BY BHEKILIZWE BERNARD NDLOVU Many years ago, a people decided to document their trajectory going back to what is believed to by many to be the origins of men starting with a gentleman called Adam who had a lady called Eve extracted from his rib while he slept. This story is now a universal story and is being evangelised by believers as the story of God and many centuries down the line it continues to spread like a veld fire. This is the magic of documenting narratives and their main characters, telling their stories and looking at their weaknesses and strengths for posterity to learn and improve.
The story of the bible has serious heroes such as Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Jesus, Peter and a snake that spoke. When the preacher man has a lesson to deliver about something, these characters tend to be quoted for their good or bad behaviour and ideally those who believe should be getting better in behaviour and becoming a better generation progressively. It is true that we are individuals but life tends to put us in groups and communities and in our continuing attempts to live better and pursue happiness we do well when we document our narratives whether good or bad.
The workplace is awash with activity and is at the centre of the productivity of any country and here and there you have individuals performing well and really inviting that kind of attention and the documentation that the biblical people enjoyed. It is interesting for example that the whole book of the Bible, while starting with the Adamic story, ends up zeroing in on a man called Abraham who is said to have heard God’s voice and boom, out of that man’s story a whole nation called Israel is born and enjoys such attention worldwide as the chosen nation. Their story is well-documented.
Growing up as a young man I remember this aggressive marketing guru I never met but whose name became music in every household. His name was Paul Tangi Mhova Mukondo who ran an insurance company that was well-advertised on radio and even coming to get associated with a beautiful jingle. Paul went into the hearts of most Zimbabweans by declaring that hupenyu hwenyu idambudziko remoyo wangu (Your lives are my concern). He ran a popular insurance programme called Mari NeUpenyu Wevanhu broadcasting on Radio 2 (now known as Radio Zimbabwe) on Sunday mornings since the early 70s. This was entrepreneurial prowess at its best and sadly Paul’s traction is little known. If you talk to someone who lived in those days and ask them if they remember VaPaul Mukondo, they suddenly light up and go ‘oh yes, that insurance man of the then popular jingle, itai cent cent mundibatsirewo.
The silence around Paul and other serious workplace heroes’ lives and stories is a display of our failure to understand the paramount importance of documentation as a discipline if people are going to learn from their collective story and make it better as they unfold it. We live without checking whether we are growing and learning from our strengths and weaknesses as a people. Paul’s strengths and of course weaknesses are ours as Zimbabweans. They are for us to learn about work and continue to improve, and as a result make our lives and those of posterity better. We cannot afford as a people to just live and gather no data and glean no lessons from what we do. That is poor knowledge management and it means we might not be learning from our stories.
We have the heroes’ acre, for example, where memories of war heroes are captured, but we are human beings who grow and develop. Shall we always talk about war, how people got killed and killed others or we also have other things to focus on; life as a whole, work, love, stories and other things that define life? Interestingly Paul was himself a nationalist who was imprisoned for protesting against Ian Smith’s UDI. Together with the larger-than-life character of Joshua Nkomo and others, Paul served his prison time but came back to live his life as an outstanding entrepreneur. One even wonders why Paul is not buried at the heroes’ acre.
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It’s a big consolation that Samuel Chimusoro did write something about Paul, little known and less read unfortunately. ‘Nothing is Impossible’ (1983) novel by Samuel Chimsoro is based on Mkondo’s early life & Pre-Independence. What is sad is that books easily gather dust and stories get forgotten. Perhaps we need to rethink and reconsider our knowledge preservation forms such as folktales. Most of us remember umvundla, (rabbit) as a main character in our folktales meaning that this form of entertainment-education worked in knowledge management because even now we still talk about these animals including baboon, the fool and villain of our folklore. How about workplace heroes? We forgot, just like that?
As we speak, history continues to be made and we are getting outstanding performance in the workplace by teams and individuals. Just recently Dr Sikhulile Moyo the now world acclaimed virologist did Zimbabwe proud by becoming the first to identify the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. In 2022, Moyo was listed in the Time 100 list. If we do not aggressively capture this story and use it to grow, Moyo’s story will just become history and a Wikipedia story unknown by posterity and an opportunity lost for us to learn and improve.
Mukondo, Moyo and many others need to be celebrated as they live and even when they are gone. They need to be as popular as the rabbit in our folklore. Many other names come to mind as one thinks of these many workplace heroes who shined in their different types of work they chose to do and did well. Joseph Madimba the brilliant news reader, Noreen Welsh, Peter Ndlovu the soccer legend, Jairos Jiri the charity worker who left a mark in the field of charity, Sipho Malunga who has carved a niche for himself in the area of social marketing work, Tawana Kupe, the academic who rose from teaching literature at varsity to becoming the one who sits at the helm of one of the best universities in South Africa, Sabelo-Gatsheni, a successful academic whose work in decoloniality is unprecedented, Brian-Tamuka Kagoro an international leader and pan-Africanism enthusiast and Percy Makombe, another international leader in social marketing work. The list is endless and we do need, as Zimbabwe, to find a way of turning these stories into big narratives with clear lessons for ourselves. We need to talk about what makes these people tick so that we may learn their secrets and tick.
- Bhekilizwe Bernard Ndlovu’s training is in human resources training, development and transformation, behavioural change, applied drama, personal mastery and mental fitness. He works for a South African organization as a Learning & Development Specialist, while also doing a PhD with Wits University where he looks at violent strikes in the South African workplace as a researcher. Ndlovu worked as a human resources manager for several blue-chip companies in Zimbabwe and still takes keen interest in the affairs of people and performance management in Zimbabwe. He can be contacted on bhekilizweb.bn@gmail.com