Online Reporter
Sunday Mail Reporter
INSTITUTE OF AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE chief executive officer Ambassador Kwame Muzawazi has called for urgent action to strengthen business, trade and travel linkages within the Global South, saying the region’s solidarity must translate into practical cooperation.
Addressing the International Conference on Colonialism, Neocolonialism and Territorial Expropriations of Western Imperialism in Caracas, Venezuela, recently, Ambassador Muzawazi highlighted the absurdity of current travel arrangements in the Global South.
“It took me 48 hours to get here, and this is an indictment on the solidarity of the Global South. If I am going from Zimbabwe to London, it will take me 10 hours. If I am going to Portugal or Spain, it will take me 10 hours. But to visit my brothers and sisters in Venezuela it is 42 hours. This is the state of affairs in the Global South,” he said.
Ambassador Muzawazi said solidarity must go beyond political statements and be grounded in practical cooperation.
“The problem is we are not doing business together; we are not making money. We are more likely to go to Europe, to go to the United States of America, to go to Asia for business; but you and me are not making money.”
He underscored Zimbabwe’s own trajectory in the struggle for total liberation.
“Zimbabwe is a country at the centre of decolonisation. Most of you know how we have taken back the land. There is no decolonisation without taking the land, and we took our land. Zimbabwe is the most liberated country in Southern Africa.”
Yet, he argued, economic and cultural freedom remain unfinished business.
“Now that we have political independence and now that we have the land, we still have one big challenge. The biggest challenge for Zimbabwe and the Global South in decolonisation is the issue of cultural liberation.”
Ambassador Muzawazi recounted his overland journey across Africa as evidence of structural barriers that undermine intra-African trade and movement.
“I crossed 21 African countries driving a car, from Tangiers to Cape Town, a distance of 25 000km. Of those 21 African countries, I — a Zimbabwean — needed visas to enter 17 of those countries. Imagine, a Zimbabwean needs 17 visas to cross 21 African countries. If a European Union passport holder wants to visit these same 21 African countries, he only needs three visas.”
He added: “This has nothing to do with colonisation. It is the African colonising himself against himself.
“There is nothing here that the US and EU must do. It is the African who must take charge on this issue. Please go and destroy the borders so that we can do business together.”
Ambassador Muzawazi also urged the Global South to rethink international structures.
“The United Nations, which just held its political festival in New York two weeks ago, is the worst organisation to serve African interests. There is nothing that the United Nations has done for Africa and the Global South. It is proposed that reimagining the future means creating institutions through which the Global South can talk, make binding decisions and move this part of the world forward together.”
Calling for the repatriation of African heritage, he argued: “When Europe says it wants to give us aid, why don’t we tell them this: bring back our culture, bring back our heritage, bring back our artefacts, and people will travel from around the world to see them and we collect the money ourselves?”
The Caracas gathering brought together 137 participants from 57 countries.
Delegates agreed on the “urgency of decolonising both thought and the global economy”.
For Zimbabwe, Ambassador Muzawazi’s intervention placed the nation at the vanguard of advancing South-South solidarity in concrete, economic terms.
Ends
