adminmake Africans hold Europeans with high esteem. The concept was to make sure that European cultures were adopted by Africans as cultures of modern civilisation. The main objective was to blind-fold and make Africans a subordinate race to the Europeans. This was tactfully but sometimes savagely operationalised through the education and legal systems respectively.
The education system was designed to produce, in the majority of cases, highly qualified academics who would later become conduits of oppressing the majority of the poor people. The highly qualified academics formed the middle class and a precast concrete wall that blocked the uneducated and poor from seeing the white man’s oppressive rule. The highly qualified and educated were given some middle management posts in both private and the public sectors. In most cases, they were used as examples of the goodness that the colonial masters had unselfishly pretended to have done to improve the social lives of Africans. Social amenities of middle and lower classes were designed and separately located.
The cost of getting services from theses amenities were prohibitive that the poor remained in continuously weak and ill-healthy state. Sadly, neo-liberal academics continue to view western economic policies as credible regardless of the fact that western nationals are protesting against it throughout Europe and America. Laws were, again, designed to marginalise the middle class and the poor whilst removing possession of land and cattle from Africans to colonialists. In the Rhodesia’s Kaffir and Beer Act of 1918, it was clearly stated that Africans belonged to Magaba and Machembere beer halls, and not in hotels like Jameson, Meikles, etc. The law was very clear on which streets Africans were to straddle and which shops they would go for shopping.
Furthermore, the law was very clear on who votes and what property an African was allowed to possess.
The education system was expertly crafted to make the Africans have a feeling of being embraced by the white settler’s democratic, governance, human rights systems and observance of the rule of law. Government institutions made it possible for African oppression as those in the middle management worked hard for recognition by the whiteman and were the ones enforcing, in a savage manner, the oppressive colonial rule. It is pitiful that most of Africa’s legal minds do not see the need for legal transformation as they continue to clamour for property rights. The colonial education produced prominent persons like Tshombe, Muzorewa, Kasavumbu, and Savimbi. These highly educated people were to be used against their own people; they were there to asymmetrically symbolise
what education can do to better an African. It must be noted that it did not matter for them, to see fellow countrymen suffering as is the case with the MDC-T’s view on indigenisation and sanctions.
The highly educated of the colonial era would not mind if the majority were living under abject poverty for as long as they received better subsistence monthly salaries and lived in a better Highfield house. This is exactly what the neo-liberal academics are doing today in search for donor funds. It is not that Doctors Mandaza and Makoni did not know that Mavambo would soon be magumo, six months down its political life. It did not matter and what mattered most was to receive donor funds for opposing what was good for the majority. It does not matter for the MDC-T that the sanctions are hurting the urban and the rural poor but for them to make the MDC gurus continue to receive huge donor funds for opposing indigenisation and black empowerment. The MDC-T would do anything, knowingly for that matter, for as long as it opposes Zanu-PF and the majority urban and rural poor.
The MDC T is not alone in the crusade mantra of fixing Zimbabweans for reclaiming their land; the neo-liberal academics the likes of professor Makumbe, Dr Makoni, Madhuku, are in league.
It does not matter how much the nation suffers from the treasonous Machiavellian machination as long as they get donor funds for rubbishing and demonising Zimbabwe. They would be more than happy. The love for enriching the few, started in the colonial period manifesting from the education and legal systems that were asymmetrically designed to make us believe the whitemen were glorious. The call for sanctions and the demonisation of Zimbabwe by the neo-liberal academics and the MDCs is a strategy used by the west to continuously plunder our resources under the guise of democracy, rule of law and human rights.
The funding of the MDC as puppets is not a new phenomenon as even during the liberation war, we had people like Muzorewa, Sithole, Chirau and neo-liberal academics being used as proxies of the Smith regime with an agenda of exterminating freedom fighters.
During the liberation war, many academics like Ibbo Mandaza, Dr Makoni etal left the country for western and independent African state cities. As guns were blazing, radio Maputo and Lusaka made a calling for able-bodied Zimbabweans to join the struggle.
However, these neo-liberal academics were either housed in urban centres or were self-exiled in independent neighbouring countries. Most of them did not come and join the struggle, even as war administrators, for they feared to be bombed by the Rhodesian Forces.
The majority of them were the ones who quickly came back at independence pretending to have come to develop the newly Independent Zimbabwe. Some of them like Dr Makoni and Dr Mandaza, during the struggle, were glob trotting for their comfort. Surprisingly they have now become the most treacherous intellectuals who are now calling for Mugabe’s head to please Uncle Tom.
Dr Makoni is not ashamed of the mess and disrepute he caused when strategically deployed in Sadc as its Secretary General. He, today has forgotten that his uncle picked him from Goromonzi assembly area where he was masquerading as a freedom fighter and was given a ministerial post. Those with a grounded British education foothold would not want to disengage from the British. The question is: why do they not go and be British nationals as opposed to continue reminding us of the barbaric governance of British oppression which we suffered?
When the neo-liberal academics and puppets, some mentioned herein, speak, one would think there were born out of a British mother and an American father.
They do not have any symbolism of being Zimbabweans in spirit. They are not ashamed of selling out as what happens with the MDC bunch of intellectuals who do not want blacks empowered but to create jobs for them (blacks) to continue being exploited by British corporates that are only concerned with remitting profits to London.
Fellow Zimbabweans; the British hate Mugabe for he stopped the money that was channelled by the white farming community and British corporates to fund the Unemployment Benefit Fund in the UK. President Mugabe, a clear Pan-Africanist and highly educated man, stopped the financing of the Unemployment Benefit of the UK from Zimbabwe through land reform and black empowerment programmes. He practices a strategy of creating wealth for the unborn millions of Zimbabweans. It is a strategy that creates inheritable wealth through indigenisation and land reform. This strategy forms our national vision upon which wealth will be locally owned and indigenous capital created for newly established industries.
- Panganai Kahuni is a social and political commentator.
People must understand that we need a starting point in order for the future generation to be like the Asian tigers & China whose economies are booming. In simple terms we need to create our own industries and these industries will open up job opportunities. Rome was not built in one day but there was a day set to start the construction.
The MDC-T must understand that a good beginning always has a good starting point. The process of creating wealth in Zimbabwe started during our culture of “nhimbe” era. It traversed through a long path of colonization, liberation, political independence and now the economic emancipation.
People may want to forget very quickly the colonial era but would continue to remember all the other processes for the good of our future. As we may want to forget the colonial phase of our wealth construction, the liberation phase and the economic independence phase are the phases that would continuously remind us of the colonial imbalances.
Let the MDC-T and the PM not derail the nation from its wealth construction process for doing so would be treacherous. Let the Education & Legal Systems not blind us but make us wise and economically strong. Those who do not agree with the tactics/concepts of indigenization must clearly demonstrate to the nation the alternatives; but obviously creation of job for Africans to continue to be workers cannot be the best way forward. .
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter