Mahoso argues that all those people in Africa who buy the Western narrative have ‘African disks full of white memory’. This is the reason for him why they would hate themselves; hate their own people, hate African culture, African values and above all, their elders, but only to love the Western culture and values. All such individuals for Mahoso do not exhibit ubuntu,49 since they are guided by ‘white man’s Eurocentric
localisation of humanity called globalisation (which) itself leads to nar- cissism. And for Mahoso, Narcissus is the enemy of African Relational Ethics, because instead of relating, Narcissus or Europe’s man goes as far as Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. An African, (with Afri-
in_cote_d_ivoire. (accessed on 16 June 2011); Thabo Mbeki, ‘Thabo Mbeki Speaks on Lybia’, taken from: Pan-African Views, Insights and Opinions from Zimbabwe, posted by Tichaona Zindoga on: http://tichzindoga.blogspot.com/2011/04/thabo-mbeki- speaks-on-libya.html. (accessed on 22 January 2012).
47 Mahoso, ‘Racist Media, African Leadership’.
48 Mahoso, ‘Denigration of African Elders’; Cf. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan Books, 2007, who analyses the CIA publication of
1996, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, which lays the strategies for America to dominate other countries by rearranging society and creating disaster situations for the opportunity to rearrange memory.
can disk full of African memory-Ubuntu) in contrast, chooses his or her leaders from within the dariro (circle) where the opposite dictum is the foundation and context of leadership.50
Even the Bible for Mahoso acknowledges and accepts this African phi- losophy of ubuntu, which philosophy penetrated the world of the Bible through Egypt. In other words the Bible does not condone the Western conception of reality but that of Africans. Therefore, flushing out white disk from the African memory entails accepting the biblical teaching (African philosophy of ubuntu) over non biblical philosophy which is represented by the Western mentality.
Typical of him, Mahoso cites the Bible, (Luke 2:40, 52) the vernacular (Ndau) translation, to confirm the validity or ‘biblicity’ of the pan-African ideology of ubuntu. He argues that, the Bible itself expresses the Judeo- Christian debt to the African relational ethics of Egypt when it tells us: In Ruka 2:40: (that) Nomwana (Jesu) wakakura, akagwinya, anoungwaru,
nenyasha dza Mwari dzaiva padera pake’. But it was not enough for Ma-
hoso, for Jesus to just grow and become strong, and be filled with wis- dom and the grace of God, that is the reason we are told, ‘In Ruka 2:52:
Na Jesu wakakura muungwaru nokudikana ndi Mwari nevanhu’, that Jesus
grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men. This is important for Mahoso, since, ‘the leader, the teacher, leads and teaches because he has a deep relationship with God and the povo’.51 By implica-
tion therefore, Mugabe and other African liberation leaders do not only have wisdom and the hand of God upon their lives, but they also have a relationship with the masses (povo). This povo, for Mahoso, is a com- munity of Africans with African disks full of African memory of the African struggles against slavery and colonialism. From this perspective, the African struggles against imperialism are inspired by Jesus.
In praise of ZANU PF government, the same government loathed and blamed for destruction of the economy by those he describes as ‘Afri- cans with disks full of white memory’, Mahoso strikes a similarity be- tween ZANU PF leadership and Jesus’ mission. According to him, ‘the liberation movement on which the Government of the new Zimbabwe was based in 1980 was deeply entrenched within and among the rural communities (like Jesus) as a legitimate government of the people’. Therefore, ‘this new state built by the liberation movement has suc-
50 Mahoso, ‘Flush white disk from an African memory’. 51 Mahoso, ‘Flush white disk from an African memory’.
ceeded because it has connected the three mapfiwa of legitimacy in the rural African community: It has linked the spirit media, the mambo (chief), and the mhondoro’. This is an intersection of spheres or circles of relational power which produce a new reality where they all meet.52 And this for Mahoso is not the case in the other camp, that
group of ‘Africans with disks full of white memory’. In Mahoso’s her- meneutics, since Jesus is identified with ZANU PF’s pan-African ideol- ogy it follows that the devil is identified with the MDC, since they are not connected to the masses like Jesus (ZANU PF). The legitimacy of Afri- can leadership as Mahoso observes, ‘derives from its capacity to re- member or reconnect relationships disrupted and disconnected by the evil forces of slavery, colonialism, apartheid, imperialism and neo- colonialism’53 and this is what ZANU PF stands for.
According to Mahoso, the worst thing that ever happened to Zimbabwe in the last years is the willingness of leaders of the MDC formations and the supposed intellectuals and activists supporting them to lie about and against Zimbabwe in exchange for money, sponsorship and other West- ern inducements.54 Blessing Miles-Tendi, observed this trend among
academics in Zimbabwe, who always misrepresented or exaggerated the negative situation in the country for financial gains.55 Such people, for
Mahoso are not worth of being leaders, as they are not rooted in the masses like Jesus.
Under the conditions Zimbabwe was subjected to, even some staunchest African liberationist scholars were forced to reconsider their positions for survival, hence were rewired. It was only the few scholars like Ma- hoso, who never recanted their pan-Africanism. In a country, where the shock that was deployed upon its people could be described as unprece- dented in history, Mahoso believes that the failure of all the strategies to bring about the much desired results of regime change, even after flood- ing the disks of many with white memory, was because God protected Zimbabwe. In deed it is even difficult to understand how people of Zim- babwe managed to survive in a nation whose grocery shops were literally
52 Mahoso, ‘Flush white disk from an African memory’. 53 Mahoso, ‘Flush white disk from an African memory’.
54 Mahoso, ‘Wikileaks confirms the puppets in the MDC that we already knew’. AFRI-
CAN FOCUS: The Sunday Mail. 05 December 2010.
55 Cf. Blessing Miles-Tendi, Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectu-
als and the Media. Britain: Peter Lang, 2010, 59-60; Mahoso ‘Wikileaks confirms the puppets in the MDC’.
empty for more than two years. For Mahoso, it was a miracle; it can only be attributed to God.