Online Reporter
Gibson Nyikadzino
Zimpapers Politics Hub
Frederick Selous, a British and explorer, writing about the conquest of the Ndebele during the 1896 uprisings described the native warriors and fighters as “monsters in human shape, that ought to be shot down mercilessly like wild dogs or hyenas, until they are reduced to a state of abject submission to the white man’s rule”.
This statement, with its racist tones, is sufficient to expose how ethno-supremacist the colonial enterprise was. When Zimbabweans therefore raise signals for the righting of colonial wrongs, it is something informed by the experiences of their people.
Denunciations of the evils of colonialism occur over and over again, as does an intermittent readiness to listen to them. However, the wounds inflicted cannot be repaired, not least because colonial institutions in all of their manifestations disrupted the deep structures of the social, economic, and political organisation of the societies they targeted.
Colonialism, an enterprise of military force, racial segregation, economic and social exclusion, remains the dark spot on the development of Zimbabwe’s history, which the former coloniser should atone for. It was a regime of evil to those who experienced it then, and those experiencing its after-effects now.
Segregation was the basic assumption on which Rhodesian colonialism was founded, and the racialist institutional pattern was laid down by the beginning of the 20th Century. The atonement of colonial sins by the former coloniser should act as a basis of acknowledgement that wrongdoers, back then, have a moral debt to pay historically.
The British, for example, have refused to pay colonial reparations or offer a formal apology to the colonial atrocities they committed, in particular to African countries, because they feel they have no legal right to do so. They, however, have an obligation to do so.
It is critical to countenance the view that Germany is today paying reparations to Israel and the Holocaust survivors over the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler and his NAZI regime from 1933 to 1945. As of last February, the German finance ministry announced it was going to pay US$27 million in compensation to 113 000 Holocaust survivors to help them cope with the impact of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel.
The same Germany in 2022 undertook to pay Namibia reparations of up to US$1,3 billion for the colonial atrocities and the genocide it committed between 1904-1908. Germans also paid reparations to Poland. In 1970, the West Germany’s Chancellor Willy Brandt went down on his knees in Warsaw as a gesture of apology for crimes committed by the NAZI.
In 2008, Italy accepted through the Treat of Benghazi, to pay in the next 20 years five billion dollars in reparations to Libya for the colonial atrocities. Even Britain, in 2022, paid reparations and formally apologised to the Maori tribe in New Zealand as redress for atrocities committed by the crown, including for its indiscriminate killings and massive alienation of tribal land.
There is no exception for the people of Africa and in particular Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans do need to be aware of history because if people attempt to disregard knowing where they came from, they will find it difficult to appreciate where they want to go. On many occasions, sympathisers of the British colonial empire have always advocated a position that descendants of those who suffered at the hands of the colonialists should “forgive and forget the past, then move forward”. That is an objectionable proposition!
It is a proposition that seeks to disillusion victims of colonial injustices so that they build a delicate future that is not anchored on their history.
In his 2018 article, “The Case for Colonialism”, Western theorist Bruce Gilley not only extols the virtues of colonialism in Africa, but advocates its renewal in some areas for the sake of “international order”. “The most serious threat to human rights and world peace was not colonialism — as the United Nations declared in 1960, but anti-colonialism,” he wrote. In the 19th century, the British drive for possessions in Zimbabwe has been used to justify colonialism in various ways, with some claims that it Christianised the heathens or civilised the savage races or brought everyone the miraculous benefits of free trade. The Victorian moral sensibilities took these noble causes heartily.
However, there is no positiveness of colonialism that can be derived, if people are to be critical about the weight colonialism had, it carried prejudicial impacts on Africa and Zimbabwe. There exists so much historical amnesia about what British colonialism really entailed, whether this is being done voluntarily or involuntarily. The idea that much of these colonial atrocities they committed are not taught in British schools means there is a deliberate ploy to de-intellectualise their population around this subject.
Presently, there is also no real awareness in Britain of these atrocities which it also used to finance its industrial revolution and its prosperity from the depredations of empire. All of that is really not known anymore.
British colonialism in the territory now known as Zimbabwe was more akin to theft, often leading to death and destruction. Undoubtedly, the British destroyed Zimbabwe through looting, expropriation and outright theft, all conducted in a spirit of deep racism and amoral cynicism. The ‘great symbols’ of empire in Zimbabwe, such as the country’s rail system, were built for the benefit of the British rather than for the native citizens.
In the labour market, for instance, the level of inequality and the gap between white and black wages in 1972 were at a ratio one as to 10. Whites on average earned $3,632, while blacks earned $332. From 1964 when the racist Rhodesian Front of Ian Smith came to power, it had promised to resist majority rule, it further banned and suppressed black opposition groups and detained and imprisoned nationalist leaders. In 1965, the Smith government unilaterally declared independence as the Republic of Rhodesia.
It is an important realisation that Britain turned a blind eye to the oppression of Zimbabweans as it was not willing to sabotage its interests. Its oil companies continued to support Rhodesia, even in the face of half-hearted December 1966 “UN economic sanctions”. This explains why nationalists and liberation fighters resorted to armed struggle as the appropriate route to liberation of the rest of Zimbabweans.
From these actions, the white colonial government in 1974 reacted by launching a broad “counter-insurgency” against the Zimbabwean population in an operation modelled after US tactics used against the Vietnamese national liberation struggle. Furthermore, bulldozers and flamethrowers defoliated 54 000 square miles of Zimbabwean land.
As Zimbabweans celebrate 45 years of independence, there is no reason to be ahistorical and attempt to whitewash British colonial iniquities. There has to be a starting point to rectify the recurring problems. Dialogue, formal apology and reparations are models that can be used to reflect on the colonial excesses of empire.
Even as Zimbabwe moves ahead, without resolving colonial iniquities, it should remain in memory that the most egregious offences that ever happened in Zimbabwe are British imperialism and racist colonial governance.
Peter Tanyanyiwa