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What history for which Zimbabwe? A report on the Britain Zimbabwe Society Research Days, June 12th and 13th 2004
Britain Zimbabwe Society (BZS)
July 2004

http://www.britain-zimbabwe.org.uk/RDreport04.htm

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Introduction
The Research Days began with an introduction by Terence Ranger. He drew on his November 2003 paper - posted on the Society's website - 'Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe'. (This is appearing in the June 2004 issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies). To this he added a recent lecture delivered in Uppsala, 'The Uses and Abuses of History in Zimbabwe', which covered developments between November and May. What emerged from both papers was a determined effort by the Zimbabwean state to ensure that its version of the past, which it calls either 'patriotic history' or 'Mugabeism', is imposed at every level. It is hammered home by television, radio and the state press. It is taught in the militia camps from Mugabe's Inside the Third Chimurenga; in schools with textbooks written by the Minister of Education; in colleges and polytechnics in the form of a compulsory 'Strategic and National Studies' course.

Patriotic history is a much narrowed down version of nationalist history. It focuses on the three 'revolutions' - 1896, the guerrilla war and the 'third chimurenga' of land redistribution. It divides the nation into 'patriots' and 'sell-outs'. (An examination question in the Strategic and National Studies course asked which Zimbabwean political party is an agent of imperialism and how it should be regarded). Mugabe's proclamation in the 1970s that Zimbabwe would carry out a socialist and modernist revolution alongside the progressive nations of the world has been abandoned. White socialists and support groups are seen as having betrayed Zimbabwe and Africa. Today 'authenticity' is the watchword and Zimbabwe seeks support only among the 'indigenous peoples' of the world. With its doctrine of 'permanent revolution', patriotic history glorifies violence and omits other forms of popular action, marginalising in particular the cities and the trade unions.

Its relationship to Zimbabwean intellectuals is complicated. On the one hand, universities are attacked as 'alien' institutions teaching a history influenced by non-Zimbabwean ideas. On the other hand, regime intellectuals - Jonathan Moyo, Stanislaus Mudenge, Aeneas Chigwedere - are crucial to the formulation and propagation of patriotic history. The problem for those academic historians who desire a more complex and plural history is how to make an entry into public debate. Spokesmen of the Crisis Coalition call for an 'alternative narrative'. But what should this be? And how can it be expressed?

Ranger said that the Research Days sought to answer these questions. We needed to confront how far our previous historical writing has been complicit with patriotic history. We needed to ask how best to draw on what we already knew so as to re-assert a more plural history. We need to explore the gaps in the present historiography - what we needed to know, but did not - in order to understand the present Zimbabwe crisis. We needed to determine what new questions that crisis posed.

Because patriotic history challenged other interpretations in so many fields the Research Days would cover much ground. Jonathan Moyo has launched a project to recover oral history and Robert Mugabe is increasingly making use of Great Zimbabwe as a ceremonial centre so the Research Days would begin with statements of alternative oral narratives and of plural 'history-scapes' around Great Zimbabwe.

Patriotic history was unequivocally patriarchal so there would be papers on women in Zimbabwean history: its key figures were warriors so there would be discussion of children and how they related to war. Patriotic history expresses itself in tv and radio jingles specially written by Jonathan Moyo so we would discuss music and history. As Zimbabwe's best writers went into exile we would explore fiction and history. Robert Mugabe has appealed to the Vapostori, who are seen dancing at Heroes Acre in their white robes, so we would explore the historical consciousness of the prophets. Patriotic history emphasises the role of spirit-mediums in the first and second chimurengas so we would look at their role since independence. Land is the key theme of patriotic history so we would explore what we know and what we don't know about the history of land and look at the neglected history of land in white Rhodesian politics. Cities and trade unions are marginalised in patriotic history so we would look at the contemporary problems of cities and ask what historians can contribute to their resolution. And at the end Brian Raftopoulos, the very model of the committed intellectual, has the task of drawing all this together.

Conclusion
Brian Raftopolous said that it had been the most worthwhile two days since the two days he had spent in prison, which had also been spent in discussing history though there it was the history of football! He returned to the organising questions of the Research Days - what discourses alternative to patriotic history exist or could exist? Were we historiographically prepared for the crisis? Where do we go now?

He drew on the discussions to emphasise several points. The first was the argument made by Tim Scarnecchia on the need to distinguish between several 'nationalisms'. If one looked at citizenship there was both national and civic citizenship. Mzingeli was suspicious of the young nationalists because he felt they did not take seriously enough the project of urban citizenship. If one looked at rights it was necessary to re-iterate the point made by Ranka Primorac that rights to ownership and residence only made sense if there were also the rights to come and go. The papers on religion had raised the question of alternative and parallel narratives to that of nationalism. All these possibilities had to be explored. Zanu PF would never undertake this because it was 'so afraid to look into its own past'. Nationalism had been in many way an urban growth. The idea of urban dwellers as a totemless people was in itself merely a re-iteration of colonial concepts.

Nevertheless, even if one worked on the towns and on labour it was hard to avoid one's work becoming complicit. Even his own work on labour avoids questions that now come back to haunt us - who really did the ZCFTU represent?

His second point was that the existing historiography was very full but that it nevertheless had major gaps. The greatest was that there is no study of the construction of race in Zimbabwe, an extraordinary fact given that Rhodesian rule depended upon it. The absence of such studies has allowed all ambiguities and contradictions to be eroded so that today 'whites' are spoken of a single category. 'The race issue is on the table'. As Terri Barnes shows in her recent analysis of school history texts whites are presented as monolithic oppressors. The left focuses on class rather than on race. Yet the end of the white commercial farms did not mean the end of race as an issue in Zimbabwe.

Looking to the future the great need was to study the reception of ideas. Did the repetition of the slogans of patriotic history and its teaching in schools and colleges mean that it had already become hegemonic? There were enough jokes in circulation about it to encourage him to think this was not yet so. Nevertheless it is very important to counter it. We need a general history of Zimbabwe which synthesises what we know about religion, land, the towns. We must go beyond political economy to include culture and consciousness. The battle to record the past is now a political struggle. 'If you are a historian you have political accountability'.

Above all, as Jocelyn Alexander insisted, we need to understand the state. It was not adequate merely to describe it as authoritarian. Bulding a state was a process of creating constituencies. The colonial state co-opted Africans in the past in way which we do not yet fully recognise or understand. The Mugabe state co-opts interests now. It rules by satisfying those interests and not just by propaganda or terror. We need to study this process.

In short there was more than enough to keep historians busy for a long time yet.

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