Online Reporter
Southern Africa completed its struggle for political Independence in 1994 when South Africa, led by the African National Congress (ANC), defeated apartheid.
The struggle started as soon as Whites settled in the region centuries earlier, grabbing the people’s wealth, enslaving them and governing by the iron fist.
The people protested, in some cases forcing the colonialists to negotiate. Some countries in the region attained their freedoms in that way.
However, in others, Whites had entrenched themselves to such an extent that negotiations were never going to convince them out of power. The Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique dug in, as did the British in our country and Boers in South Africa. Only the arms of war forced the colonialists out in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
While political freedom arrived in 1994, the economy remained in the hands of the former colonialists. This meant that there was much more work to do for the region to attain the total freedom that it deserves.
It emerged a few years ago that the former colonialists and their allies weren’t satisfied with economic control of Southern Africa. They sought to resume political control as well. This became more and more evident in the early 2000s with our country the target.
Unhappy with the land reform programme, easily the biggest Black economic empowerment drive to ever happen on the continent, Britain, US, Australia, Canada and Europe sponsored protests against Zanu-PF. They, too, formed the Movement for Democratic Change and like-minded so-called civic bodies, placed Blacks as fronts to challenge the ruling party.
They are getting increasingly open about it as we witnessed ahead of general elections in South Africa and Botswana last year. This tells us that the struggle for Independence is a permanent one. If liberation movements and their people blink once, the moment they reopen their eyes, a counter-revolutionary would have already replaced them, aided by external forces.
Every self-respecting Black in Southern Africa must, however, be encouraged that those who freed them from colonialism and apartheid have recognised the threat that the former colonial masters continue to pose. For this reason, they, in recent years, have been collaborating more regularly, crafting strategies to ensure that they not only respond to that threat but also contain it.
Six liberation movements — ANC, Zanu-PF, Frelimo (Mozambique), MPLA (Angola), Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Tanzania) and Swapo (Namibia) — convened a summit in South Africa last week to do just that. By meeting as a summit, the hexad scaled-up their collaboration to heads of state level after years of meeting at secretaries-general level. That upgrade is important because it recognises the criticality of this existential struggle that southern Africans must permanently wage against neo-colonialism.
President Mnangagwa, speaking at the summit on Sunday, highlighted the unrelenting efforts by counter-revolutionaries to overthrow liberation parties but stressed that the liberators will continue fighting, bequeathing that struggle to the younger generation.
“The responsibility and duty to build brighter and more prosperous countries for the next generation, lies with us, Liberation Movements,” he declared.
“Let us, therefore, bravely and unapologetically re-assert and re-commit ourselves to defending our founding values, Independence, sovereignty, freedom, democracy and equality. We are the only tried, trusted and dependable drivers of socio-economic justice, development and regional stability.”
