then as a lecturer at Hillside Teachers’ College. Her time at Hillside came at a critical period when this college and the school system in general were being opened up to the majority of black Zimbabweans.
As a teacher in a typical mission secondary school in early 1980s Zimbabwe, and as a parent navigating her children from primary to high school in a rapidly changing political, social and economic context, Mary also details the slow but gradual deterioration of the education sector, much of it mirroring the general decline in other sectors and in living conditions under Zanu-PF rule.
Zimbabwe’s education system has been written, and talked about, in very positive and celebratory terms with many assertions about Zimbabweans being the most educated people in southern Africa.
As an insider, Mary offers a sobering view of the challenges faced soon after independence, the responses by the state and other actors, and also the failures that led to the current state of affairs.
It is a book of hope, hope for a beautiful life in a liberated Zimbabwe after years of suffering experienced in exile and back home under colonial rule, and then unmitigated despair, desperation and frustration as all that Zimbabweans fought for seemed to fade into nothing.
The determination and sacrifice of African nationalists to gain independence for their people described here is painful when read against the reality of the "independence" that is experienced in Zimbabwe today.
It is difficult not to conclude, in words echoed by so many across the continent; Not Yet Uhuru. Echoing Fanon, whom she cites in passing, Ndlovu’s emphatic conclusion is that in Zimbabwe, the black nationalist leadership reproduced the worst forms of colonial injustice and repression, going further to destroy the economy and the country’s social fabric to levels not even imagined under the worst times of the country’s colonial experience.
In the end, we are perhaps left to wonder whether the Zanu leadership ever planned to run a proper state or, from the very beginning, the plan was to amass wealth and power and leave everything else to chance.
As Mary finally - reluctantly – leaves Zimbabwe back to her native Canada, one wonders whether it is foolish to hold any hope for the future.
As an outsider with vested interests in the affairs of the country, Mary has managed to maintain a beautiful balance between her subjective views and an objective assessment of Zimbabwe; past and present. Although it is a serious historical narrative, it is also punctuated with episodes of light humour.
- Mpofu is a senior lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Eswatini.
