Zim: Africa’s elephant in the room
WHEN discussing the direction of Mozambique’s liberation struggle moving forward, one of Mother Africa’s shining examples of revolutionary authenticity, Samora Machel, warned us “to Africanise colonial and capitalist power (otherwise it) would destroy the meaning of our struggle”.
Because Cde Machel earned a much deserved reputation for simplistically explaining problems that appeared to be rather complex, this made it immensely difficult for Mother Africa’s enemies to distort the core meaning and purpose of the ideas that he articulated and emphasised.
What Cde Machel was preparing the African world for was the masqueraders of revolution, who in 2018, 32 years since his airplane crashed on October 19, 1986 between Mozambique and South Africa, have emerged as the biggest threat to the decolonisation process and ultimately our goal of total unification and liberation without boundaries or parameters.
As some of Mother Africa’s most despicable sons like Mobutu Sese Seko, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Jean Bedel Boukassa, Francois and Jean Claude Duvalier, Sir Eric Gairy are buried under the soil of planet earth, never to return for the purposes of tormenting our people again, in reflection the question could be raised; would it be utter blasphemy to say they are to a degree sorely missed especially by those amongst us who have chosen the path of revolution? Before this question is prematurely addressed or declared a waste of time, what must be taken into consideration is when our complete history is written, it would be a complete mockery of our collective experience if we deny we were better off when reactionaries who posed as revolutionaries finally revealed their true colours.
Using some rather drastic and tragic examples to hammer home this particular point and sentiment, the people of the Congo, while extremely angry and hurt after the loss of Cde Patrice Lumumba, came to the realisation that Mobutu, based on his role in aiding the CIA in carrying out that horrific execution, could never stand before his people and claim to be a patriot for the Congo in particular and Mother Africa in general.
Immediately after the assassination of Cde Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, several pundits stated Blaise Compaore’s cowardly act of betrayal was rooted in envy and jealousy of his best friend. However, the truth of the matter is military neo-colonialism was the banner Compaore was more comfortable embracing. When the people of Zimbabwe look back on the Third Chimurenga and the Second Republic, they will appreciate the main mouthpiece of MDC, Nelson Chamisa, primarily because he never pretended to embrace their revolutionary process.
Chamisa’s jetsetting to the United States and making up the story that President Trump promised him a large sum of blood money and then travelling to Zionist Israel to let the Labour and Likud parties know that all Zimbabweans don’t unconditionally support the Palestinian cause and consider them Mother Africa’s eternal enemies, was him simply being true to himself.
From this vantage point, Chamisa’s undying loyalty to civilian neo-colonialism serves Zimbabwe first and Mother Africa as a whole even better, than the metamorphosis of his political father, former Zimbabwean prime minister and MDC founder Morgan Tsvangirai, who, believe it or not, as a college student organiser was given the nickname Arafat in recognition of one of the greatest champions and voices of the Palestinian liberation struggle.
One who embraces Arafat in their 20’s but by the time they are in their 50’s, are trusted confidants of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Madeline Albright, was obviously experimenting with the ideas that made Cde Arafat make the Palestinian liberation struggle his life’s primary purpose.
Based on this rationale and premise, our so-called African American sisters and brothers will become much more appreciative of former US Secretary of State and Joint Chief of Staff General Colin Powell more than not only any member of the Congressional Black Caucus but the former Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party of Self-Defence, Eldridge Cleaver.
Unlike Cleaver who 20 years after standing shoulder to shoulder with Kwame Ture and Huey P. Newton became a born-again Mormon and even supported former US president Ronald Reagan who as Governor of California was responsible for the assassination of the youngest member of the Oakland Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Hutton, General Powell as a young man slaughtered Vietnamese people and evolved to help assassinate former Grenadian prime minister Maurice Bishop and drop bombs on Libya and Panama in the mid and late eighties.
Africans and non-Africans alike who are apologists for Reagan can never justify his decision not to honour the Lancaster House Agreement, that would have returned Zimbabwe’s indigenous land to its beloved citizens 28 years ago. In the name of all who died to liberate this sacred land, we boldly dump the blame on the doorstep of US-EU imperialism even if they fail to acknowledge the arrogance and dismissive nature of their most evil by-products.