Takura Zhangazha

Drawing on childhood memories of Zimbabwe hosting liberation refugees, Takura Zhangazha argues that today's anti-African sentiment in South Africa contradicts the values of Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela and the continent's liberation struggle.

Takura Zhangazha: "In Zimbabwe we have this primary challenge of either beginning to forget the fact that we are also a class-based society. Both by way of our modern colonial history as well as by way of our many desires to by almost any means necessary move from one ‘lower class’ rung to the next and then shouting from the hilltop that we have made it. Only to come tumbling down again. Or to die trying to get up the same ladder, never mind giving a pretense at still being there."

By Takura Zhangazha I am not sure if there has been some sort of scientific study on this but I will hazard to argue that we Zimbabweans are a highly opinionated people. This is for various reasons. Some of them similar to other countries in Africa such as assumptions of the superiority of our education system. Meaning our ability to speak English or mimic the political economic knowledge and cultural systems of our former colonisers. Including complex considerations of our generally unrequited desire for equal ‘recognition’ for these capabilities. Hence for example we have inundated social media chat with convoluted explanations of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, something that fundamentally very few of us would easily understand.

Takura Zhangazha: "Many of us with rural roots will invariably remember fireside conversations around an uncle or aunt who instead of going to school would hide in the hills in abstract resistance to the classroom or ‘kwa fata’ as it was referred to in those early days of the entrenching of the colonial political economy. With ahistorical hindsight we would find humour in this but the reality of the matter was that the introduction of formal education to young Africans via initially mainly missionaries was about disruption of African knowledge production systems. And also our forced cooption into a colonial political economy that promoted not only capitalist inequality but also the racist narratives that came with it."

By Takura Zhangazha Zimbabwe’s current ruling party Zanu PF is noticeably beginning to exude a specific confidence about how it is running the country. Not necessarily through its own members but those that are at its political and strategic helm.