AFRICANA-AUSTRALIANS MISS MUGABE Okello Oculi
President Mugabe’s abrasive wit matches the evil records and hypocrisies of the west, writes
The ‘SHIT-MOUTH’ diplomacy shooting out of America’s White House has missed razor-sharp rebuttals from President Robert Mugabe who recently went on a political sabbatical following a drama which African diplomats in southern Africa attribute to his writing its script. As a point of departure, President Donald Trump who is himself a descendant of immigrants suspected to have originated from Norway and settled in Scotland before reaching North America, has unwittingly opened gates for African diplomacy to open wide. Specifically, he has opened skies over the fate of Africans in their contact with European immigrants who landed in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Peru and elsewhere in the Americas.
European immigrants shipped to Australia were hauled from rat-infested, disease-wrecked slums and prisons of London and other British cities, and hit the over two million local Africans with strange European diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, chicken pox, smallpox and syphilis. They captured their past with the slogan of ‘’Coming From Down Under’’. Typical of the wretched of the earth, they threw at their African hosts in the Pacific Sea area the cruelties with which the British aristocracy and new business classes had bashed them – with millions of their kin perishing from plague and starvation in urban slums.
Their leaders claimed that their Black hosts had migrated from the Philippines, and not Africa. They invented the term ‘’Aborigines’’ to avoid acknowledging their linkage to Africa. Like their kin in Kenya, Algeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola and Mozambique they set on what one Governor MacQuarrie in 1819 undertook as ‘’a war of extermination against them’’ in Western New South Wales. They also grabbed land from local owners. Between 1788 and 1933 the over two million Africans had been decimated by violence, foreign disease, and famine to a mere 74,000 people.
The level of fear of black-skinned people regaining control of that vast Australia has remained so strong that as recently as 2013 a proposed referendum to amend the Australian constitution so that ‘’indigenous’’ peoples would be ‘’Recognised as Australians’’ was successfully blocked due to intensive white opposition. In 1999, Prime Minister John Howard refused to officially apologise for all the crimes committed against ‘Africana-Australians’. On February 13, 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ‘’issued a public apology’’ for brutal practices of kidnapping Black children; forcibly attaching them to white families and denying them awareness of their true identity, language and culture. That policy explains why in 2010 the first Africana-Australian to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives had the typically British names of Ken Wyatt. The same policy of ‘’assimilation’’ through kidnapping Black children was also practised in Canada.
Prime Minister John Howard had a special fondness for President Robert Mugabe; virtually advocating for a plan to seize him and lock him up inside vaults of the International Criminal Court at The Hague in Holland. On first glance, it seemed as if he wanted to cover for his 2007 policy of ‘’compulsory acquisition of Aborigines land’’; opening up their land for exploitation by companies mining bauxite, coal, red earth and others. The real hatred for Mugabe was in his reparation policy of violently chasing British immigrants from land they had seized by bleeding to death Shona and other ethnic groups across Zimbabwe. The echoes of his version of nationalism into Australia gave John Howard nightmares.
On January 31, 2018, the Senate in Poland passed a law which made it a crime to blame the country for the holocaust against Jews during World War Two. The legislative act enraged Israel and Jews worldwide. Israel has invested enormous resources in tracking individuals who played official roles in sending Jews to ‘’concentration camps’’, and putting them on trial: preferably in Israel’s own courts. This diplomacy of harvesting hidden histories for the purpose of punishing violators of people’s rights to life and human dignity, has not received much visibility in Africa’s international affairs.
President Mugabe’s abrasive wit was often quick to recall evil records and hypocrisies of his critics. When an American journalist asked why at over 80 years he should still be ruling over Zimbabwe, he shouted at her to direct that question to an older Queen Elizabeth Two. At the Commonwealth Conference held in Australia at which Zimbabwe’s membership was suspended, only President Obasanjo is reported to have publicly rebuked John Howard for championing the imposition of sanctions against Zimbabwe for violations of human rights of white farmers in Zimbabwe when his own country stunk of a long history of physical and socio-economic genocide against Africana-Australians. President Mugabe has an agenda waiting for his remaining years.
The agenda of ‘’Liberation Pan-Africanism’’ has a vast canvass to cover: ranging from Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, and Peru to Canada. Israel has valuable lessons to borrow for investigation and documentation of crimes against peoples of African descent. Her quarrel with the Vatican should animate Africa over records of Popes who blessed European Slave trade; colonial exploitation, genocide and South Africa’s ‘’crime against humanity’’. Pope Francis should be Africa’s supporter.
There are local allies to work with. In Australia, university students in the 1960s, followed examples of their peers in the United States to mount ‘’Freedom Rides’’ in buses to educate Africana-Autralians about fighting for their rights. African intervention with scholarships and diplomatic noises at Commonwealth and United Nations meetings remain new frontiers.
THE REAL HATRED FOR MUGABE WAS IN HIS REPARATION POLICY OF VIOLENTLY CHASING BRITISH IMMIGRANTS FROM LAND THEY HAD SEIZED BY BLEEDING TO DEATH SHONA AND OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS ACROSS ZIMBABWE