Nurturing economic ideologies

President Mugabe’s appeal to Zimbabwe’s youth during the recent 21st February Movement Celebrations in Mutare.
We should shun violence and adopt a consciousness of our country’s economic sovereignty and natural resources. He urged the nation to formulate ideas of harnessing such resources, using our entrepreneurial skills to advance “matters of state” which today are defined by indigenisation and economic empowerment. He also called upon us to fight our cause with ideals which shall be the foundation and impetus for ours and our country’s pursuit for economic prosperity.
The good book of our Lord warns us to take care what our minds think, for our lives shall be shaped by our thoughts. Therefore, if our minds formulate ideas of economic empowerment founded on ownership of natural resources then such ideas shall become our actions, define our character and our very being as a nation. And so we must be weary of minds unable to form their own ideas that advance self and the national interest. Such void minds, like cans emptied of matter, shall be kicked about only to respond with cries echoing into nothingness, unable to define a purpose or pursuit.
Worse still, such empty minds become susceptible to the ideas of others, colonised and enslaved to serve the interests of foreign hosts. Such has been the plight of a richly endowed African people made to believe they are a poor helpless lot and reduced to economic refugees fleeing to the very Western countries plundering the wealth of their God given resources.
Fitting then that President Mugabe warned that “We are letting imperialists dictate terms to us . . . We should remain united to prevent outsiders from snatching our wealth from us . . . We reject being slaves in our own country.” If we acknowledge that the objectives of slavery and colonialism were to exploit us economically we will learn the painful reality that long after the abolition of slavery and defeat of colonialism we are still being exploited. The only difference from our enslaved and colonised forefathers is that today it is not our bodies that labour for emerging Western economies.
Rather, it is our natural resources being plundered to sustain the same Western economies and maintain the luxury of the descendents of former slave/colonial masters. The perpetuity of such exploitation across generations of Africa’s black people has been calculated and guaranteed by our consciousness being subdued by Western economic interests.
It was the infamous British slave owner, Willie Lynch, who as far back as 1712, advised America’s slave owners in Virginia on methods of keeping the black man enslaved to the economic desires of his white master. Lynch declared that the “nigger”, like a wild hose, had to be broken from one mental life to another, “Keep (his) body and take the mind . . . whereas nature provides them with the natural capacity to take care of their needs and the needs of their offspring, we break that natural string of independence from them and thereby create a dependency state, so that we may be able to get from them useful production for our business and pleasure.”
Lynch emphasised to the slave owners how “It is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect and trust only us.” Lynch was confident that if installed correctly his methods of subjugating black minds could benefit white economic interests for at least 300 years, more-so where his methods to be applied by the children of slave owners.
No surprise then, that with every step Zimbabwe’s indigenous people take toward ownership of their natural resources their minds are being manipulated to doubt their pursuit of economic sovereignty.
An involuntary instinct overcomes many, who become motionless with fear from pacified minds that dare not deny the sacred economic interests of foreign investors, least the avenging white god’s sanctions whip them to the point of death.
Brainwashed for generations they find it hard to break free, believing the idea of their economic empowerment and the sovereignty of their natural resources to be a taboo, a pursuit that will curse our country’s economic endeavours. Being a people of taboos, wezvinoyera, we can only imagine the extent of our minds’ subjugation.
And so the black mind is forced into internal conflict. While its deep scars inflicted by colonialism’s painful deprivation arouse a strong consciousness nagging at restoration and affirmative action, an installed consciousness of inferiority and dependency weighs stronger and imprisons any pursuit of liberating action.
So the black man submits and presents himself and all his inheritance to the very descendents of erstwhile colonisers, now called Western investors. Our conflicted minds are convinced that we are a cursed people, never having the wisdom to question how the same God said to have cursed us has blessed our lands with so much wealth.
He, God, then warns us of the peril of ignorant minds and to take care what thoughts we dwell upon. Yet we remain submissive when condemned to a “Dark Continent”, blinded from economic enlightenment. Henty Berry, far back in 1832, told a Virginia House of Delegates faced with the abolition of slavery that “We have, as far as possible, closed every avenue by which light may enter their (the slaves) minds. If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be complete, they would then be on a level with the beasts of the field and we should be safe”.
More than ever, our minds are in need of enlightenment, revelation that the owl has no horns. It is a revelation President Mugabe has laboured to impart, drags us screaming and kicking into the light of self determination and economic sovereignty. Yet we resist, even made to plot his demise, the old trick of house nigger against field nigger. No wonder Bob Marley wept, “for how long they shall kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look.”
Still, the time for economic liberation remains imminent, near inevitable. Even though Lynch wanted to believe that the submissive dependent mind of the nigger would remain an orbiting cycle that turns on its own axis forever, he admitted it would remain so only until “a phenomenon occurs and re-shifts the positions of the male and female slaves”.
Gentleman and woman of my pigmentation, the phenomenon is occurring. You hear it, witness it, in the name and image of indigenisation and economic empowerment, yet you have eyes but choose to see not, ears yet hear not. It was precisely in 1712 that Willie Lynch predicted his methods to last at least 300 years?
Well guess what, Zimbabwe is in 2012, exactly 300 years later. And then we had Bob, not theirs, but one who shares your pigmentation, your scars and your nagging dreams beckoning your minds into liberating socio-economic enlightenment.
In our time of economic enlightenment President Mugabe hastens to warn of “stupid ideas” planted “to work against everything that we (are) believe(ing) in”, namely our economic liberation and empowerment. These ideas have been returned to our shores, well packaged, designed to sell. They can no longer be beaten into the flesh but must be embraced and pleaded for by the new nigger.
We can imagine Willie Lynch sharing such stupid ideas with foreign economic interests today: “Let us convince this new nigger of his civil and political rights and give him a false sense of self determination and governance. Oh hell, for legitimacy’s sake let us get some among them to champion such rights on our behalf, reward them with heroism. Yes, we can get another 300 years of economic exploitation going while we distract them by sending their young ones on the streets to fight for us those among them who dare see and challenge our thieving and exploitative ways.”
You only need to read the Lanchester House Constitution to realise that with our independence in April of 1980, we were lured into civil and political rights, while impressed upon to leave behind and neglect our socio-economic pursuits.
Just look next door at “rainbow” South Africa, the Malemas of that world, whose only real “crime” is to parrot the silenced and forgotten socio-economic ideals of their one time liberator, Nelson Mandela, are vilified by white media. They are labelled the village idiots, the rest of their masses scared into shunning them least they contaminate the village well with ideas of economic liberation.
And so the white economic interest’s retributive system is set upon them, but legitimised and inflicted by those of Malema’s own pigmentation. But worry not, they only wish away an inevitable end like a naïve young girl thinking a tight corset will keep hidden the blossom of a pleasure most foul in the eyes of her parents. It is coming.
For now we only need choose wisely those who will impart ideas upon us and keep our dreams and aspirations enlightened, remembering that it is not all who call us brother who share our socio-economic aspirations. It was Steve Biko, an advocate of black consciousness against apartheid’s political subjugation and economic exploitation of black people, who warned that being black is not a matter of pigmentation but a reflection of the mind.
Indeed we have leaders with us whose minds/consciousness have been broken, domesticated to serve the economic interests of so called ‘‘free-markets’ and globalised economies monopolised by foreign investors. They are the kind living in the same bubble as Lynch’s house nigger, whose socio-economic outlook has been made a shade whiter, alienated from brothers and sisters forced to labour and load the wealth of their nation bound for foreign economies.
Given that our antagonists can become our best teachers, we must learn then from the likes of Willie Lynch. From his methods is a lesson that ideas must live on, long after the minds that formulated them. They must be inherited, passed on to generations to further a cause in the interest of a people and nation.