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NewsDay

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A letter from John Smith

Opinion & Analysis
I am writing to let you know that I follow your column very closely, not because it adds any value to my life, but some of your ideas are becoming a threat to the future of my children.

Dear Tapiwa I am writing to let you know that I follow your column very closely, not because it adds any value to my life, but some of your ideas are becoming a threat to the future of my children. It is on this basis that I wish to express my displeasure over some of those ideas.

I wish to remind you that Africa is my farm inherited from my forefather, Mr Smith, who was part of the group that attended the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 to regulate how Europe would convert Africa into our colonial farm, a supplier of resources, laboratory of ideas and medicine and playground for our exploitation policies.

Before the conference, our forefathers treated Africans as the New World natives whose territory was considered disputed territory ripe for exploration, trade, and settlement. Contrary to what has been said by most of your African leaders, colonisation of Africa was not done outside the law. Our law-abiding forefathers would not have done that. Their interest was not to cause harm to anyone, but to establish a long-term source of raw materials in a resource-rich Africa where even the natives didn’t know such resources existed.

As you may recall, called for by Portugal and organised by Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, the outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, formalised the Scramble for Africa. And as soon as that happened our grandparents started sowing the seeds of our future by colonising Africa and ensuring that local autonomy and self-governance were simultaneously eliminated. Some of you think this was cruel, but what was the relevance of an autonomy and self-governance in an Africa that had become my grandfather’s farm? Of what benefit is such a governance system, which did not recognise the abundance of valuable resources, let alone the importance of natural resources such as gold, timber, land, markets and labour power? From our grandfather’s assessment, Africans did not need these, but we needed them to reconstruct our battered economies and sustain our waning industrialisation. Surely, you can not call that stealing or cruelty.

In fact, we were so kind to the natives of Africa. Instead of just taking these resource for free, we gave you our special education to enlighten and covert the dark minds. We gave you our religion for your people to know the right way to heaven even though we do not subscribe to that. We gave you our ways of life so as to enrich our farm. Those combined have created an impressive multitude of followers who soliloquise and submit to our philosophies as they assume different leadership positions. You just need to look at mushrooming churches and the dying African religion to see how powerful my forefathers’ ideological farming techniques are.

Also check how influential those academics are in articulating and interpreting our forefathers’ philosophy. Your politicians too are experts in preaching my forefather’s language, sometime much better than I do. They did an impressive job which you and others are trying to undo.

Your struggle for political independence did not bother us much because we knew that we had enough educated and converted people to protect our interests even as they preach nationalism against us. Why would we be bothered if we are still assured that you will depend on us? You see Tapiwa, the greatest job done by our forefathers for which we shall forever be proud of was to sow a mindset that will forever depend on us. I am sure you have read Walter Rodney’s line that: “The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one’s interests and if necessary, to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.”

True as it may sound, sadly you can not do anything about it because all of you who call themselves clever are prototypes and replicas of our forefather’s successful ideological farming prowess. We are also not moved a tad by the indigenisation policies, because they mean nothing to us. Why would we worry if those on the forefront are dressed, sheltered and fed by us? We even look after their savings and use them to invest and create jobs for our children here.

You can not use China as a model for change in Africa. We didn’t spent enough time, neither did we sow enough ideological seeds in China nor invested a lot of interest. So their rise was surely a huge surprise to the entire Smith family. But your people are not strong without us. You can even have 100% ownership of everything. What is the point of owning the mines if you do not have use for the minerals? For us it simply means we will not have to worry about production and labour costs, so go ye therefore and exploit those of yours to extract the precious stones and we shall verily meet at the market where the power of the master of the Africa farm shall be revealed. We need your resources more than you do our money, but we make sure we create demand for our money so that we can exploit those resources and sadly there is nothing you can do about it.

Your struggle for political independence did not bother us much because we knew that we had enough educated and converted people to protect our interests even as they preached nationalism against us

Yours John Smith Son of a successful African ideological farmer