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Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor
WITH sufficient determination, the human mind can find a justification for almost anything under the sun. Hence there have been efforts over the years, though no more than plausible often-times, to justify slavery and colonialism and foreign interference in the affairs of independent African states. In recent years, African leaders, to varying degrees and depending on their level of enlightenment and appreciation of global affairs, have had to fight or defend the modern day enslavement and rape of the African continent.
To further its own ends while at the same assuaging its guilt, imperialism has for its part used the captured mind of the African intellectual who uses his educational certificates to preach to us lesser mortals the virtues and goodness of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
One of our own becomes the high priest at the whiteman’s temple all the better to convince the unconverted and unbelieving blackman that the whiteman is the intercessor between God and the blackman’s destiny.
The whiteman is the bringer and ultimate source of democracy, life, enlightenment, human rights and the seer of Africa’s road to development. His overarching presence on the continent is all for our own goodness, for our redemption. Our own African leaders are the biggest problem, not imperialism and its multinationals, hence at every forum and every worthy workshop, we are reminded that Africa’s biggest challenge is one of leadership, especially if that leadership challenges and is seen to stand in the way and to reject the received wisdom of the IMF and the World Bank.
It is a pity but also the reality of mental slavery which Africa still has to resolve in the fullness of time. It is a reality which manifests in the various summits to which African leaders are summoned by different Western leaders to be told what is good for their countries and for their toiling nationals. It is a reality that we still have to confront resolutely, that the wars, poverty, economic wretchedness and human squalor on the African continent go beyond the superficiality of corruption and mismanagement.
Deplorable as the latter two malfeasances are, they manifest more on the mirror the exploiter holds to our face than the reality of our enslaved selves and the unequal and exploitative economic relations with the West. It is a mirror which reveals how we are our own enemies and why we should keep fighting each other.
While thus engaged in internecine wars, genocides and fratricides, it is once again our own sons and daughters of letters who provide the cover the whiteman needs as he carts away our resources.
In exchange for the looted and the continued looting of our resources, we receive precious wind-loads of democracy, human rights and economic development; like in the very beginning when our forebears were told to shut their eyes for heavenly salvation while the priest of spiritual deliverance stole our lands. One need not look very far to appreciate these benefits of imperialism’s benevolence to Africa and the Middle East in recent years. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo provide such examples of paradise in the wake of the whiteman’s balmy intervention. Paradise in these climes is measured by the din and frequency of gunfire.
Egypt needed the latter day brutal pacification of the loathsome Muslim Brotherhood to return to “democracy”. It would of course be sacrilegious for anyone to even imagine human rights violations being raised against the military in Egypt. It’s as blasphemous as accusing Israel and Netanyahu of crimes against humanity in the land of Palestine.
Of course, our intellectuals don’t operate on their own. They have selected mass media to help them in “discrediting” the undesirable fellow intellectuals, leaders and politicos who sing for their supper. (Those who sing for foreign supper are deemed independent, respected, balanced in their views and the only analysts whose comments and motives must never be questioned.)
Two weeks ago, I adverted to the obsession with defending and pleasing nebulous and indeterminate foreign constituencies. I said then that there was a case for the argument that some economic policies in Africa fail because they are not crafted with an eye on local material conditions. They are designed with the logic to please so-called Western investors who are waiting outside the gates for the right policies for them to give us train-loads of cash.
Our people will then benefit from the trickle down effect by way of jobs. The angelic whiteman only needs a little profit to further demonstrate his unfailing goodness through many acts of charity and philanthropy in Africa.
We are thus urged, if we want to succeed or develop, to bend over backwards and defer to the desires and prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank, the self-appointed global goalkeepers for Western investment. It is not the long-term benefits of our nations which matter but the short-term desperation of our people (unemployment) which are whipped up for the long-term interests of these Greeks bearing gifts.
That brings me to today’s main point, Zanu-PF’s roller coaster which climaxed at the congress last week. It gripped the attention of the whole nation and went beyond. The thing it didn’t do was to bring with it the thunder and bloodbath between the forces of good and evil as we were made to anticipate. To that extent, in which the Zanu-PF elective congress was expected to resolve the succession matrix in favour of a preferred, pragmatic, pro-business (read pro-West) candidate, the congress was portrayed as a damp squib.
But that “non-event” has refused to be wished away despite wistful and even desperate longing for a reincarnation of the MDC-T. President Mugabe has refused to be wished away at congress after last year’s harmonised national elections failed to sweep him away. Instead he has pre-incarnated himself while he rules Zimbabwe.
He is called Emmerson Mnangagwa.
“Analysts” were in agony and inconsolable last week after President Mugabe appointed for his deputies Justice Minister Mnangagwa and Ambassador Phelekezela Mphoko. For many, Mphoko, a career diplomat and a former senior and long-serving member of Zapu, was unquantifiable. He was therefore spared much of the vitriol vented on Mnangagwa whose historical script is indelibly tied to his alleged roles in the Gukurahundi disturbances and Zimbabwe’s military involvement in the DRC.
The former incident was deliberately invoked to incite the people of Matabeleland and Midlands against the prospect of Mnangagwa as a national leader while the latter was used as a foil for corruption allegations raised against former Vice President Joice Mujuru.
The lamentation is that Mnangagwa is bad for foreign direct investment.
Thus once again, it is the interests of foreigners, Western interests, the interests of former colonisers, which must prevail over our own long-term interests and destiny as a nation. The desperate situation of our unemployed youth is exploited to the maximum and they are told their only potential saviour, Western foreign direct investment, cannot flood the country because of the gory threat of land reform and black economic empowerment and indigenisation.
As a hardliner, as a Mugabe replica, Mnangagwa’s rise to the Zanu-PF presidium represents an endorsement and further entrenchment of Mugabe’s “evil policies”. Then one must necessarily ask, with so much self-hate and lack of self-belief masquerading as a call for foreign direct investment, can Africa ever be free, can Africa ever develop economically? Europe developed on our labour as slaves, today it prospers on our brains and resources as we boast freedom. Why are our intellectuals so desperate for the love of Europe?
Mugabe’s single unforgivable sin is that he has said foreign investors must come to Zimbabwe on our terms. Can someone show me a single African country which has prospered on Europe’s terms! Why are all the sponsored African analysts based either in Europe, or South Africa which has failed to shed off its apartheid jacket and hence has some resemblance to America where blacks are badly marginalised, but never want to live in any of the countries north of us which have prospered from the love of Europe and America?
Online Reporter