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Cain Mathema
Historical Background
The first African Reserves (pieces of land that the British colonisers created for Africans displaced by force from their traditional settlement land to go and live so that white settlers and companies could occupy the best land in the country) in Zimbabwe were the Gwayi Reserve (today’s Tsholotsho District or Communal Lands) and the Shangani Reserve (today’s Lupane District or Communal Lands, and Nkayi District or Communal Lands). African Reserves were created all over the country in order to remove the black people from the best lands in the country. Obviously, therefore, the best lands happened to have had the best rainfall patterns as well and the best grazing lands. The first two Reserves were created in 1894.
In Mashonaland the Reserves were not created until 1898, yet in that part of the country Rhodes and his hordes of white invaders and settlers started removing blacks from their best traditional lands soon after the British flag was raised in Harare in September 1890; and the first blacks to be killed for resisting colonial occupation were in Mashonaland. The first to be killed included Chief Negomo in Murehwa. His headquarters were raided in 1892 by the BSAC troops early in the morning resulting in his death and the death of twenty one of his people including one of his sons.
Both the Gwayi and Shangani Reserves were areas of Kalahari sands, infested with Tsetse flies, mosquitoes, malaria and poor rainfall patterns, and the two of them were full of dark teak and mukwa forests (amagusu amnyama) teaming with wild animals like lions, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and kudus. The Reserves had very few people living there.
In other words, these Reserves were not good for people, animal husbandry and cropping activities. Indeed, that is why they were selected — to make the blacks less and less independent economically, blacks were turned into colonial slaves, they were forced to sell their labour power at least for three months a year through laws like the hut tax laws and through being openly kidnapped by the BSAC and its white settlers and turned into slaves. The Reserves were a source of cheap labour for white farmers, government departments, white mines and white local authorities. The reserves did not have good roads, they did not have enough water, the people did not own the land, they had no title to anything, they could be kicked out of the Reserves anytime, once minerals were discovered there.
Blacks in the reserves were not allowed to have access to loans, the numbers of their cattle were limited by law, there was no electricity in the reserves, schools were built by churches (whose real role was to educate the blacks so that they became tame colonial slaves who despised themselves, hated themselves, their past, their religion and their cultures); that is why Rhodes gave all the church denominations large tracts of land, land that used to be occupied by blacks before colonialism and white racism, and large sums of money annually or monthly in order to psychologically bludgeon the black people) and blacks had no right to vote, they were not even allowed to walk on pavements, only whites were allowed by law. Life in Tsholotsho (as in all the African Reserves) was nothing but the horrible grind, the colonial government gave enough assistance in Tsholotsho to enable blacks to breed more colonial slaves.
At independence therefore Tsholotsho was a poor African Reserve, a piece of land whose main characteristic was unbelievable poverty of the citizens, its citizens relying on hand-pump boreholes and water from river beds, pans and ponds, its citizens were using the bush to relieve themselves, and no single factory was found anywhere in the district on that single most important date in Zimbabwe, the 18th April 1980.
In this paper I mean to show some of the things that President Mugabe’s government has done in Tsholotsho in terms of development since independence. In this way I shall be showing that the propaganda about him having done nothing or very little in Matabeleland compared to Mashonaland is nothing but a myth, a myth meant to make Ndebeles and Shonas hate each other, fight each other whilst British and other Western countries’ companies are looting the country’s resources and exploiting our people whom they employ and through selling to them expensive goods manufactured in Western countries using our cheap raw materials.
And I am one of those who will fight anybody who wants to use tribalism against the people of Zimbabwe — we as Zimbabweans have no alternative but to fight the imperialists and their local black puppets, our people just cannot be divided along tribal lines, after all, they live together, they inter-marry and they love each other. Just look at the people in Bulawayo, they come from all over the country, and they marry each other as naturally as the sun rises and sets daily.
The people of Bulawayo do not want to live in fear and suspicion of each other, a husband fearing his wife and vice-versa simply because each comes from another tribe, and where does that leave the children? All I am saying is — let the imperialists and their local puppets leave the people alone, we cannot allow our homes to be turned into prisons by selfish non-performing, non-delivering little politicians who are on the payroll of imperialism and white racism so that they prevent Zimbabwe from achieving economic independence like the US did after liberating itself from British colonialism.
Let it be borne in mind as well that Tsholotsho as at December 2010 had a population that stood at 129 597. At independence the population was obviously smaller than that.
To be continued……………………………………………
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