Document Zim culture

Lazarus Sauti

Zimbabwean people have produced an abundance of proverbs, riddles, songs, poetry, stories and quotes but only a fraction of this creative treasure has been captured in print.

Most of it remains unrecorded as it continues to be passed from generation to generation. This proves that Zimbabwe shows little care on its cultural heritage. In his research work titled “Value of documenting African knowledge”, Collence Chisita mourned the failure to document Zimbabwean culture to “lack of appreciation and a total disorientation of the mind resulting in some kind of intellectual inertia on the part of intellectuals amongst Zimbabweans.”

Chisita writes: “Development can only take place if Zimbabweans stand on their own platforms, appreciating and using their own cultural (indigenous knowledge) systems and putting on cultural costumes to demystify science and technology.

“Zimbabwe is endowed with a wealth of indigenous knowledge but access to such knowledge is hampered by lack of an environment that permits free flow of cultural ideas among members of the community.”

It is sad to note that not much is being done by Zimbabwe to document its traditional knowledge. Failure to document this culture is a result of colonial hangover. It can also be accredited to total confusion of the mind ensuing in some kind of intellectual inactivity on the part of the intellectuals.

Chisita says, “The failure to accept Zimbabwean culture can be attributed to colonialism and the Christian crusade in the name of Christianity, commerce and civilisation sought to acculturate the conquered in a bid to establish firm control over them.”

However, appreciating and documenting the country’s culture enhances the preservation and restoration of our history for the future.

Munyaradzi Shoko, an information officer, says recording Zimbabwean culture helps to increase international awareness of Zimbabwean heritage and creates an accurate record of important sites for restoration and conservation purposes.

Shoko said: “Documenting the country’s cultures preserves our history and the data can be used for conservation, restoration, research and education. The main intention should be to provide data for the future, should cultural sites deteriorate or be destroyed.”

Ultimately, documenting Zimbabwean culture reconnects Zimbabweans with their cultural heritage and brings back life to some of the traditions or practices of our ancestors since the best hope for preservation of Zimbabwe’s culture lies in those who constitute the cultures.
More so, preserving Zimbabwean culture is the only possible panacea for the negative effects of globalisation — the ability of many people, ideas and technology to move from one country to another.

This implicates globalisation as oriented to achieving universalisation, homogenisation, integration and centralisation: factors which foretell danger to the cultural and linguistic identity of most of the peoples of the world, especially the Zimbabweans.
In fact, the benefits advanced by the proponents of globalisation make this danger difficult to be observed.

In his book “A Fine Madness”, Mashingaidze Gomo states that globalisation can be interpreted as neo-colonialism.

He said, “Globalisation is a system with socio-economic cover equipped to destroy the remnants of African cultural and linguistic identity left by colonialism.”
According to Gomo, the only workable way of preserving the bits and pieces of Zimbabwean cultural and linguistic identity is by means of documentation of our cultures and languages, developed, undeveloped or underdeveloped ones.

Gomo added: “African culture and history must be made by Africans who are determined to re-visit the past to make amends on the present.

“More so to promote and protect the African dream (African Renaissance), African libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions or ministries need to manage their cultural heritage in such a way that they will become access point to users.

“To do this, these heritage resources need to be digitalised for better preservation.”
The purpose of preserving anything is to enable access to it in future. Without access to Zimbabwean cultural heritage it would be difficult for people to learn from the past successes and failures.

Munyaradzi Shoko said: “Library and information professionals in Zimbabwe should have the task of repackaging the cultural heritage in order to meet international standards.

“This is so because survival in the new global business market calls for improved productivity and increased competition.”

Libraries and information professionals should also partner with indigenous communities and must look at the broad issues involved in the preservation of our cultural heritage. They must consider Zimbabwean culture not as simply part of a historical archive, but a contemporary body of relevant knowledge.

Conversely, documenting the Zimbabwean culture is a daunting task and capital intensive. This is because it involves special equipment and elaborate local run.

Accordingly, the government and private organisations should be accessed with a proposal detailing the benefits of documenting Zimbabwean cultures and soliciting their contribution in the provision of funds and other logistics that are required in the documentation process.