Hopewell Chin’ono: What is a Hero and how do they become one?

By Hopewell Chin’ono

Once more in death, Professor Phineas Makhurane has set the tone and mood of what should have happened in life, and why being buried at the heroes acre doesn’t make you any less of a hero if you have earned it rather than become one through declarations.

After being declared a national hero, the scholar’s family politely informed government that he would be buried at his village as he had requested, unlike in the Cephas Msipa case, government relented.

This is what they do in many countries, they bury their heroes at private cemeteries because a cemetery postcode does not make one a hero, it is your deeds that makes you one.

A hero lives in people’s hearts not through party political declarations as happens in Zimbabwe.

Martin Luther King would have been a hero non the less even if he were buried in Muzarabani, that is why I find the desire to be buried at the Warren Park heroes acre weird.

I was involved in a similar discussion three years ago when my brother-friend, Professor Sam Moyo, died in a car accident in India.

The Government of Zimbabwe sent Minister Stembiso Nyoni to discuss with Sam’s family about declaring him a hero.

She asked Sam’s family to write his biography that would be taken to the ZANUPF politburo where hero declarations are deliberated.

The family asked me to be the interlocutor between them and the minister.

The minister was surprised when I told her that the family had turned down the idea and that they were thankful for the consideration but that Sam would be buried at Glen Forest.

She was surprised because very rarely do Zimbabweans turn down that idea of being declared a hero by the ZANUPF Politburo, we have become part of the circus of how heroism is determined.
Many become very angry when someone is not declared a hero by the ZANUPF politburo, even the opposition parties fight to get their own people declared heroes by ZANUPF. The irony!

Sam’s family found it weird that they had to write about why he had to be declared a hero, his brother Rhey laughed at the whole idea and walked away from the discussions.

They argued that if the board of people that declares heroes doesn’t know about his immense contributions to academia and agrarian studies specifically, then they found it insulting to be asked to write a motivation document.

Sam was one of the leading Agrarian scholars on the continent and beyond, African governments relied on his work immensely.

He was an intellectual giant and unlike many of our local academics, he was heavily published and he led the Agrarian Studies Institute, which has now been renamed The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies in his honor.

I sat in one of the rooms at Sam’s House with the minister and I politely explained to her how this proved the point that the process of hero declarations was flawed and not fit for purpose.

ZANUPF should have had an independent board of people who sit and give meaning to the process if the declarations are to have a national meaning to them.

They could still influence the process but it should have an independent feel to it for purposes of respect and national symbolism, but we know that many in ZANUPF don’t care about these things.

As Sam’s family argued, he was not a ZANUPF member, so they struggled with the idea of a partisan process, let alone being asked to write a letter which seemed like they were “begging” the party to make this decision.

They are not alone in feeling this way, many families don’t want their names intertwined with partisan politics. ZANUPF has made the national heroes acre theirs and not a real national heroes cemetery where national luminaries are buried beyond party politics.

It will remain so until the day the party realizes that it is important to depoliticize the dead from partisan politics.

The minister was polite and the minister understood Professor Sam Moyo’s family point of view.

However the matter was not done yet, the next morning a black Mercedes was dispatched to Sam’s house in Borrowdale with a message that the party wanted Sam’s CV.

The sensible driver realized that he was wasting his time and eventually he left.

Any Zimbabwean who knew Professor Sam Moyo and his work knows that he was a hero regardless of whether he was declared as such or not.

To show how contemptuous our government was, Sam’s funeral was actually packed with South African government officials including ministers of agriculture and struggle luminaries like Blade Nzimande.

They came became they had understood Sam’s immense intellectual contribution to agriculture, academia and Agrarian Studies specifically.

People like Joseph Made who had relied heavily on Sam’s work and passed it off as theirs in cabinet didn’t even come and comfort the family in their darkest hour and yet they wanted to declare him a hero for optics.

Government ministers who came did so because they were friends of the Professor Sam Moyo or intellectual collaborators with him.

So I am not surprised that the Makhurane family has chosen to honor his wishes to be buried at his village in Gwanda. True heroism is not declared, conferred or demanded as many believe and as we have seen for decades in our country.

True heroism is earned! People like Border Gezi and Chenjerai Hunzvi were declared heroes by ZANUPF but are they heroes in the national consciousness and in our hearts?

Folks like Jairos Jiri, Safirio Madzikatire, Lookout Masuku and indeed Professors Phineas Makhurane and Sam Moyo will remain heroes in the cemeteries that they are buried.

I would have done the same too, a hero lives in people’s hearts whether they are buried at their ancestral home like Nelson Mandela or whether they are buried at a contrived burial place!

As a friend said to me, legacies are determined by future generations long after we have died. Self-enshrinement is official narcissism,

Idi Amin could have declared himself a hero together with his mates in Kampala, would that have made him a real hero?

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award winning Zimbabwean international Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker.

He is a Harvard University Nieman Fellow and a CNN African Journalist of the year.

He is also a Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Africa leadership Institute.
Hopewell has a new documentary film looking at mental illness in Zimbabwe called State of Mind, which was launched to critical acclaim.

You can watch the documentary trailer below. Hopewell can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter @daddyhope