Zimbabwe Must Become Pan-Africa's Afghanistan or Iraq!
From the English Civil Wars to the American War of Independence, American Civil War, the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and through to ZANU-PF and the ANC, some people had to give their all and die for the right causes so others may live in peace and freedom.
For instance, the English people and the British people will never allow any stooge, even a prince, to sanctify the vote more than the ideals the votes are supposed to protect. There will never be any return to absolute monarchy where there is no parliament and the kings and queens can do as they please. Similarly, the French Republic will stand against any notion of restoration of the bourbons. And, America will not soon want to revert to control from the kings and queens of England; the Republic is there to stay and so are the ideals for which the American Civil war was fought.
Were there another power from mars strong enough to create a Morgan Tsivangirai in England, France, or America, who would want to roll back these achievements of centuries of human struggles, they would no doubt resist with all their might, and deal with him as harshly as Mugabe has dealt with Morgan Tsivangirai.
The proposition that the issue of iniquities of racialism and domination and exploitation and dispossession and disenfranchisement of Africans that ZANU-PF fought against should now be relegated to a footnote of history, and electoral formalities should obfuscate and trump the central dispute of historical injustices, is a twisted logic and convoluted sense of realism. How sensible would it be, for anyone to tell the ANC, PAC, that they fought against apartheid alright, but sooner or later, those laws and practices of segregation should be re-established simply because a majority voted for it in a referendum or election? What bull that would be!
The moral of the racist apartheid regime and the justification of the ANC and PAC struggles and triumph against it, are no different from the morals of the racist UDI of Ian Smith and the robbery of Africans of their land and confinement in barren and rocky reserves in Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF and ZAPU struggles were against racialism, and justice for Africans in Rhodesia. They cannot now trade their blood-earned freedom to vote, and for the African to be a human being and exercising his inalienable rights to their land, for a piece of paper called a ballot with Morgan Tsivangirai's name on it. The African that ZANU-PF liberated yesterday will not eat dry, bland paper. He does not need to wait for British or American aid; he can till his land and feed himself. He needs not be held hostage to Cargill, Nestle and other western conglomerates that control global food distribution and are used by the west as weapons.
Only African Presidents, Prime Ministers, opposition politicians, intellectuals, youths and commentators without a contextual sense of history and justice would look at Mugabe, Museveni, Idi Amin, and other African dictators as moral and political equivalents. And sadly, it is only African youths and intellectuals of all the other former colonial peoples of the other worlds, who have acquiesced and are comfortable in mental, cultural and ideological slavery.
From Asia to Latin America, the tradition of resistance to oppression, servitude, slavery and cultural genocide is as vigilant as ever. Closer to home, the youths of the Middle East flocked to Afghanistan in the 1970s; to Pakistan in the 1980s; and today, they are fighting running battles with the forces of global oppression and domination in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan, while the youths of Africa are perishing under planes as stowaways and drowning in the seas on make-shift rafts because they want to enter Europe so they could imbibe of the pop culture of the land of milk and honey that rappers , the BBC and CNN and MTV have popularised. While they are engaged in such unproductive enterprises, their counterparts in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America are busy leading social and political struggles to transform their societies so they would have no need to migrate to Europe and America where humiliating visa processes and immigration policies leave no doubt that they are unwanted in the first place.
In despair, we are bound to ask: when is Africa's century? Sadly, it may never come, until Africans are capable of identifying who their real enemies are, rather than being instigated by covert CIA and British and American Special Operations Forces and their African agents to define their problems and identify their enemies for them; thereby turning brother against brother, and egging us on to commit fratricide for their economic and strategic benefits. In the case of Zimbabwe, it is not Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF, the man and liberation organisation that first made the African in Rhodesia a human being and gave them the rights to vote.
It is a sad, sad, sad day and century for Africa, for people like Raila Odinga, who seems to have never learnt what his father struggled for and why his father believed Kenyan or African independence meant nothing with the presidencies of people like Jomo Kenyatta then or Yoweri Museveni today-Not Yet Uhuru until the African could control his own destiny. Raila Odinga should have been the last person to uncritically buy into the western rhetoric against Robert Mugabe.
Instead of uncritically chorusing the imperialist Anglo-American axis and their African lackeys in blaming Robert Mugabe, African youths should be flocking to Zimbabwe, and turn it into Pan-Africa's Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine; the Mecca for the reclamation of the African soul and personality and aspirations. It is time Africa stood for something, as was the case for those anti-colonial heroes from Agustino Neto to Robert Mugabe, whose paths were beaten by the courage and legacies of Samori Toure, Shaka Zulu, King Lobengula, Hendrick Witboi, Nyunga ya Mawe, Omukama Kabarega and those courageous men and women of Lamogi rebellion in Acholi.
It may yet be done; African youths, dispossessed, oppressed; the landless and poor; the unemployed of all Africa, trekking to the Matopos hills to the ruins of great Zimbabwe and waging the Pan African struggle for the soul of Africa. It may yet become a reality.
We should no longer accept the propositions that it is only the black man and the black race that must be punished for transgressions but those committed against them must be forgiven. We have seen that sixty some years after Nuremberg, the perpetrators of genocide are still being hunted and brought on wheel chairs to justice. But for the genocide of slavery, of colonialism, of apartheid and racialism, Africans must forgive and forget, and be content with Truth and Reconciliations Commissions. In cases where African collaborator regimes have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity with western complicity, such as that of Yoweri Museveni in northern Ugnada, Rwanda and Congo, we must turn a blind eye or invoke traditional African mechanisms to shield the regime and its agents from scrutiny. But African regimes and leaders considered recalcitrant to western biddings are dragged before International Criminal Courts and International Special Tribunals.
It is time the Poor and dispossessed of Africa looked to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, and turn Zimbabwe into Pan-Africa’s Afghanistan or Iraq or Pakistani Madrasa, where the spirits of African resistance and liberation shall be rekindled and the struggle for African soul re-launched. The Poor of Africa unite and trek to Zimbabwe! You have nothing to lose but the yokes of slavery and poverty in your own lands.
For instance, the English people and the British people will never allow any stooge, even a prince, to sanctify the vote more than the ideals the votes are supposed to protect. There will never be any return to absolute monarchy where there is no parliament and the kings and queens can do as they please. Similarly, the French Republic will stand against any notion of restoration of the bourbons. And, America will not soon want to revert to control from the kings and queens of England; the Republic is there to stay and so are the ideals for which the American Civil war was fought.
Were there another power from mars strong enough to create a Morgan Tsivangirai in England, France, or America, who would want to roll back these achievements of centuries of human struggles, they would no doubt resist with all their might, and deal with him as harshly as Mugabe has dealt with Morgan Tsivangirai.
The proposition that the issue of iniquities of racialism and domination and exploitation and dispossession and disenfranchisement of Africans that ZANU-PF fought against should now be relegated to a footnote of history, and electoral formalities should obfuscate and trump the central dispute of historical injustices, is a twisted logic and convoluted sense of realism. How sensible would it be, for anyone to tell the ANC, PAC, that they fought against apartheid alright, but sooner or later, those laws and practices of segregation should be re-established simply because a majority voted for it in a referendum or election? What bull that would be!
The moral of the racist apartheid regime and the justification of the ANC and PAC struggles and triumph against it, are no different from the morals of the racist UDI of Ian Smith and the robbery of Africans of their land and confinement in barren and rocky reserves in Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF and ZAPU struggles were against racialism, and justice for Africans in Rhodesia. They cannot now trade their blood-earned freedom to vote, and for the African to be a human being and exercising his inalienable rights to their land, for a piece of paper called a ballot with Morgan Tsivangirai's name on it. The African that ZANU-PF liberated yesterday will not eat dry, bland paper. He does not need to wait for British or American aid; he can till his land and feed himself. He needs not be held hostage to Cargill, Nestle and other western conglomerates that control global food distribution and are used by the west as weapons.
Only African Presidents, Prime Ministers, opposition politicians, intellectuals, youths and commentators without a contextual sense of history and justice would look at Mugabe, Museveni, Idi Amin, and other African dictators as moral and political equivalents. And sadly, it is only African youths and intellectuals of all the other former colonial peoples of the other worlds, who have acquiesced and are comfortable in mental, cultural and ideological slavery.
From Asia to Latin America, the tradition of resistance to oppression, servitude, slavery and cultural genocide is as vigilant as ever. Closer to home, the youths of the Middle East flocked to Afghanistan in the 1970s; to Pakistan in the 1980s; and today, they are fighting running battles with the forces of global oppression and domination in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan, while the youths of Africa are perishing under planes as stowaways and drowning in the seas on make-shift rafts because they want to enter Europe so they could imbibe of the pop culture of the land of milk and honey that rappers , the BBC and CNN and MTV have popularised. While they are engaged in such unproductive enterprises, their counterparts in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America are busy leading social and political struggles to transform their societies so they would have no need to migrate to Europe and America where humiliating visa processes and immigration policies leave no doubt that they are unwanted in the first place.
In despair, we are bound to ask: when is Africa's century? Sadly, it may never come, until Africans are capable of identifying who their real enemies are, rather than being instigated by covert CIA and British and American Special Operations Forces and their African agents to define their problems and identify their enemies for them; thereby turning brother against brother, and egging us on to commit fratricide for their economic and strategic benefits. In the case of Zimbabwe, it is not Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF, the man and liberation organisation that first made the African in Rhodesia a human being and gave them the rights to vote.
It is a sad, sad, sad day and century for Africa, for people like Raila Odinga, who seems to have never learnt what his father struggled for and why his father believed Kenyan or African independence meant nothing with the presidencies of people like Jomo Kenyatta then or Yoweri Museveni today-Not Yet Uhuru until the African could control his own destiny. Raila Odinga should have been the last person to uncritically buy into the western rhetoric against Robert Mugabe.
Instead of uncritically chorusing the imperialist Anglo-American axis and their African lackeys in blaming Robert Mugabe, African youths should be flocking to Zimbabwe, and turn it into Pan-Africa's Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine; the Mecca for the reclamation of the African soul and personality and aspirations. It is time Africa stood for something, as was the case for those anti-colonial heroes from Agustino Neto to Robert Mugabe, whose paths were beaten by the courage and legacies of Samori Toure, Shaka Zulu, King Lobengula, Hendrick Witboi, Nyunga ya Mawe, Omukama Kabarega and those courageous men and women of Lamogi rebellion in Acholi.
It may yet be done; African youths, dispossessed, oppressed; the landless and poor; the unemployed of all Africa, trekking to the Matopos hills to the ruins of great Zimbabwe and waging the Pan African struggle for the soul of Africa. It may yet become a reality.
We should no longer accept the propositions that it is only the black man and the black race that must be punished for transgressions but those committed against them must be forgiven. We have seen that sixty some years after Nuremberg, the perpetrators of genocide are still being hunted and brought on wheel chairs to justice. But for the genocide of slavery, of colonialism, of apartheid and racialism, Africans must forgive and forget, and be content with Truth and Reconciliations Commissions. In cases where African collaborator regimes have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity with western complicity, such as that of Yoweri Museveni in northern Ugnada, Rwanda and Congo, we must turn a blind eye or invoke traditional African mechanisms to shield the regime and its agents from scrutiny. But African regimes and leaders considered recalcitrant to western biddings are dragged before International Criminal Courts and International Special Tribunals.
It is time the Poor and dispossessed of Africa looked to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, and turn Zimbabwe into Pan-Africa’s Afghanistan or Iraq or Pakistani Madrasa, where the spirits of African resistance and liberation shall be rekindled and the struggle for African soul re-launched. The Poor of Africa unite and trek to Zimbabwe! You have nothing to lose but the yokes of slavery and poverty in your own lands.
Comments