Generally all histories, including those in biographies and other sources – their accounts and tropes – are usually subject to revisionism, particularly through ex post facto rationalisation.
Ex post facto rationalisation plays a major role in shaping historical narratives and the stories in the public imagination.In this recent video, President Emmerson Mnangagwa tells Vice-President Kembo Mohadi (whom he refers to as ‘this young man’) about the seemingly insurmountable challenges that he needs to overcome to become president.
In the process, Mnangagwa, who might actually have been addressing his internal rival Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga warning him how difficult it is to become president, repeats the controversial assertion that he survived death sentence because he was under age.
This claim of death penalty and surviving due to under age is directly contradicted by a court record in his own authorised biography, titled Life of Sacrifice: Emmerson Mnangagwa, written by his adviser Eddie Cross, a former opposition senior leader and MP.
The biography tells the life history of Mnangagwa, from childhood, through the liberation struggle to the presidency.
The 153-page book sheds new light on this issue of whether Mnangagwa was sentenced to death or not.
While he says he was, his book shows he wasn’t.
The story is that in 1965, he bombed a train near Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) with his colleague, Matthew Malowa.
Mnangagwa then went on trial facing the death penalty, but was saved from the gallows at the time as he was under the age of 21.
A court record of January 1965 contained in the book, which has many shades of grey magnified by distortions and omissions, makes it clear that the judge did not sentence Mnangagwa to death as he did not even contemplate that.
Justice John Lewis said:“I do not therefore propose to sentence you to death.”
He went on to deliver his ruling without a death sentence.
Lewis was to later become Judge President in 1980.
Hector Mcdonald was the Chief Justice.All histories, including those in biographies, are subject to revisionism and ex post facto rationalisation.
So whether Mnangagwa was on death row or not, the judge, according the court record in his own book, certainly said he never intended to sentence him to death.
He was then imprisoned for 10 after which he was released and deported to Zambia where his parents had been restricted to.
Given these two opposed accounts, what is the true story and the truth?
