Exorcising neo-imperial ghost

trickster.
What is important is that Africanist scholars have regarded him as a true African prophet. The Ndebele warriors tried to kill him but all this was in vain. It was only after Chaminuka himself instructed that if they wanted to kill him this could only be done by a small boy who was still pure. Before Chaminuka was killed, he prophesised that a group of people who at that time they referred to as “vasinamabvi” the Europeans, would come, defeat them and become the new rulers.
This is the “ghost” that Chaminuka said would terrorise the country. This is the same ghost that has continued to mutate taking various forms in universities, media houses, political parties and human rights groups, among others, and has presently possessed some of our own and if we are not careful, it will continue to haunt us.
In the early 1890s Mbuya NeHanda, Kaguvi, Mapondera, Chingaira and others rose to fight against this colonialist dragon. Ironically, there were others who fought aiding this dragon and were in turn rewarded by being given chiefly positions. Lumumba, Nyerere, Nkrumah called for Africa to cleanse itself of this colonial ghost. During the second Chimurenga, Takawira, Chitepo, Joshua Nkomo and others fulfilled Nehanda’s prophesy that one day her bones would rise again so that Zimbabwe would be cleansed. What is interesting is that this neo-imperialist ghost has continued to wreak havoc on the entire African continent in economics, politics, culturally, among others sectors.
The ghost is meant to confuse all progressive Africans so that the majority of the African populace will continue to reel under the neo-imperialist yoke of oppression.
Immediately after many African countries attained independence, the neo-imperialist ghost masqueraded as the Western-sponsored economic stabilisation programmes sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Some people who became victims of the HIV and Aids pandemic failed to feed themselves as they continued to earn less than a dollar a day while Africa’s foreign debt continued to balloon to unprecedented levels. According to John Perkins in his book, The Confessions of an Economic Hit man, “Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.
“They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organisations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources.
“Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, pay-offs, extortion, sex, and murder.
“They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalisation.” It is therefore not surprising that the neo-colonial ghost transformed itself and reincarnated itself in the 1990s under the guise of promoting multi-party-ism bent on dislodging all revolutionary parties that had spearheaded the wars of liberation.
In Zambia and Zimbabwe this witnessed the formation of the MMD and MDC, which were Western-sponsored in everything from ideology, economics to politics.
In Zimbabwe the MDC was meant to protect the British and their kith and kin’s interests.
They are being driven by a false democratic concept of good governance and rule of law that has now been turned into a gospel of utopian political stability.
They are the ones arguing that there is no democracy in Africa; there are human rights violations and no respect of the rule of law in Africa.
They only want economic and political benefits to be enjoyed by a small fraction of the population while the rest of the people are merely available for exploitation.
These treacherous “pseudo-men of the people” are rewarded by their white handlers with fat brown Judas Iscariot envelopes for protecting the interests of their funders. They see nothing wrong in instructing their children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, those who have legalised homosexuality and lesbianism. These are the people who are resisting the indigenisation and empowerment drive that visionary revolutionary leaders like President Mugabe are initiating.
How then can Africa exorcise itself from such a ghost?
Part of the answer lies in what President Robert Mugabe advised and proposed in his distinguished lecture at the research and intellectual expo, on September 5, 2012. Our point of departure is going back to our roots, knowing that as Africans we are and Africans we will remain African. We simply have to make a definitive choice on whether we are children of Africa or not. If indeed we are children of Africa, then all that we do must be firmly fixed in our own cultures as Africans, the concept of Ubuntu or hunhuism. It must be understood that development can only take place in a cultural context.
President Mugabe went on to advise that university students must be empowered educationally and universities must be concerned about the end product, the type of student that they produce.
He posited that education should therefore create a personality, a much better person. The educated Africans are generally expected to be free of being stooges of the white man and are supposed to be highly patriotic, self-reliant, and morally ingrained. But shamefully that is not our current reality. This explains why the President at the research expo recommended that “education must be integrated in the national development process.
“Vocational fields must be broadened by making universities institutions for development, consolidation and politically and economically liberating in terms of ideas.
“Progress must therefore mean maximum participation of every individual in the productive activities of the African society being championed by our African universities here and now in politics, economics, culture, among others.” As Zimbabweans we must develop ideologies and values that will guide the way we live.
This is why Frantz Fanon advised that “It is imperative that we decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent and resolute . . . Let us not waste time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. We have better things to do than to follow Europe.”
If one dares to reflect on this, whose spirit possesses you, is it Mbuya Nehanda’s or Cecil John Rhodes’? In all fairness, we would rather be possessed by Murenga’s spirit of resistance rather than to be possessed by the spirits of Leander Starr Jameson or Major Allan Forbes’ white imperialist spirits.
On the other hand, whose political and economic paths are you following, President Robert Mugabe’s economic empowerment or Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s job creation? The choice is yours dear reader, either to prosper or to perish. It is therefore shameful to see that there are some sections among us that still openly advocate for the maintenance of illegal sanctions and are bent on bringing the “Rhodies” through the back door.
That is the worst type of betrayal that Zimbabweans must always guard against.
Dear reader, whenever you hear of any Zimbabwean who wants to reverse the gains of the second, third and fourth Chimurenga, then you can easily tell that those are the machinations of the neo-imperialist ghost that can only be exorcised by going the African route of kurutsiswa or kupumhwa mamhepo iwawo.