THIS newspaper has for the past week been inundated with enquiries from within borders and the Diaspora about the credentials of newly-appointed second Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko.
A majority of people have been expressing ignorance about Mphoko who President Robert Mugabe last week appointed second vice-president of Zimbabwe.
A fellow journalist colleague now practising in Windhoek, Namibia, remarked: “I never knew the fellow until last week.”
The blame should squarely be put on local historians, particularly Aeneas Chigwedere, for distorting the history of the country’s liberation struggle by sidelining the role played by people like Mphoko who was a member of Zipra’s High Command.
Right now our history is so distorted that citizens know very little about Zipra and its cadrés’ contribution in the liberation struggle.
Most of our children, particularly the so-called born-frees, passed through Chigwedere’s history textbooks which are bereft of the heroics of Mphoko and other Zipra cadres.
For the record there is a history book — Dynamics of History — written by one S Mukanya — some scholars claim it was written by Chigwedere under the pseudonym — which deliberately distorted the history of the liberation struggle by crediting the liberation of Zimbabwe solely to Zanu and Zanla forces.
People are now asking about the credentials of VP Mphoko because our historians did a hatchet job on the true history of the liberation struggle.
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In fact, Mphoko’s appointment has exposed Chigwedere, Mukanya and other historians that have written shoddy textbooks purporting to chronicle the history of the liberation of this country.
They failed to correctly capture the facts, hence the currently ignorance about the new second VP Mphoko who colleagues say is the right man for the job.
If our historians had simply written the truth there would not be all these questions being asked about Mphoko. What is disappointing though is that the book — Dynamics of History — is still being used in our schools.
The liberation struggle had several legends, but our historians chose to cherry-pick those they liked to curry favour at the expense of writing the true history of the liberation struggle. We know there are many suspect heroes that came up from nowhere while some real heroes were sidelined.
