0 tongogara
Hildegarde The Arena

THEY were a duo whose lives were intertwined by a history based on a master servant relationship, but one in which the servant’s mindset opened up at a young age, and said “No” in a manner the master never expected. MALCOLM Gladwell in his 2013 book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” writes: “Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.”

A fortnight before we commemorate Heroes Day, I revisit a piece I did on November 25, 2010, titled “Cde Tongo, Smith: History defined their destinies.”

I wrote then:
Alexander Kanengoni’s November 11, 2010 piece, “Smith, UDI and the missed ride”, published in The Herald was one of those exposes that evoke memories and experiences you do not normally want to share until you write your memoirs.

I read it many times. Kanengoni is a natural storyteller, who can present a complex issue in simple narrative form, with the meaning deeply embedded in that simplistic format.

Apart from the lessons, it elicited something in me. Just as he wrote: “Long after his death, the man still fascinates me. I am sure I am not the only one.”

Indeed he was not the only one. In 2002, I also missed a face-to-face pre-recording interview with Ian Douglas Smith for a television talk show programme.

Sometimes, opportunities present themselves and while you are still wondering on the why and how of it, they fly away, and all you remain with are regrets and in some cases, just relief.

TONGAGARA-BOOK

My responsibility was to invite Smith on to the programme and also do the interview script. Although I thought that he would decline, I went ahead to prepare the questions, which I believed would nail him beyond redemption.

But the first hurdle was getting him to agree, which meant calling him. I had to be prepared for anything.

The first phone call was well rehearsed. A white male answered and I recall saying: “Can I please speak to Mr Ian Smith,” and the response was, “It’s me speaking.”

I nearly dropped the handset.

ian_smith

This real life situation sounded like a joke. I had actually called him “Mr Smith” and continued doing so throughout the conversation. It was surprising because people were used to just calling him Smith or Ian Smith, hardly Mr Ian Smith. I was being too nice for comfort and spoke with him for longer than I thought.

He had no reservations about the interview. I was quick to note that he quickly wanted to paint himself a “saint”.

When I realised that it was a psychological game where he wanted an upper hand as he started preaching to me, and obviously expecting me to “amen” his every sentiment, I was ready to play it.

I listened on without losing focus on the objective: to make him commit himself to being interviewed. After the “niceties”, I promised to call him as soon as I had worked out the logistics.

I surprised myself because I wanted to see how far we would play the game. I was enjoying it. I called a second time, and this time to schedule the interview date and time, but he in turn asked me whether I had read the book “Rhodesians Never Die” and I said I had. He advised me to read it again before the interview.

I “promised” him that I would, knowing full well that I would not. He was not going to blackmail me into doing the script based on his mindset. The script was going to be a Zimbabwean narrative, and he would have to be a willing player.

If Rhodesians really never died, what other aspect of their perceived immortality did we have to hear?

Then he shocked me when he said, “Tendai, I must say that you sound like a nice lady. I’d be happy to meet you, but I have to work on my cattle first and then after that, we can have the interview. By then, you’d have read the book.”

Then, I hung up!

The mention of cattle struck me. I then remembered so vividly how Chief Rekayi Tangwena at any given moment there was a white audience would say, “Ndingoti ini, Simisi uyu ungotora mombe dzangu.” (I’m saying that (Ian) Smith stole lots of cattle from me.)

If this could not bother me apart from the atrocities committed but his government and the whole colonial system, then nothing else could.

It would have meant that I did not know where Zimbabwe came from, where it was (that time at the height of the land reform programme), and where it was going.

When Smith also called me “a nice lady” (even though he sounded genuine), in an event where I was play-acting and hoping to upstage him, I asked myself whether I was being transformed into a good African.

Suddenly, the prospect of interviewing Smith weighed heavily on me. I held back tears until I got home and confided in a family member that I could not go through with it.

It was affecting me negatively. As I cried, I told my confidante that there was no way Smith could be allowed to have the last laugh at us with me being party to that. There was also nothing new to learn from him.

I quietly abandoned it, and told myself that if he could say “not in a thousand years”, I would equally say the same. I have always wondered what he thought about the interview that never materialised.

But it was not over yet. On November 5, 2007, I felt a deep desire to know the essence behind the 11th hour, 11th day and 11th month when Ian Smith made his Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

So much had been said about how Rhodesians every year got together to “celebrate” this day, just like they did Rhodes and Founders Day.

On November 7, a devotional website I subscribed to sent information about the Mayflower Compact, and this unlocked the mystery. Thus when I realised that it was not originally Smith’s idea. Its roots were in the Mayflower Compact and later the Armistice (First World War).

The analysis I wrote was published on November 21, 2007 and part of it reads: “If you cannot define a problem, then you cannot solve it. History, according to Wikipedia is the aggregate of past events; the continuum of events occurring in succession leading from the past to the present and even into the future; a record or narrative description of past events.

“Is it possible to put the past behind us? What is the significance of history and historical events? Is history used unfairly to renege on one’s responsibilities? How can history be married to the present and the future and would it be a polyandrous or polygamous relationship?

“. . . Should events that gave impetus to Zimbabwe’s armed struggle and Independence in 1980, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in particular be forgotten or be accommodated in discussions about Zimbabwe’s statehood? How do we identify ourselves with historical events such as UDI? When one writes about UDI, are they giving it dignity?”

That evening on November 20, Ian Smith had another surprise. At 10pm BBC World Service’s News hour announced his death in South Africa.

In August 2010, Smith made me cry again. While compiling the National Heroes round-up, Smith, whose name featured in all of them, was featured in General Josiah Magama Tongogara (Cde Tongo’s) life — the zanla commander, in a peculiar manner.

It was different from everyone else. While other nationalists knew Smith much later in their adult lives, it was not the same with Cde Tongo.

They were a duo whose lives were intertwined by a history based on a master servant relationship, but one in which the servant’s mindset opened up at a young age, and said “No” in a manner the master never expected .

While settler colonialists tried to shape Zimbabweans’ psyche, with neo-colonialists still desperately trying to erase its sovereignty, the Smith family shaped Cde Tongo’s destiny.

“Tongo: legend, role model” was the title of Professor Simbi Mubako‘s article published on August 14, 2007.

He wrote: “As with thousands of other African families, Josiah’s father and mother worked on a white man’s farm. By some historical coincidence, their bosses were the Smith family of Shurugwi whose son, Ian Douglas, was to become prime minister of the illegal regime in Southern Rhodesia and who was to make the Unilateral Declaration of independence in 1966, in the name of the white supremacy.”

Just as well that interview never materialised, for missing this important historical link was as good as not doing the interview.

As we interpret historical events, we can easily say that although politicised a lot more in Zambia and Mozambique, Cde Tongo received his first political lessons at the Smith family farm in Shurugwi. He saw the inhuman treatment his parents got.

Prof Mubako also says that to Cde Tongo, land and the education of Africans became the driving forces in his life. Thus he had to extricate himself and everybody else from that inhumanity.

The Smith family never realised that the man who would command the armed struggle was raised on the meagre wage they gave his parents coming from what they claimed to be their land.

Notwithstanding, Smith always received justice. While other former white commercial farmers’ land was repossessed, the Smith farm was not touched.

It is reported that at the Lancaster House, Conference, it was Cde Tongo who broke the ice among the different parties when he reached over to Smith and told him that his mother used to give him sweets. What a score, exchanging sweets with bullets!

What was Smith’s immediate reaction? What went through his mind?

Had he known all along that the son to his parents’ farm labourers was the zanla commander that fought his regime to the bitter end?

Such was Ian Smith. Making people feel the way they feel and in some cases cry — and not crying ordinarily!

As people visit Mozambique and Zambia and see those mass graves, they cannot believe that one man spawned that.

Worthy interrogating is how this paradox played up and affected our lives, for we all got caught up in the irony of two men whose destinies were shaped by history as they fought for the soul of this nation from protracted and diametrically opposed ideological and racial standpoints.

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