BY TENDAI RUBEN MBOFANA
It has never been in doubt to most of us that the government that came into power in 1980 in Zimbabwe, was nothing more than a British project, which was created to hijack the genuine and gallant people’s revolution in order to establish a system that would perpetuate colonial interests and protect the erstwhile masters’ interests — since, the real liberators were regarded as a potential threat to the status quo.
Those who took time to study how elections of 1980 were conducted by the British under governor Lord Soames would know how Zanu was permitted to commit some of the most horrendous and barbaric pre-election atrocities with impunity in the run-up to its disputed “victory” as the ruling elite knew that they never attained the true trust, love, and support of the majority of Zimbabweans.
Why I call the 1980 Zanu a hijacked party is that it was no longer anywhere near the original Zanu founded by icons such as Leopold Takawira, Herbert Wilshire Chitepo, and Josiah Magama Tongogara, who had been suspiciously assassinated, most likely by the same characters who were now in charge of the already former revolutionary party (something that even the then President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, realised, as he rounded up and arrested most of the senior Zanu officials based in his country, after the killing of Chitepo).
Even the then Mozambican leader Samora Machel understood this fact very well, as he was also reportedly highly distrustful of the likes of the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe, and his close ally Edgar “Twoboy” Tekere, when they suspiciously and hurriedly crossed into his country in 1975, soon after the death of Chitepo on March 18 of the same year, to take over the party’s military wing, Zanla, in order to complete the hijacking.
As such, it was not surprising that barely two years into Zimbabwe’s independence, this fake and hijacked Zanu would embark on arguably the worst atrocities ever committed in this country — as the regime’s military cold-bloodedly butchered over 20 000 innocent and unarmed civilians, largely in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces — yet, the British, who today tout themselves as human rights and democracy defenders (even imposing laughable half-hearted, utterly ineffective, and pointless targeted sanctions on four top officials, and one company) looked aside, continued providing the country with military assistance, and to top it all, Queen
Elizabeth knighted then brutal dictator Mugabe with some dubiously titled “Grand Knight Cross in the order of the Bath” in 1994.
Why were these ridiculous targeted sanctions that we witness today — whose objective I have never quite understood, as they neither have the punch nor the sense, to genuinely and seriously force any greedy, cold-hearted and evil-minded tyrant to change his ways — not imposed when the hijacked Zanu regime was busy massacring tens of thousands of mainly Ndebele-speaking people?
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Well, the answer to that is simply that this British-engineered Zanu was a tool to annihilate whatever was left of the genuine liberation forces (having already ruthlessly dealt with its own, such as Chitepo and Tongogara) — in this regard, the other revolutionary party, Zapu, and its perceived supporters, whom the tribalist regime regarded as being Ndebele speakers — so as to continue colonial policies in independent Zimbabwe.
No wonder, even the much acclaimed land reform programme, carried out in the early 2000s, was so haphazardly, violently, and shoddily conducted, as there had been absolutely no plans at all to redistribute any significant land to the majority of Zimbabweans by the ruling elite — except, for their own benefit, since they had already been parcelling out the most productive areas to themselves since 1980 at the expense of the rest of the citizenry.
The only reason this opportunistic British-engineered Zanu administration found itself “forced” in panic mode was due to the emergence of the MDC in 1999, which threatened to romp to victory in the 2000 elections — thus, the ruling junta had to come up with a façade to rouse the long-lost revolutionary fervour in order to portray the country as being under some attack by the former colonial master.
A charade that is still ongoing
Yet, what we still witness today, is a ruling party still willing to please its “real” masters, as it has just gazetted a legal instrument to facilitate the eviction of over 12 500 villagers from their ancestoral homes in Chilonga, Chiredzi, so as to make way for the growing of lucerne grass to feed cattle owned by Dendairy company.
Does this sound familiar?
It most certainly does as this brings back memories of the evictions of villagers under Chief Rekai Tangwena of Nyanga in Manicaland province, on October 29, 1970 by the colonial regime under the Land Apportionment Act — something the Harare establishment always megaphones as the highlight of the Rhodesians’ cruelty, in spite of repeating the very same in post-independent Zimbabwe.
If what the Zimbabwean government is doing to Chiredzi villagers had been done at the hands of the Rhodesians, we would have never heard the last of it — as we would have been loudly and repeatedly told by the authorities how “cruel colonists displaced Chiredzi villagers from land they had been on for hundreds of years in order to grow grass”.
In fact, this displacement of people of Chiredzi from their ancestoral land “to grow grass”, is by no means an isolated case, as removing people from their land, and leaving them virtually destitute, to make room for capital, has been the hallmark of both the Rhodesia and Zimbabwe regimes.
However, the latter has even taken this a step further by demolishing people’s homes and abandoning them to the vagaries of the weather on the pretext of “sanitising” or “cleansing” urban areas.
We, the people, then ask: “What difference to colonialism did this post-independence regime bring” — considering that the majority of the country’s citizenry has never experienced the difference — if anything, most urban dwellers, and the working class, might sense that the economic situation has actually worsened under this incompetent, corrupt, and murderous autocratic regime, whose only purpose appears to be to steal, kill, and destroy.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice activist, writer, author and speaker. He writes here in his personal capacity.
