Paul T Shipale
With this third insert on the review of the biography of the late Bishop Peter T. Kalangula, allow me to respond to Ndumba J. Kamwanyah who alleged that I “seem to push for a narrow view of history, suggesting that Namibia’s liberation struggle should only be understood through the lens of SWAPO’s master narrative.”
Kamwanyah also said that I accused the author of the biography, Nelson T. Kalangula, of being biased because he is related to the late Bishop. Far from it! What I said was “the author of the biography Nelson T. Kalangula, who is related to the late Bishop Peter T. Kalangula, is not neutral in his writing but seeks to fashion a certain reality and portray his grandfather as a hero.”
The above view is premised on an eclectic approach and scholarly views contained in a thesis titled “The politics of narrating the performance of power in selected Zimbabwean Autobiographical writings,” submitted in fulfilment of the requirements in respect of the Master’s Degree in English, in the Department of English in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Free State, in March 2019, by Walter Kudzai Barure.
The primary concern of the study was to juxtapose the ‘patriotic’ and ‘oppositional’ narratives and highlight salient connections between self and nation, past and the present and, autobiography and postcolonial theory. The dissertation concludes that ‘oppositional’ narratives appropriate and emulate the performance of power to the extent of being travesty of democracy and suggest that a revisionist and inclusive writing of the nation goes against the grain of discriminatory and demonisation discourses.
While I am being accused of pushing “for a narrow view of history, suggesting that Namibia’s liberation struggle should only be understood through the lens of SWAPO’s master narrative,” I personally said “looking, in the Namibian context, at the political autobiographies of those in power and those who were side-lined by ‘patriotic history’ and reading these autobiographies side by side locates the self in historical and aesthetic contexts that illustrate the fault-lines of representation and identity.”
Nevertheless, I still maintain the view that the author of the biography, Nelson T. Kalangula, who is related to the late Bishop Peter T. Kalangula, is not neutral and objective in his writing but subjective. Indeed, autobiography are chronicling an event making “history” yet “performing several rhetorical acts” such as justifying perceptions, upholding reputations, disputing the preceding accounts of others, settling scores, conveying cultural information and inventing desirable futures among others (Smith & Watson, 2001: 10).”
Any form of writing is not a neutral undertaking but a political one in which texts speak and seek to both re-present and fashion ‘reality’ (Wa Thiong’o, 1997; Auerbach, 2003 and Hall, Evans & Nixon, 2013). Similarly, Bluck (2003) and Vambe and Chennells (2009: 1) note that narrating the self is inherently political and at best a performance that is staged in multiple spaces.
The question is; did the late Bishop Kalangula not participate in the 1978 elections, becoming a DTA member of the interim government from 1979–1983 at the time of the cassinga massacre on the 4th of May 1978? How come we did not hear of his protest to such a barbaric attack on the innocent Namibians? Did he not form the Ovamboland Anglican Church as an African independent church, with the support of the South African government officials and the Security Police?
Unlike Bishop Zephania Kameeta who was arrested by the South African authorities for protesting against the Turnhalle Constitutional Conference, why was Bishop Kalangula never arrested by the apartheid regime?
Kamwanyah also said that dismissing the writings of others as mere ‘oppositional narratives,’ limits our understanding of the past. Instead of lecturing my learned colleague, I will allow Walter Kudzai Barure to lecture him when he posits that patriotic narratives are intended to proclaim the seamless continuity of the history of the African revolutionary tradition.
Indeed, although Ranger is always credited as having conceptualised the term in broad swathes, prior research by Sylvester (2003: 35) suggests that patriotic history both builds on and departs from previous nationalist narratives through a series of omissions, additions and simplifications. It is clear from this orientation that the misrepresentation(s) of Africa and Africans in the imperial accounts, de-humanise, de-historicise and objectify their subjects as well as silencing and discovering them.
This is revealed in Livingstone’s (1857) missionary narrative, in which he describes Africa as a vast hinterland and purports to have discovered the Victoria Falls. Inherent in these imperial romances is the politics of gazing and the desire to control and tame the mystic landscape, animals and Africans.
The use of bigoted epithets is replete in colonial auto/biographies and justified the perception and reception of myths and stereotypes of Africa and Africans. Terms such as ‘uncharted country’, ‘barbaric land’, ‘empty unmapped lands’ and ‘no man’s land’ are evident in Gale’s One Man’s Vision (1935), Somerville’s My Life was a Ranch (1976: 153) and Smith’s The Great Betrayal:
The memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith (1997: 1-2). Gale’s (1935) biography glorifies Cecil John Rhodes’ vision and describes the movement of the Pioneer Column in an untamed hinterland and how it formed the nucleus of a civilised population in the heart of a barbaric space. The same sentiments are echoed in Somerville’s memoir which narrates how Devuli Ranch emerged from a wild bushveld country and how the ‘primitive’ inhabitants became civilised through their contact with white settlers.
The former Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, contends in his (1997: 1-2) autobiography that clearly Rhodesia was a ‘no man’s land’ as Cecil John Rhodes and the politicians back in London had confirmed. As a result, no one could accuse them of trespassing or taking part in an invasion. In essence, the African landscape was imagined as vast, unsettled and underutilised in order to rationalise and justify the colonial conquest.
It can be inferred from the above that imperial narratives simulated and conditioned racial hostilities. Comparably, a “radical re-thinking and re-formulation of forms of knowledge and social identities authored and authorised by colonialism and western domination” (Prakash, 1992: 8) incited black writers to write their own personal histories. These narratives “repudiated master-narratives and disposed Eurocentric hegemonic assumptions” (Dirlik, 2018: 56). This is how patriotic history came into being.
Some auto/biographies endeavour to be revisionist and critically resist dominant views about patriotic history and the performance of the liberation struggle. This revisionism is not a subtle regurgitation of patriotic history because their political perspective is too broad to be subsumed under patriotic narratives. In addition, Rooney (1995: 139) terms this, re-writing “the story of the story, the escape which escapes us, [and] the unwritten which makes for further writing [and] further departures.” Thus, ‘oppositional’ narratives are chiefly concerned with the writing of the ‘unwritten’ and re-writing the written off in the national narrative.
Postcolonial theory is an ever-evolving process of resistance and reconstruction that addresses all aspects of the colonial process from the time of colonial contact up to present day (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 2006: 2). Similarly, Bhabha (2015) and Young (2012) contend that postcolonial theory ‘remains’ relevant, firstly, because of its continuing projection of past conflicts into the experience of the present. Secondly, the same theory is germane to the aesthetics of cultural difference and politics of minorities in an age of globalisation. This desire to transform the present by destabilising the past is what is central in the representation of both, ‘oppositional’ and patriotic narratives.
The main proponents of this eclectic theory are Derrida, Foucault, Bakhtin, Butler, Gramsci, Spivak, Althusser, said Postcolonial literatures are a result of transcultural processes such as hybridity, mimicry and liminality. Young (1995: 16) argues that hybridity can be invoked to imply a contra-fusion and disjunction (or even separate development) as well as fusion and assimilation.
Moreover, Bhabha (2015) defines hybridity as a form of incipient critique that works within the cultural design of the present to reshape our understanding of the performative and political interstices. Similarly, Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (2006, 2013) note that hybridity stresses the mutuality of the colonial process and its counter-resistance. Put simply, a hybrid postcolonial situation can be seen as a counter-narrative and a counter-performance of power by the dominated and oppressed.
Limitations of revisionist ‘oppositional narratives’
Opposition leaders perceive the former liberation movements as political parties whose agenda had its terminus ad quem with independence. This is a word in Latin which means; the point at which something ends or finishes. Patriotic narratives, however, constantly proclaim the continuity of the history of the revolutionary tradition. This tradition is ritualised through an affirmation of the past. Therefore, patriotic history is unfinished history that is premised on a linear continuum of the heroic literary tradition that glorifies the past in order to create permanent ideals and values embedded in the liberation struggle.
The ramification of the misreading of patriotic history by the revisionist-oppositional narrative is that it fortifies the simplification of the past and sustains a monolithic and complacent narrative. Although the sole justification of this misreading is to highlight the distinction between two dominant parties, it proves to be a futile exercise because these differences are essentialised and politicised.
Accordingly, Mbembe (2015: 148) contends that “[m]any things are not simply set by side; they also resemble each other”. This view is also buttressed by Tendi (2010: 171) who argues that the patriotic history has been reproduced in some quarters of the revisionist and oppositional narrative because of the utility and familiarity of the distinction between ‘patriots’ and ‘sell-outs.’
Revisionist and oppositional narrative is what Mbembe (2015: 165) describes as a “chameleon” that changes depending on its location. This chameleon-like character is what Bhabha (2012: 121) refers to as a “camouflage”, an effect of mimicry. It was made abundantly clear that the role and status of an autobiography continue to be paradoxical because it can be objective and subjective in the presentation and evaluation of events of history. This insight was confirmed by the fact that most autobiographies have tendencies of highlighting the ‘good side’ of issues. It is a writing trait typified by Muzorewa as a particular writer who deliberately ignored to document certain events concerning certain miscalculations that could disgrace his own personality as a nationalist.
However, Maposa’s study revealed that autobiographies, as a literary genre, can be taken as important sources of national history in so far as they show how historical events affected the writer and, in the process, how those events affected others. In so far as they can complement each other to provide a holistic picture of the history of the nation, an autobiography can, in that regard eliminate bias that is stark in the history of a nation. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
