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As the discourse around Zimbabwe’s heroes who were killed and had their remains taken to Britain where they are exhibited as trophies continues, there is one point that hardly escapes a critical mind.
It is the hypocrisy of the whole British and Western establishment which today touts itself as the paragon of democracy and human rights.
As British museums today parade the skulls of such heroes as Kadungure Mapondera, Chief Mashayamombe and Chief Chingaira Makoni, and Mutekedza Chiwashira among others from Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the African continent where blacks resisted colonialism, the hypocrisy smells to the heavens.
First, these African luminaries were killed for resisting conquest and superimposition of alien and unwanted political systems, social and religious practices as well as the expropriation of their resources. Africans had functional and orderly systems that had worked millennia before the encroachment of the white man and these systems were participatory, just and transparent and had the effect of unifying and strengthening African peoples.
British conquest sought to undo this order and foist the dictatorship of foreigners and making the Queen the ultimate overlord. The heroes of the First Chimurenga died while defending their democracy, space and land, which was the noblest thing to do.
They were, however, killed in the most brutal manner and their heads hewn and shipped to Britain apparently to the satisfaction of the British Queen. Now these heads and other artefacts are on public display in British museums.
Does it sit well with these preachers of democracy that they celebrate the deaths of Africans who were trying to defend their democracy and political systems against foreign brigands?
We all know that after the so-called pacification of natives, settlers exacted slavery and near slavery on locals and denied them dignity and human rights. It took an average of 100 years for most Africans to defeat colonialism and introduce democracy. Democracy was attained by the barrel of the gun as settlers resisted.
In Zimbabwe, Ian Smith declared that there would be no majority rule in 1 000 years. On another level, let’s talk about human rights. By parading the heads of African resistance fighters it would appear that Britain has no shame at all. These people were murdered in cold blood, summarily executed, without due processes of law.
Theirs were extra-judicial killings and we frown upon such infractions of human rights and lack of regard for the sanctity of human life. That Britain parades the skulls of people killed extra-judicially tells us volumes about Britain’s sense of justice and morality.
Or is it being seriously suggested that black heroes did not, do not, deserve human dignity, even in death? This is a collective hurt for which we must find redress, along other aspects of British plunder and rape of our country and continent. A Cambridge scholar, Stacey Hind puts the issue of British criminality in such cases as these ones beyond question.
She says, “Capital punishment in British colonial Africa was not just a method of crime control or individual punishment, but an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. The treatment of condemned criminals and the rituals of execution which brought their lives to an end illustrate the tensions within colonialism surrounding the relationship between these states and their subjects, and with their metropolitan overlords.”
She tells of how Britain created “theatre(s) of death” in these extrajudicial killings.
This clearly shows that Britain is culpable of and should be held accountable for, crimes against humanity. That the British metropolitan overlords derived pleasure from the killings during that time and still derive vicarious pleasure by parading the skulls of their victims to date, demonstrates that Britain is guilty and our outrage should now be channelled towards seeking justice for the departed ones and bring peace to this land.
It is no secret that until and unless we sort out such spiritual questions as these and accord our heroes proper and dignified burial we cannot move positively as a country.
It is common cause that the spiritual realm and the world of the living are not far removed.
As efforts are now underway to bring back the skulls and hopefully other loot, we hope Britain should be compelled to foot the bill of such repatriations while preparing itself for bigger suits which it must pay us.
Meanwhile, we continue watching what the hypocritical Britain will have to do in light of these revelations. Surely, they cannot continue playing human rights and democracy righteous when they have skeletons in the cupboard — literally.
Online Reporter