Indigenous Knowledge Systems : Management of Harurwa : Part 6
THAT clearly illustrates the nauseatingly overbearing paternalistic and belittling characteristics of colonialism and racism because the coloniser has to think for you and whatever comes to his mind, whether you agree with it or not will be imposed on you because the racist coloniser has said so.
Luckily the new ministry of education of Zimbabwe after independence has recognised this mistake and they are now correcting this colonial linguistic catastrophe.
I know that some people will want to lynch me for this observation I have made on the shortcomings of George Fortune’s work because everybody has been made to deify George Fortune because,
“He played a key role in establishing African linguistics as a field of study at African universities.”
That still sucks and reeks to high heaven. We cannot be held at ransom simply because some liberal who was earning his fortune working on our languages, with clearly demonstrable fatal errors as indisputably exemplified above is now seen as some saint when for crying out loud, we could not even be allowed to work on our own languages because of racism which this liberal was part of either directly or by association or both!
People like J.C. Kumbirai only started working with George Fortune much later. Even then, J.C Kumbirai and company only worked with George Fortune in a very timid, submissive and slavishly subordinate role as racism demanded. George Fortune used his position of privilege to imperiously work on indigenous languages he didn’t have the foggiest about and imposed anything that came to his head when the actual indigenes were there to write the correct things.
Yet Kumbirai and company could not correct him because colonialism and racism forbade them to amend any mistakes George Fortune could have been making (and there were many) simply because “master doesn’t make mistakes”, see?
That is one of the biggest shortcomings of racism.
In fact, it puts the racist in this prison where he has to pretend to know everything so that he maintains the myth of superiority over the person he erroneously imagines to be racially superior over when inwardly he/she is burning and silently and inaudibly crying out for help. But, because he cannot be seen to be getting help from the subject he looks down upon, he therefore carries on with whatever in an erroneous way because of arrogance when just a little bit of indigenous knowledge could have effortlessly solved the problem. Shame!
It’s the same thing as the credit erroneously given to missionaries for having, “educated Africans”. I think that’s another area that needs re-examination and further analysis.
Firstly, the missionaries made it a condition that in order for black people to get the so called education, they had to give up their own religion and convert to Christianity, a foreign religion unknown to the African.
And with that, the dignity of the black man was completely robbed from him thanks to this dastardly act by the missionary.
Secondly, the so called education the missionary was dishing out to the black man was this Eurocentric education which presently continues to alienate the black man from his real self.
If the missionaries were genuine about educating blacks, they should have continued with the version of education black people already had. This education was black home grown and not replaced this with Eurocentric learning, which did not have anything to do with black people.
This explains why for example people like Indians and Arabs, although also colonised by the very same British, remained culturally intact. This is because the British were not able to take from Arabs and Indians their cultural fabric. Today, Arabs and Indians, albeit also colonised by the British, have largely remained their original selves religiously and culturally.
With us, maybe because of our smaller numerical numbers, it was easier to control us culturally and religiously and we ended up having an education, a religion and a world view based on the coloniser’s own whims.
In that regard, the missionary was therefore worse of an oppressor because he pretended to be doing something good to us when in fact, he was the worst agent of racism and colonialism.
His so called education completely disregarded and threw out the existing education the blacks themselves were giving each other in their own way.
Coupled with being converted to a religion the black people had nothing to do with, this whole trick took away the black man’s soul and blackness and replaced it with nothingness.
So thank you, but no thank you. George Fortune, like all other liberals earned a fortune, no pun intended, using the black man’s plight as the source of his income.
In the process he messed up a lot of things about our languages much as the Christian missionaries completely killed the black man in us by converting us to their religion as if we didn’t have a religion of our own.
So these two sets of people are equally oppressive racists if not worse. Unlike the colonial government which didn’t pretend to like you as a black person and told you straight up that as far as they were concerned, the black man was a monkey who did not deserve even third class human treatment, people like George Fortune and the missionaries pretended to be at one with the black man when they were exploiting and oppressing the black man even worse.
That’s typical racist paternalistic liberalism which is more oppressive than an open racist who doesn’t waste your time when you think that he is probably a nice person.
An open racist is clear from the onset so you keep your distance and or brace up for a fight to the death whereas a liberal pretends to be with you then sells you out in a very betraying manner.
Having said that, although the Harurwa insects can be eaten on their own, their primary use is that of murivo to accompany the sadza.
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