Rastafari Speaks - Zimbabwe: When fear becomes the enemy

By Grañfadaá Ayitomeka
April 17, 2012 - herald.co.zw

The struggle to free Zimbabwe from the gnawing jaws of settler colonialism was not fought because the people had the penchant of fighting strangers, neither did they do so for the love of the lofty ideas embedded in the skulls of the anti-colonial leaders.

The basis for the people’s bloody struggle is direct and simple, to ward off white predators who had occupied the land by committing maafa (the unspoken African word for genocide committed by Caucasians against Africans) and subsequently established minority criminal regime.

Ab initio, the struggle was about the land, it is and it will be about the land! This is not a negotiable issue because, it touches on the very existential ingredient fundamental to life. The socio-cultural, spiritual and economic fabrics of the people of Zimbabwe are inextricably linked to the land. If you yanked or dispossessed people from their land, they are better off dying than to live a parasitic miserable life. A landless person is stateless and ceases to enjoy human dignity.

If any one told you that the fight was just about the realisation of the innermost desire of Zimbabweans to see black majority rule or the institutionalisation of neo-liberal political administration (bourgeois democracy) is totally hogwash and deceptive. Material consideration was the impetus that galvanised the people to wage the Second Chimurenga which led to the defeated of the brigandage system foisted on Zimbabweans by vampiristical Caucasian invaders.

In Africa, land is a symbol of power and authority. It actually confers on you an honour and responsibility towards the larger society, posterity including the ancestors. It is therefore unpardonable for a society to willingly or otherwise cede its God given wealth (land) to another group of people and expect to command respect, honour and authority amongst comity of nations.

The ground upon which the people took to guerrilla warfare to institute democracy, freedom (political and economic) and rule of law was about the need to control and assert authority over the land. This very reason was intentionally trampled upon by the Western hoodlums during the Lancaster negotiation.

The people’s burning desire to extricate themselves from the zombie feet of the oppressor’s rule, came with a heavy price of immeasurable loss of lives and properties. The majority, who paid that price for independence, are still left further away from the victory trophy-land.

It is only a matter of principle that when we go to war and emerge victorious, the spoils of the war must be shared by all who participated in the successful prosecution of the war. Failure to do so amounts to abnegation of the collective spirit and principle which weld the people together during the cause of the struggle against the white supremacists minority racist rule.

Justice has so long eluded the indigenes of Zimbabwe as they have been kept to wait for the day the thieves and their lackeys would voluntarily parcel out pieces of land to their victims. This unacceptable situation is somewhat understandable due to the legal complexities (willing seller and willing buyer proviso) smuggled deliberately into the Lancaster Constitution which heralded the independence of Great Zimbabwe nay Dzimbabwe, 32 years ago.

It is always said that, “it is better late than never”. We have no basis to continue to be angry against our kiths and kins who have unintentionally delayed the sharing of the war prize. It is unarguable fact in jurisprudence that, justice delayed is justice denied. However, we have, after all gotten what we wanted, albeit belated.

Today, the land redistribution and empowerment policy of the Government christened “Indigenisation and economic empowerment” has come to fulfil the wishes and aspirations that instigated the people to take up arms in defence of their land from foreign occupation. The fear, however, is the enemy within. And who is the enemy? The enemy is not far fetched, it is identified by its utterances and behaviour. The enemy is the one who says that Zimbabweans must not own land and that it is the appalling thieves and murderers of our forebears, who usurp the land, must possess it.

The absurdity of this gibberish paternalistic assumption that black people in Zimbabwe are better off selling their labour in the factory floors and farmlands for a mess of pottage to the white racist hooligans is a “haram” and most repugnant. It is also an insult to our dignity as Africans. It is only students and believers in the Hegelian doctrine that Africans are “mere things”, whose lives have “no value”, would pander to Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s plagiarised counter revolutionary indigenisation policy proposal.

If this jaundice idea being entertained by Tsvangirai and his gangs of servile followers finds expression in State policies, it would constrain the people’s resolve to give meaning to the essence of independence which was bloodily fought for. The reactionary posture by the MDC-T leader is a microcosm of the moral orthodoxy of the West.

Again, the enemy is the one who is saying that we (Zimbabweans) are not “capable of managing our own affairs” and that it is only when we subordinate our destiny into the hands of the forces of neo-colonialism we would never better our lots. This hypothesis, when juxtapose with common sense, it wobbles and collapses like a pack of paper cards.

How can one, commit himself towards the eradication of poverty when he or she does not attempt to control the means of production? Is this not the case of Africa where our natural resources are firmly (since independence) in the grip of the capitalist West while we labour and leave on subsistence that underwrites the penury of life witness on the continent?

The revolutionary legend of our time, Fidel Castro once said: “If you don’t learn to understand the world, you would not learn to survive”. Fidel’s axiom should be a premonition to us Africans and, especially Zimbabweans so that we never give the slightest inch to the lunatic doctrinal framework that threatens our survival. If the fifth column imperialists in our midst want to reverse the uneven distribution of the resources and see to the economic upliftment of the people then, there is no other way to do it than what Zanu-PF is championing.

I must, however, point out that any little attempt by MDC-T in the foreseeable future to reverse the land redistribution in order to satisfy their sponsors (colonial Britain and the White Commonwealth) would lead to the deepening of economic marginalisation, stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation. This reckless attempt will foster ethnic, religious and ideological extremism, along with the violence that often accompanies it. President Mugabe is just playing the role of an obedient and dutiful servant to redeem the promise of the revolutionary, spiritualist prophetess Mbuya Nehanda, whose last inspirational words in the gallows read — “mapfupa angu achamuka”.

The destiny of Zimbabwe does not lie in the hands of the white men and their marionettes who churn out spurious concepts of human rights and rule of law without watching their own actions that fragrantly infringe on those very principles and concepts they professed.

We have an ancestral responsibility to be vigilant and counter head-on any action or inaction that the enemy within would take to reverse the clock of progress.

The writer is a Pan Africanist and Secretary General of Pan African Council.

Source: herald.co.zw


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