“PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa Friday took time to criticise some Africans he accused of continuously looking down upon themselves while apportioning high regard for Western ways of doing things,” reported New Zimbabwe
“Let me explain to you why it is called Victoria Falls. There was a man called David Livingstone who visited this area and found some people who told him it is called Mosi-oa-Tunya and he couldn’t comprehend. He named it after his Queen Victoria Falls who was sitting somewhere back there in his country. If we advertise saying visit Mosi-oa-Tunya you don’t come, but if we say come to Victoria Falls you come. That is the tragedy of Africa,” said Mnangagwa.
Actually the real tragedy of Africa is that we, especially our domineering “Misstra Know It All” leaders, make mountains out of mole-hills.
If calling the falls, Victoria Falls brings in tourists in the hundreds the and with them the wealth to the local community and the nation at large; and calling it Mosi-oa-Tunya only brings in a few tourists. Then call it Victoria Falls.
It was China’s Chairman Deng Xiaoping who famously said "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”
Many Africans’ anti-West rhetoric is the antithesis of the inferiority complex brought on by the white supremacists’ racist rhetoric. The rhetoric has become an obsession admitting failure in anything, even in the face of a mountain of evidence to prove the failure, is tantamount to acknowledging one’s racial inferiority.
Of course, that is nonsense because we all make mistakes regardless of our race, gender, etc. And therefore to refuse to being fallible is to refuse to being human. It is bad enough for an individual to bury one’s head in the sand and refuse to admit to one’s failures but when the individual is in a position of power and authority, is a national leader, the consequences of a nation blundering from pillar to post will drag the whole nation into the gutter!
41 years and counting of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawlessness has dragged Zimbabwe deeper and deeper into this hell-on-earth. Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies have usurped the people’s freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. And so Zanu PF has dragged the nation into this hell-hole and we, the people have been helpless to stop it.
Mnangagwa said Pan Africa Postal Union should play a developmental role in uplifting standards of living in line with aspirations of the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063.
Typical, he is always looking into the distant future, chasing a mirage; he will not talk about the present of the historic past because he knows they all point to a totally, totally different future to Africa’s cuckoo land Agenda 2063!
By ignoring the present and the past Africa is failing to learn from the past and so is making the same foolish mistakes over and over again. Problems that should be nipped in the bud are allowed to grown out of proportion.
For example, Zimbabwe has swept corruption under the carpet for decades and now it has become so rampant, it is overwhelming the nation. A recent Auditor General report revealed that only 1% of US$4.5 billion in cash and material donated to the Cyclone Ida relief was put to good use the rest was looted or wasted. The country’s future is grime, given such criminal waste of human and material resources.
Many independent African countries now look at the colonial years with begrudging nostalgia as the country’s golden age. It is a damning testimonial of independent Africa’s failure to govern ourselves.
Africa is being dragged back into the dark-ages not by Africans leaders who inflated ego and overarching inferiority complex will not allow them to admit they are fallible and are therefore subject to democratic scrutiny and accountability. They will not allow regime change because, to them, that is tantamount to "looking down upon themselves”!
The day Zimbabwe is able to hold free, fair and credible elections will be the greatest day in the country’s history because it will mark the day the country has finally emerged from the dark of corruption and tyranny into the light of freedom and democracy. That will be a quantum leap and one Zanu PF is hell bend on resisting at all cost!
All this anti-west rhetoric by leaders like Mugabe and Mnangagwa is all contrived to hide the individual’s incompetence and inferiority complex. For the first decade after independence, Mugabe worshiped the British and he loved everything British. The British rewarded him with the knighthood.
ReplyDeleteHowever when the Zimbabwe economy started flagging and was failing to pay its blooming debt Mugabe was always itching for a fight with the IMF, WB, AfDB, Paris Club, etc. He blamed them for imposing unworkable economic reform programmes of poor African countries although he is the one who had initiated the programmes.
Mugabe initiated the fallout with the British over the land issue in the turn of the century to justify his violent seizure of the white owned farms. The seizure of the white farms has been used as cover behind which to justify the violence used against the MDC opposition whom the regime accused of being supported by the white farmers and the West. Mnangagwa has taken over from where Mugabe left off.
Only a slow witted person like Mnangagwa would admit calling the falls Victoria Falls attracts tourists and yet would argue changing the name! And this for a nation in serious economic meltdown and has many serious problems to worry about instead of wasting time on trivial. What is in a name!!!
We cannot run away from the historic fact that we would not be in this political mess if MDC leaders had implemented the democratic reforms when they had the golden opportunity to do so during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Worse still, MDC leaders are going to participate in the 2023 elections with no reforms in place knowing fully well that by doing so will only give legitimacy to vote rigging Zanu PF.
ReplyDeleteMDC leaders are participating in these flawed and illegal elections out of greed. It is for us, the ordinary citizens, to put an end to this madness!
THE biggest referral hospital in Zimbabwe, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, cancelled 1 688 surgical operations in one year, owing to a lack of medical equipment.
ReplyDeleteBRIDGET MANANAVIRE
In her 2019 audit report on state enterprises and parastatals, Auditor-General Mildred Chiri said this may compromise health service delivery.
She also found that during the year under review (2018) the hospital did not have adequate monitors in anaesthetic rooms and recovery areas, with only eight out of 18 stations in use.
If this is the sorry state at a referral hospital one can only image the sorry state of the provincial and the rural hospitals.
When VP Chiwenga took over as Minister of Health he said he would turn the health services into a five star. This is a sick joke!
The people of Zimbabwe became obsessed about names, it was not just the country's name that was changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe but cities, towns, companies, individuals, etc. changed their names. At it turned out we were busy changing names and took our eyes off what really mattered - making sure we built a free, just and democratic nation. We have a renamed nation but in ruins after 41 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and tyrannical rule.
ReplyDeleteIt is ironic that we have a Banana Republic in which 50% of the population now live in abject poverty and all the ruling elite care about is renaming whatever else they had missed out. What a buffoon!
@ Arthur Mntungwa
ReplyDelete“But to ZANU, any African who opposes them and expresses a different opinion is a puppet of the west. Isn't that looking down on Africans?
Africans should not have independent thinking, because they have no brains.
They should tore the ZANU line, otherwise they are Western puppets. They cannot belong to an opposition party other than one approved by ZANU. Shame!”
You are 100% correct on that, any black person who says anything critical of Zanu PF must be repeating something the whites told him or her to say. Even people demanding free, fair and credible elections, they must be puppets as far as Zanu PF is concerned; as if it is inconceivable that a black person could ever consider the right to vote as anything worth the spit!
Zanu PF has never ever allowed the ordinary Zimbabweans to enjoy their basic freedoms and rights for the same reasons the white colonialists denied the blacks the same freed and rights. Zimbabwe’s independence did not change anything of substance, we removed the white oppressors only to replace them with the Zanu PF thugs!