“Blacks are incapable of self government!” said John.
Bang! Came the explosive response from Chengetai.
John was a white student from St. Georges College. Chengetai and myself were black students from St Ignatius College. The two Colleges were ran by Jesuits priests and it was common for students from St Ignatius to visit the former to take advantage of its better facilities.
The year was 1976, at the height of the liberations war. Racial tension was high. Ian Smith’s white racist regime, had inflamed the blacks by passing a law compelling blacks students and other trainees to undergo military training and fight on the whites’ side in the ensuing civil war.
John’s racist remark was nothing new, if we, blacks, had heard it once we had heard it a thousand times!
Chengetai’s explosive response had taken us all by complete surprise; he hit the desk so hard, the message was loud and clear John had traded on his toes and only a fool will dare to that ever again.
Those of us who knew Chengetai well even more surprised. In all the years, I do not recall him ever raising his voice in anger at anyone. Talk of being calm, here was a vast expense of water the size of Kariba Dam and not a ripple! Out of this sheet of glass still came the twenty metres high Tsunami wave!
“I was not angry with John because he is a racist,” explained Chengetai, some months later. “His racist remark, devoid of truth, would have been water off a duck’s back.
“John’s remark was loaded. He forced me to face my deepest fears. I was very angry with myself and not with John.”
Zimbabwe used to produce enough food to feed her own people and have plenty left to be the breadbasket of the region. Ever since Mugabe seized the white owned farms to give to his cronies, mostly, the country has relied on food aid.
We are starving in a country that is, for all practical purposes, the Biblical Garden of Eden. A damning testimonial of the black majority rule!
It is no exaggeration to say the last four decades Zimbabwe has blundered from pillar to post as the country sunk deeper and deeper into this man-made hell-on-earth. It is not so much that Zimbabwe has made mistakes, it is bad enough to make mistakes, but worst of all the country has made the same foolish mistakes over and over again.
Zimbabwe has been stuck with the same corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF thugs for the last four decades. The party has systematically denied the people their basic freedoms and rights including the right to a free vote and even the right to life. The nation has had countless opportunities to end the Zanu PF curse of rigging elections and bad governance but has wasted them all.
Zanu PF blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections. The regime denied 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote, this was more than the 2.4 million Mnangagwa says he garnered to win. The regime failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters’ roll, Pete’s sake! And yet many Zimbabweans, led by the country’s corrupt and incompetent opposition, have endorsed the election result and Zanu PF as legitimate.
If the people, in this day and age and with all the benefit of four decades of hindsight, have no clue what constitutes free, fair and credible election then they surely deserved rigged elections and bad government. And in this corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous Zanu PF dictatorship, Zimbabwe has one of the worst government in modern history.
The reality of the total economic meltdown that has left millions of Zimbabweans into abject poverty, the blatant vote rigging of the elections by Zanu PF, etc. have proven white racist like John were right that blacks are incapable of self-rule. But what clinches the case for me, is the water off a duck’s back reaction of most Zimbabweans to these economic and political realities.
Chengetai did foresee the bad governance and still he is disappointed to see the nation sink this deep into hopelessness and despair. He would be furious that Zimbabweans have buried their heads in the sand and would not face up to the realities of their own shortcomings. That, even now with the country desperate to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance, the people would still participating in an election without something as basic as a voters’ roll! It is not rocket science!
@ Phillan Zamchiya
ReplyDelete“The major problem is that without democratic compromise what wins is the status quo. Yet compromise must not be for the sake of compromise. If it improves the status quo, it is an essential part of the democratic process. Let me not detour from my postulation, that within the framework of a pending general election, no effective dialogue is likely to take place in substance but in optics. Perhaps it is time to rethink innovative political solutions that are tailor made to Zimbabwe’s specific problem,” you said.
“For now, I posit that despite the call for dialogue, democratic compromise will be difficult for many reasons. These include ZANU PF leaders’ sense of entitlement to rule due to their participation in the liberation war that led to Zimbabwe’s independence from British colonial rule in 1980.”
You hit the nail on the head right there; we are dealing here with Zanu PF thugs who believe they have the right to rule Zimbabwe and hence to rig elections to secure their iron grip on power. It is clear then that the only relevant dialogue therefore must be to address this thorny issue: does Zanu PF have the right to rig elections?
In proposing the POLAD forum, Mnangagwa has made it clear that the dialogue in that talk-shop will discuss everything else EXCEPT Zanu PF’s right to rig elections - that must be accepted as fait accompli.
Chamisa has dismissed POLAD as a waste of time and he is right, any dialogue that does not address the curse of rigged elections is, indeed, a waste of time.
What Chamisa is proposing a dialogue in which comprehensive reforms to stop the cursed vote rigging are on the agenda. The weakness of this proposal is that MDC accepts the July 2018 parliamentary elections as having been free, fair and credible. This means Zanu PF will go into this dialogue with its 2/3 parliamentary majority. It is naive, to say the least, to expect this parliament to ever approve comprehensive democratic reforms.
Zanu PF will never reform itself out of office!
The only way forward is to accept the political reality that Zanu PF rigged the 2018 elections recognising the result as legitimate is just another way of endorsing the party’s outrageous claim that it has the right to rig elections.
Zanu PF is illegitimate and the party must step down to allow the nation to appoint an interim body that will implement the reforms and end the curse of rigged elections.
The only political dialogue to be had with Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies is to remind them that 2018 elections were flawed and illegal and could not have produced a legitimate government. The Zanu PF has held the nation to ransom these last 40 years, with the disastrous consequences now there for all to see. This must now stop! Enough is enough!
“I was not angry with John because he is a racist,” explained Chengetai, some months later. “His racist remark, devoid of truth, would have been water off a duck’s back.
ReplyDelete“John’s remark was loaded. He forced me to face my deepest fears. I was very angry with myself and not with John.”
Well this is very true, people will quickly forget and forgive an insult that is devoid of truth but not one that is loaded. Remember the ZRP officers who shot dead a colleague for calling him “Banana’s wife!” It turned out the man had been drugged and sodomised!
I takes real character for Chengetai to admit John, put aside his crude language, was doing doing him a big favour of forcing him to face the reality that, because of some character flaws including the tendency to bury one’s head in the sand, the possibility of bad black government was real.
When you look at a leader like Mnangagwa one sees immediately why the country is in this mess this deep! Even with all the evidence of 40 years of failure, Mnangagwa will never admit he has failed. Never!
The fact that the tyrant has found himself in a position of power and authority and has no qualms abusing it to impose himself has left the nation helpless. 40 years of the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship has left the country in economic ruins and at a complete lose as what to do to wrestle power from the regime!