The man, the nation and the national interest

empowerment and human rights hero for 2011 (The Herald 14 February 2012).
The friend reminded me that I had to acknowledge that Ambassador Ray was doing a lot in the area of grooming Zimbabwe’s youth to become good leaders.
Much as it may be so, and with due respect to my friend’s views, I found it hard to withdraw my sentiments, indeed found reason to defend them.
Now, I have no issue with the good Ambassador in his personal and private capacity.
My issue and indeed concern is with the implications of his actions as America’s man, representing and furthering the American national interest in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans must understand that the man, Ambassador Charles Ray, his actions and motives, shall always prioritise America’s interests whether such interests are in conflict with or harmful to Zimbabwe’s aspirations and endeavour for prosperity.
Mr Charles Ray’s ambassadorial terms of reference can only spell out a purely American crusade in Zimbabwe.
Given his army background, which can only hard wire love and loyalty for country, we can be certain that the US Ambassador will pursue America’s interest in Zimbabwe to the bitter end. Surely he must aspire to be recalled home the heroic man who won the Zimbabwean battle for God and country.
Have you ever wondered why America strategically appoints tried and tested army men, dressed in civilian attire, to further its national interest abroad?
We then jostle to declare such foreign army men keeping post for their nation’s interest our local heroes; yet despise our own former military men called upon to watch over strategic national institutions and interests.
Now, about our American trained young Zimbabwean leaders, to what ends are they to inspire and rally the rest of us?
Could their acquired leadership skills ever be applied to achieve an exclusively Zimbabwean interest?
To lead what, and achieve whose national interest?
There is after all glaring contradiction, that the very American interest now working toward capacitating us in the art of leadership is the same nation whose sanctions have laid waste to mine, yours and our socio-economic livelihoods?
What is the American interest in training the next generation of Zimbabwean leaders, those who shall be entrusted with the care of Zimbabwe’s natural resources and socio-economic aspirations?
Could it be that America is lining up to become puppet master, impress upon their alienate loyalties American economic interests long vested in Africa and Zimbabwe’s resources?
God help us, if America’s Zimbabwean young men and women are ever propelled to political power.
For ease of reference, let’s create an image of the Western interest in Zimbabwe.
Picture an indigenous man who has had to labour his God-given land for foreign economic gain.
His livelihood is sanctioned to keep him in check, to the extent of depriving him, his wife and children their basic socio-economic needs.
The wife and children now left vulnerable, without food, healthcare, education and the small luxuries of life, turn their desperation into anger against husband and father, himself a victim of his sanctioned nature.
It is at this vulnerable moment that the foreign interest makes benevolent intervention, presenting the wife and children with aid and relief.
The foreign nation offers its expertise, to train the indigenous man’s children in the art of leadership, said to capacitate and free them from their plight now blamed on a “reckless” and “corrupt” father squandering their livelihood.
In naïve gratitude, the children unwittingly entrust their whole being, present and future, to the care of a foreign man and nation whose only real interest has always been to exploit the beauty and fertility of the indigenous nation.
The vilified father looks on, helpless, incapacitated by the fear that any chiding anger against alienated loved ones will be branded a violation of rights warranting him to be dragged to distant foreign lands, to face foreign arbitrators persuaded by foreign interests.
Decide then, whether I can still call it “silliness” that we prioritise foreign interest ahead of our own.
“Silliness”, itself a kinder and more diplomatic word for something more fraudulent and sinister, a threat dragged among us by youthful naivete thinking it is a plaything.
But today it is less about foreign men, their foreign nations and interests.
It is more to do with our own indigenous reflection and determination of an identity of the Zimbabwean man, Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean national interest.
The true Zimbabwean man remains conscious of the nation, values it as his foundation for being, his sustenance and flourishing.
Zimbabwe becomes the womb and umbilical cord whose fertility nurtures him and citizenry.
Therefore, national interest becomes a form of identification with such dependency and a desire for all that is and lies within his nation to be jealously pursued and guarded against competing foreign interests that threaten deprivation and peril.
National interest is simply a people’s prioritised urge for self-preservation and prosperity. The man must be seen to rise and declare nation and national interest.
We have seen in President Mugabe such a man, calling upon yours and our sovereignty.
Without such sovereignty and self-belief, we will remain an unanchored nation to be tossed about western winds seeking to scatter our wealth for their rich pickings.
Is such a man’s rhetoric not needed, to be a reminder of our humanity, to inspire our souls weighed with self-hate and inferiority visited upon us by generations of colonial interests that uprooted and estranged us from our identity, our nation and its interest?
The man, our man, defines sovereignty simply as our rightful claim to the God-given nation Zimbabwe, its natural resources and economic wealth.
Today, the nation and national interest pursue a socio-economic purpose through indigenisation and empowerment. It is now that man shall be weighed, for history to revere or find most wanting.
The man, President Mugabe, champions the national socio-economic interest. His vision begrudgingly certified by adversaries in afterthought.
Only recently the man, Prime Minister Tsvangirai, was enlightened by Marange’s glitter that the national interest demands that Zimbabwe’s diamonds must be allowed to sustain countrymen’s socio-economic being.
Yet he remains uncertain, wavered by a foreign interest that seems to lay hold upon and inhibit the blossom of unyielding pursuit of national interest.
Meanwhile, President Mugabe, resolute and un-wavered, launches yet another community trust, restoring to his countrymen in Zvishavane their platinum inheritance.
The man, President Mugabe, has rekindled the idea of a nation’s socio-economic sovereignty; that a nation well endowed with natural resources must benefit the socio-economic needs of long deprived indigenous man and woman.
The idea, now birthed in indigenisation and economic empowerment, today defines our national interest calling upon every man and woman to be its guarantor.
For it is an idea, a consciousness upon which generations shall build their whole being and prosperity.
This idea of a nation’s interest was long envisioned by Nehanda, who in death prophesied of a nationalism to arouse pursuit of total liberation.
They rallied in their thousands, Mugabe, Nkomo, Chitepo, Tongogara, Mnangagwa, Mujurus etc, in pursuit of indigenous nation.
Yet at independence, having achieved civil and political gain and birthed a nation, the new nation felt the cramps of socio-economic emptiness, starved off its plundered natural resources.
Now man and woman are again stirred to rise in pursuit of the national socio-economic interest.
We need though to be wary of the Zimbabwean man so drunk with foreign interest that he is blind to the fraud alienating him from his own nation’s indigenous interest. Yet the very western man that alienates him from his nation and national interest is seen frantically seeking to retain his British and American national sovereignty. Now we hear Britain’s man, Cameron, declaring British sovereignty and national economic interest dearer than an economically distressed European union seeking bail out.
And in the United States of America, you only need to have listened to the Republican primary election campaigns to hear aspiring leaders promising restoration of American greatness and sovereignty fast fading to the rising east. They woo the voter with commitment to ensuring that the American national interest restores its choking grip around the neck of a world emboldened by the idea of national and economic liberation.
Yet if you listened further and more closely to the rhetoric of Republican presidential aspirants you would hear a glaring and embarrassing ignorance on matters of the world’s affairs.
One would think that it is back home where America must conduct leadership training for those seeking to lead it, and not seek to corrupt an already well informed and educated Zimbabwean youth.
We have been taught rightly that charity must begin at home, and when it is exported and imposed upon us by those who are themselves impoverished we must look upon such aid with suspicion, poke at it with long sticks, observe and test it before swallowing poison a stomach cannot easily rid of.
During our moment of economic liberation the indigenous man and woman must take care that Zimbabwe is not denied pursuit of the national interest.
We must not be made to leave the fate of our natural resources to claims of globalisation, international co-operation and foreign investment that have always been fronts for the greed of foreign corporations and economies seeking to plunder our nation’s economic wealth.
Back to my dear friend; as for Ambassador Charles Ray, and Barack Obama for that matter, neither can ever be our man. Their American nation can never embrace Zimbabwe’s youth tightly within its bosom and share its wealth with our lot.