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Zimbabwe runes
Percy Zvomuya, Mail & Guardian (SA)
August 11, 2006

http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2006/2006aug/060811-zimbabwe.html

Percy Zvomuya reflects on two new books about Zimbabwe's history

• House Of Stone by Christina Lamb (HarperCollins)
• Assignment Selous Scouts by Jim Parker (Galago)

August 11 is Heroes’ Day in Zimbabwe, a good time to be reflecting on a number of new books about the country’s history. British journalist and author Christina Lamb’s House of Stone immediately struck me for one reason: its elementary failure to recognise that if it is about Zimbabwe, which it is, then "house" should be "houses". The country is named Zimbabwe after the many stone structures littering its plateau, literally translated as dzimba dzamabwe.

Lamb traces the lives of two protagonists: a white man, Nigel, and a black woman, Aqui, born in the early 1960s. That is precisely the time when the country’s history became very interesting, with the unilateral declaration of independence by Ian Smith on November 11 1965, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to wage a nationalist war of liberation. Written in spare and lean prose, House of Stone is a readable and concise history of Zimbabwe seen through the eyes of Nigel and Aqui, as well as their parents and grandparents.

Lamb sketches Zimbabwe’s history throughout its several milestones right from the time the colonial Pioneer Column arrived on September 13 1890 in what is now Harare, to last year. Interweaving historical figures and events with the personalities of her protagonists makes this book come alive. Using illustrations, localised imagery, anecdotal personal details, and frank views about the "other" in a segregated Rhodesia, she manages to make this narrative their story rather than the history for which they are prototypes: the white male farm owner and the peasant black woman.

By allowing her protagonists their own voices -- italicised passages in the book -- the story becomes their story. It achieves an emotional pathos midway through the book as Nigel, stranded in China after a sour business deal with a wily businessman, sinks into despair. Thereafter he discovers himself and his fortune, part of which he uses to buy a farm that is taken away later by the war veterans at the height of the farm occupations.

Although Nigel feels aggrieved by the injustice he felt he underwent, he shows no bitterness -- something that Assignment Selous Scouts is brimming with. This book is the memoir of Jim Parker, a former member of the Selous Scouts, the dreaded elite unit created by the security establishment in Rhodesia at the height of the bush war.

Inevitably, Parker’s long and meandering account becomes an unorthodox history of Zimbabwe. Among other startling claims by the author is that the nationalist Herbert Chitepo was killed by operatives of the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). It, says Parker, took advantage of the infighting that prevailed to "get rid of a man" who not only supported Robert Mugabe, but was powerful in his own right.

This is quite a simplistic argument on a topic about which scores of books have been written, and had a commission ordered by Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia.

The evidence overwhelmingly points to infighting within Zanu. How Parker hopes in a couple of paragraphs to put a lid on an emotive and controversial topic, 30 years on, is beyond my ken.

Assignment Selous Scouts is punctuated by sweeping and offensive clichés like "these Shangaans had an awful smell about them because regular bathing did not fall within their culture". Others contend that black people cannot swim, or that most guerrillas were abducted to join the war effort.

Then there are glaring factual errors such as claims that Edgar Tekere died an alcoholic. Tekere is alive and well and has in fact rejoined Zanu-PF. These pedestrian tendencies aside, the book is a fresh insider’s account to one of the most brutal liberation wars ever waged on this continent.

Parker’s account is mostly centred in the south-eastern lowveld of Zimbabwe where he was based, but his account is an important narrative of the Smith regime’s general war efforts to repel mainly Zanu guerillas coming into the country from Mozambique.

The illustrations paint vivid pictures of the infighting and mutual jealousy among the Rhodesian security hierarchy, apartheid South Africa’s involvement in the war effort, and Selous missions as well as activities such as poisoning water sources.

Using formerly classified documents of secret missions, Parker explains the Scouts’ use of biological and chemical warfare against the guerrillas right up to their operations after independence.

Gory details emerge from this account, but as Parker writes, "all is fair in love and war". This is an important book that can take its place in Zimbabwe’s ever-expanding literary pantheon.

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