Western interference will not deter Zim’s progress
THIS April 18, Zimbabwe celebrates its 41st birthday. This is a very important day when you look at the transition of the country from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe.
For those in the know, independence means a lot, for, it ended a buffet of white supremacist antics that wholly dehumanised the black majority, in most cases, leaving blacks with less rights than the white man’s livestock and pets.
Very little history will help here. After the Pioneer Column colonised the country in September 1890, the land was run as a company and only became a country with a government on October 1, 1923.
A referendum on the status of the then Southern Rhodesia was held in the colony on 27 October 1922. After 59 percent of white settlers voted in favour of the Responsible Government, it was officially granted on 1 October 1923.
It should be noted that the black people did not vote. They were not regarded as people let alone thinking beings, but as simple servants with no voting rights and no interest on how they should be governed.
The government formed then, immediately started to synchronise power and firm white people’s grip on resources while suffocating any resistance by black people to regain their land, their resources and their lost dignity and pride.
Laws like the Animal Husbandry Act, the Land Apportionment Act, etc all entrenched white supremacy and superiority at the same time making black people a lesser race.
Suddenly blacks had limited land and were dispossessed and evicted from fertile and relocated to arid places without compensation, while the whites took prime farming land whenever they found it and liked it.
Suddenly black people were told to keep less than 10 cattle, because their land was limited to six hectares. The whites got huge farms of protected land rights through title deeds.
The black had none, their land was reserved for use by Government any time and they were holding it on behalf of the Government. The Reserves.
Black people were forced into offering free labour in the farm to make contour ridges (“nhamo yemakand
iwa takaiona,” as Thomas Mapfumo aptly captured it in one of his Chimurenga songs).
Because whites had title deeds their land became private property and the trespassing laws were used whenever a black person passed by.
In urban areas, black women without marriage certificates were not allowed hence our parents had two homes, one in town where they stayed as bachelors and village homes where they visited their wives during weekends.
Education for blacks was limited to a certain number and level per years. The curriculum was different too.
Government determined the number of black girls and boys who went to secondary school, for example. Many blacks were just allowed to go to school to understand the language of command. They were just being trained to take instructions.
In Harare, Kings Way, now Julius Nyerere Way, was a major demarcation between the first world and the third world. Before it was paved and closed above the river flew from what is today Harare Gardens down to the flyover to Magaba, Mbare and beyond.
Only selected black people, the servants, were allowed to cross Nyerere into Angwa, First, Second streets etc. The rest were kept on the western side of town, aptly dubbed the Third World.
Manica Road, now Robert Gabriel Mugabe Road was the crossing point and there, was a notice, No Black No Jews!
In the black townships, use of elec
tricity was limited to lighting only, white in white settlements they used power to perpetuity.
I could go on and on. Even the beer one partook in Rhodesia, was determined by your race.
Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1963, made things worse. There was more and more constriction of black people in national governance.
It took brave sons and daughters of this country to take arms and fight the regime.
In the process some lost limb and some paid the ultimate price and died for our independence. Freedom did not come freely. A lot of blood was lost. Dignity for blacks did not come freely, a lot of blood was lost.
Democracy did not come freely, a lot of blood was lot. It was all sacrifice and sacrifice. Zimbabwe was born out of a bloody fight as Britain and its allies like United States of America, used all tactics in the world to avoid democracy, to avoid dignifying the
black Zimbabwean.
Today as we celebrate 41 years of our hard-won independence we get shocked when the United States and its allies in the West stand up and try to preach to us about democracy and human rights, yet we had to go to war to regain our dignity, our lost pride and our looted land.
We take it as a case of a devil running away with the Bible and preaching sanctity.
We wonder where they were with their democracy, when we did not have voting rights, when we did not have rights to our land, when we did not have rights to thing core to our existence as human beings?
As we celebrate our independence we know the US and its allies in the West have no shame. They prefer to ignore facts of how their system of governance has not changed.
They still seek ways of reversing the gains of our independence. They still sponsor opposition parties to remove liberation movements like Zanu-PF from power. They think we are stupid, but we are not.
The US in particular, has latched on a bilateral conflict between Zimbabwe and its former coloniser Britain and has made it its issue, akin to an outsider who mourns more than the bereaved. Foolhardy!
The world over the US has proclaimed itself the world’s policeman, telling other nations how they should govern themselves. Everything should be done the way Americans want. It is called crass.
The US must learn from other countries like China and Russia.