Unity Accord beneficial to Zim
AT the height of Africa’s reawakening and fight against colonialism, the coloniser manufactured a belief that made it difficult for Pan-Africanists to see a reality that was creeping in.
Ubuntu warriors like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Guinea’s Ahmed Sékou Touré and Mali’s Modibo Keïta advised peer leaders that African unity at leadership level was strength at a citizen’s level.
The leadership-citizen nexus is a bedrock for unity. The trio passionately spoke about the dangers that were presented by the coloniser’s “divide and rule” strategy.
This meant division at leadership level would, unfortunately, cascade to the citizenry. At the continental level, the British, French, Germans, Belgians, Italians and their other imperial counterparts orchestrated and coordinated a way to derail the unity of both leaders and citizens. They exploited the continent’s diversity such that after independence, sponsored violence through leaders of various ethnic groups became rampant.
In Southern Africa, the simultaneous attainment of independence of Mozambique and Angola from Portugal in 1975 signalled a great hope to start national rebuilding programmes after years of colonial dominance.
The imperial hand that had become a permanent feature instigated militant rebellions and disharmony among Mozambicans through the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) led by Afonso Dhlakama and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by Jonas Savimbi.
Years on internal conflict reversed the consent to peace that people had.
Regarding post-independence challenges in Africa, Zimbabwe was not spared.
The British, Australians and the apartheid government in South Africa coveted the independence that had been conceptualised by the nation’s two revolutionary parties and their armed wings.
To the losing coloniser, Zimbabwe remained the jewel they wanted to remain shackled to maintain the colonial status quo, hence the underhand instigation that threatened national peace between 1983-1987.
History, if well laid down, produces patterns that engage the mind in an interesting dialogue and that is the history that African leaders, and Zimbabwe’s, should pass to their younger citizens who happen to be the future leaders of Africa.
Mozambique and Angola proffered lessons that led the Zanu PF and PF Zapu leadership to find each other, do away with the externally engineered animosity, dialogue and put forward the nation’s interests without any further deterioration of peace. Zimbabwe’s Unity Accord, signed on December 22 1987, remains a product of a peace-loving leadership and a strong citizenry 34 years after its signing.
Not at any time has the leadership, back then, and under the Second Republic, ever turned a blind eye to the Unity Accord.
The essence of unity is to make peace with people one disagrees with.
The Zimbabwean view of unity is not only an expression of peace as a national endeavour, but a footprint of regional and global aspirations.
A lot more nationalities have been resident in Zimbabwe, housed under the peace and unity of locals. This accord has allowed Zimbabweans to cherish their diversity in unison, to differ in generous respect while knowing that we are Zimbabweans bound by the same history, identity and values.
This has shamed the West. Former colonisers are aware that history creates a shared identity in a people.
They know it is based on that shared identity that people act collectively.
By sowing and fomenting war-like tendencies, they plot to take away that history, to degrade that history so that they can degrade that sense of our shared identity.
The history of unity is the basis upon which people behave collectively to reach their goals and this is why the Unity Accord remains an imperative puzzle piece to the current generation and posterity.
Whenever citizens and their leaders seek peace, a rebirth and rejuvenation of national aspirations occur. The same can be said after the 2008 post-election disturbances, the Global Political Agreement as a political process ensured peace among the diverse political views. Since November 2017, the Second Republic under President Mnangagwa has kept peace and dialogue as priorities to national cohesion and development.
To ensure inclusion and dialogue, other political entities whose institutional representation is neither in the National Assembly nor Senate, the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) platform has been instrumental in formulating progressive national discourses.
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