Owen Maseko’s art has been banned

Zimbabwean artist Owen Maseko is in the news again: VOA News report on an act of censorship by the inclusive government banning some of his art:

A special government order was issued in Harare late Friday banning art works by Owen Maseko, briefly seen by the public last march in the main art gallery in Bulawayo.

The artworks, some of them huge murals, concentrated on political violence in the two Matabeleland provinces in the 1980′s aimed at the opposition of that time, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union led by the late nationalist Joshua Nkomo.

President Robert Mugabe sent a brigade of North Korean-trained soldiers into rural areas in the two Matabeleland provinces.  Few outside those areas knew about this terror campaign, South African and British journalists exposed the atrocities in 1983.

[...]

The government order banning the paintings came from the Home Affairs Ministry under the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act.  The ministry is jointly controlled in the 18-month-old unity government by ministers loyal to Mr. Mugabe and to Movement for Democratic Change leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

More details from Zimbabwe’s state-controlled media:

In a Government Gazette published yesterday, Secretary for Home Affairs Mr Melusi Matshiya said it was an offence in terms of the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act (Cinematography and Publications, Production of Pictures and Statutes) for anyone to show the material.

Mr Matshiya said the Board of Censors had in terms of Section 12(1) and (2), 13(1) and (2), and 14(3) of the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act declared as prohibited the showing of DVD clips with effigies, words and paintings on the walls of the Bulawayo National Art Gallery by Owen Maseko.

“The exhibition at the Bulawayo Art Gallery of effigies, paintings and words written on the walls portraying the Gukurahundi era as a tribal-biased event and as such is prohibited,” read the notice.

“The male statue showing genital organs standing at the opening in the Gallery to be as being proof of indecent nature and as such is prohibited from public exhibition.”

Maseko was arrested in March this year for trying to exhibit the images that were condemned by Government.

Significantly, Maseko, who was arrested shortly after his exhibition opened, hasn’t been accused of being either offensive or of  indecency: “He was charged with violating Section 33 of the Criminal Law and Codification Act, which punishes anyone who insults or undermines the authority of the President.” (Via The Herald).

I find it disappointing that the inclusive government is ‘offended’ by art works – paintings on a wall -  and seemingly less offended by the truth depicted in the images: torture, violence and the despair of mothers and the elderly over the murders of their families. It is this truth that deeply offends me!

But why should we be surprised? There have been two official enquiries carried out by the Zimbabwean government under the leadership of Robert Mugabe into the events and horrors of this time. Again: Zimbabwean enquiries, under the leadership of Robert Mugabe; not ‘British’ or western controlled enquiries. (It seems important to state that for the cynics who continue to deny the truth of what happened in this region in the 1980s!). The enquiries were the Dumbutshena enquiry into the Entumbane battle and the 1984 Chihambakwe enquiry into the 1983 massacres. Despite Mugabe’s apparent desire to expose the truth of what happened, the findings of both enquiries have been suppressed. Those of us who know the truth, also know why the government is not happy with the outcomes of the enquiries; because they no doubt expose  grotesque human rights abuses which will inevitably lead to calls for justice and demand that perpetrators are held accountable.

Efforts were made to get the Mugabe regime to make these findings public, but he and his government even ignored Zimbabwean Supreme Court orders instructing them to do so (not SADC court orders which they have also ignored). Again, no doubt because they are scared of what they say.

And now they are banning art that also conveys the truth. They are still scared.

And they have reason to be scared:; because what they did was so horrific and so unimaginably cruel and barbaric – incidents of calculated vicious physical and psychological torture almost too extreme for civilised minds to fully to comprehend.

Those who come from this region remember well the brutality of Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade in the early 1980s and yet it remains a period shrouded with false truths and misrepresentations. Not for the families though: who can forget or misunderstand what murder feels like? Who can forget the sense of shock that rippled through the region when we learned of hundreds of people being deliberately starved by government imposed food embargoes enforced by the Fifith Brigade, or of mass murders, where the memories of in comprehensible terror and bullet-riddled bodies in mass graves still return to haunt us decades later.

Africa has a strong tradition in oral literature, where stories and history are handed down through the generations. There is nothing the Mugabe regime, and apologists for this regime, can do to stop the truth being carried forward with subsequent generations.

The dead also have a way of reminding us of the truth: less than two weeks ago NewsDay was reporting on how the bodies of those slaughtered by the Fifth Bridgade were being dug up by wild animals, even now in 2010. And with those bodies come the most horrific distressing memories:

The remains of at least 13 people who were shot and killed by the Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi era in Chief Mabhikwa’s area of Lupane and buried in shallow mass graves are being dug up by wild animals as a result of failure by villagers and the government to accord the victims decent reburials, NewsDay can reveal.

The 13 are said to have been employed by the Forestry Commission when they were massacred.

NewsDay visited Lupane this week to investigate the developments and got it from reliable sources that members of the Fifth Brigade patrolling the area indiscriminately opened fire at the 13 in front of their families.

No explanation was given for the killing.

Headman Sikhonzi Nyathi of Mafa Forester Village under Chief Mabhikwa, a few kilometres outside Lupane district, told NewsDay that the remains of the murdered people had not been accorded proper burial because there was no money to do that.

“The first to be gunned down were nine forestry workers,” said Nyathi. “They were shot for no reason. After that, we were told to bury them in
shallow graves and their remains have remained there since.”

He said the soldiers ordered the villagers to bury the nine bodies in one grave before they went on to indiscriminately shoot at four others.

“There was nothing that the villagers could do to resist the orders as they also risked being shot,” Nyathi said.

“The villagers carried out the orders and buried them in one grave.

“It was more of just putting them in the dug-up pits and covering them with sand than burying them,” he said.

While the community was still shocked by the incident, the soldiers allegedly summoned all the villagers to another site where they ordered them
to watch and learn a lesson on how people who resisted orders were dealt with.

Nyathi said families, including children, watched as bullets from AK rifles riddled the other four employees.

The government can ban art, and it can suppress the findings of official reports, but they cannot obliterate the memories of those who were there. For others who seek to know more, I recommend you buy a copy of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe. The accounts of torture and murder, based on witness statements, are truely horrific. But this is what we need to know, and what Owen Maseko was trying to convey through his art.

Banned – but how on earth does the government think in this day and age that the world will not see them…? To illustrate my point, please click on the link below. If you would like to share these with your friends and family, simply right click on the image, save it to your desktops and then feel free to email them widely.

Please see our post below titled ‘The art they don’t want you to see, because of the truth they fear you will learn‘ to view more images of Owen Maseko’s art.

This entry was posted by Hope on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 10:29 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.