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NewsDay

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Are black Zimbos racist?

Opinion & Analysis
IT is always a dangerous occupation to generalise. As Mark Twain once said: “All generalisations are false including this one.” However, I think the above issue needs to be explored, simply because it has been quite intriguing for me, to talk to black Zimbabweans about the past and how it has affected their thinking today.

IT is always a dangerous occupation to generalise. As Mark Twain once said: “All generalisations are false including this one.” However, I think the above issue needs to be explored, simply because it has been quite intriguing for me, to talk to black Zimbabweans about the past and how it has affected their thinking today. I, therefore, ask for my readers’ indulgence in advance, lest I generalise, an inevitable consequence of the subject matter discussed herein.

Opinion by Vince Musewe

Growing up in the then Rhodesia was never easy for us blacks. I remember my high school days where, despite having an excellent education, I was traumatised by the overt racism that I experienced from fellow white students at a certain private school just outside Harare. I only realised this later on in my life that I was continually abused verbally and emotionally. The word kaffir ended up not meaning much to me, because I heard it so many times.

I stopped reacting negatively to it, and began to even laugh when I was called that. The lie that blacks are inferior was repeated to me so many times for six years that I began to believe it. Even after independence, Zimbabwe’s corporate sector was fraught with racist practices that held back blacks, while accelerating the promotion of whites. That too I experienced during my articles in Harare. I guess our older generation of Zimbabweans also had similar experiences. You end up accepting those things you can’t change and focusing on those you can.

Despite the above, the older generation of Zimbabweans appreciates how the murungu was organised. Wages were always paid on time, properties and roads well maintained or developed, infrastructure worked, medicines were available, street lights always on, rubbish was collected on time every time, drinking water was safe and so on. It stops there, because there is nothing sweeter than freedom and liberty even without the comforts of the colonialist.

There is a tendency among some of us to detest all whites, because of our history.

This is more evident among those blacks who suffered terribly under colonialism and the liberation struggle. Those black Zimbabweans who participated in the liberation struggle bore the brunt of white hate and violence.

I think they, however, still acknowledge that whites certainly did have a hand in developing Zimbabwe, albeit fortheir selfish ends. There was absolutely no justification for their selfishness. In my opinion, Rhodesian whites were rather slow to react to a changed environment after independence and did not acknowledge blacks as equal partners by incorporating them in the economy, especially the agricultural sector.

On the political front, it is evident that there is an overt abhorrence of whites, but one needs to understand the dynamics that have led to this phenomenon. I will not delve into it here, but suffice it to say that, to some extent, President Robert Mugabe’s experience with, and opinion of, the British has been “institutionalised” in Zimbabwe.

This may have has created a misconception that all blacks hate whites, which is not necessarily the case. You will hear stories of some good deeds done towards black Zimbabweans by whites, and we ought to give credit where it is due. The British, for example, still give considerable aid to Zimbabwe today, and so do a lot of other European countries and America. In fact, they seem more concerned about our social underdevelopment than our own black politicians! How bizarre, but not surprising at all!

The cacophony we hear today about indigenisation and the drive to take over white-owned companies to me, is driven more by political desperation than by the absolute hate of whites. What always amazes me is that our politicians here speak against everything white, but can be seen jumping into British or German-manufactured cars, love Scottish whisky and British tea, adore Italian suits and Swiss-made watches. They want all things Western, but are quick to speak against the West. For me, that is the contradiction of it all. But as we all know, African politicians are a strange breed indeed, quick to condemn and shout against colonialism and imperialism if that is going to earn them political power, but slow to shed the personal material comforts and benefits they derive from their former masters. Talk about being authentic!

I, therefore, conjecture that some black Zimbabweans still hate what some whites did to them in the past, but in my opinion, black Zimbabweans in general do not necessarily hate whites with the obsessive passion that we see “you know who” showing at political gatherings, before he is whisked away in his German-made limousine, or his French Alouette helicopter.