Jamwanda : The Herald
Those behind this treacherous Twitter campaign have been out to convince us Ian Smith and his racist settler Rhodesian regime were so superlatively good that all we should do is decapitate all veterans of the Struggle, all post-colonial Independence leadership, President Mnangagwa especially, and liquidate the current political order from our Liberation Struggle for happy Rhodesia and good old Smithie.They went further to urge us to pray and plead with a
mistaken Almighty so he grants Ian Douglas Smith a second life to declare and
run a second Unilateral Declaration of Independence, UDI! Ian Smith, we are
told, was a better nationalist and better leader who knew how to develop the
country; white settler Rhodesia was a happy haven where all ate well, with no
one slaughtered or sent into exile! Besides, he ran a growing economy under
sanctions!
So many unanswered
questions
Then you ask: so which nationalism was Ian Smith better at
which discriminated blacks found worth admiring? You again ask: so who
slaughtered thousands at Chimoio, Mkushi, Nyadzonia, Freedom Camp and many
other external bases, not to mention the over 100 000 blacks killed inside the country?
You draw their attention in vain to the countless
bottlenecks placed in the way of blacks to smother their life chances and
opportunities. You ask: what infrastructure was put to service the African
underdog stuck in infertile and overcrowded Lupane, Gokwe, Beitbridge or
Buhera, to mention but a few places?
You ask, whose but for a small, select white, privileged
community did Ian Smith build a strong Economy? Above all, you ask which
sanctions did America slap white Rhodesia with, but to buy its chrome and
fortify its racist defences through covert money and murderous mercenaries?
Whose infrastructure and economy did he build so well, and for which catchment
caste of beneficiaries?
The response takes the form of a brag that the Rhodesian
dollar was one-on-one with the US dollar whose economy Rhodesia traded with,
all against UN sanctions. Or takes the form of thousands of brickbats spiced
with biting expletives.
Triple C’s
ideological teaser cows and bulls
Tellingly, all these Triple C ideological teaser bulls and
cows — there are two particularly super-aggressive cows in the herd – were born
after Independence. They never saw Ian Smith in real life, or tasted his
wrathful and devilish racial reign. All they know and see are lovely Smith’s
Kodak moments, which look blindingly handsome to their eyes.
They even recite when Smith’s wife was born; when she
conceived; what day she delivered; when she got cancer and, mournfully, when
she died. In the case of Ian, they, in their wish and desire, get him to die
here at his Gwenoro Farm in Shurugwi! That’s how better informed they are on
this their hero-couple!
When swines trample on national heritage
Tellingly, too, these Smith punters all got educated to
levels which their little, warped brains could go, in Independent Zimbabwe they
now so love to deride.
The few times they are home, they ply beautiful roads done
after Independence, visit parents on newly resettled lands, admire good water
bodies built after Independence, and join their families in once whites-only
suburbs their fathers would never have dreamt of going to except as nannies and
garden-boys!
They forget under Ian Smith, they would have been trapped
in rural idiocy, or rarely when lucky enough to get passes, holed up in filthy,
overcrowded Rhodesian hostels which their Triple C neither repairs nor
maintains in spite of collecting millions by way of rates.
Above all, they were able to strike it out in foreign
lands, including in advanced white societies, on the strength of skills
Independent Zimbabwe afforded them. One can’t say with certainty if their
anti-nation, anti-Independence and racial self-hate has anything to do with
their current placement, whether in time, circumstance or geography. But the
fact is, they are a solid, vocal but cankered part of the national psyche we
can neither ignore, disown or wish away.
Too little, too weak, too late
Sensing this was public political communication gone
disastrously bad, Triple C’s Secretary General, Chalton Hwende — himself
another post-Independence kid — was forced to intervene in the hope of
distancing Triple C from its confirmed Rhodesian pedigree.
But that was too little too late.
The debate had run for several days and to utter, quiescent
silence from all in Triple C, including its heavies.
Who would be blamed for believing those vocal propaganda
teasers were on Party ideological and communication assignment?
That they spoke and expressed Triple C’s ideological
sub-conscious?
And so it was. For a while, most of us who knew and
survived under Ian Smith and his atrociously genocidal system, for a while kept
quiet hoping the Triple C leadership would call their waywardly a-historical
goons to order, so this appalling anti-nation, anti-black, anti-Independence
diatribe and abomination would be stopped. Didn’t we wait forever?
Angry darts from
East Africa
But Professor Jonathan Moyo could not repress his horror,
preferring to verbalise it viciously.
“Ian Douglas Smith’s apologists and supporters are
barbarians!” he despatched a searing dart of unmitigated anger loaded from East
Africa. Nor was he done. He added: “It’s one thing to condemn Zanu-PF’s
leadership for its failures and atrocities; and another thing to gratuitously
glorify Ian Smith, UDI and colonialism….”
It was only then that Hwende was drawn out, and lamely
sought to distance Triple C from this spited encomium and pean to Ian Smith and
his UDI Rhodesia.
One hell of Triple
C’s Freudian slip
What are we to make of all this? Well, clearly that this
was one hell of a political Freudian slip by a party which, for purposes of
electability, fawned proximity to the Liberation ethos.
Now we know and are both a lot wiser and decidedly alarmed.
Both by history and succession, Triple C is an efflux of resurgent UDI Rhodesia
angry at losing its coveted status as a landed gentry, both in situ and
absentee.
Tsvangirai could not hide this from public view, especially
after that iconic image of him receiving endorsement and funding from rich
farmers in Mutorashanga. That connection between Rhodesia’s white landed gentry
obtruded even in the aforementioned tweet-driven beatification of Ian Smith and
Rhodesia: the post-colonial Independence ethos had ruined the lovely Rhodesian
pound/dollar because of its disastrous Land Reform Programme, the teasing
tweets would not hesitate to say it, right in our face!
Resurgent Rhodesia through our own children
Second, the movement-in-exile of Rhodesians Worldwide who
have been selling their genocidal war through several interviews on YouTube
with Rhodesian ex-servicemen, have a hand in shaping this whole communication
for and through Triple C’s diaspora constituency of which they are an integral
part.
That movement continues to fund Chamisa and Biti’s jaunts,
as well as all programmes for Triple C abroad.
They are also behind the diaspora vote debate which Triple
C has been pushing for ahead of 2023, and which our Speaker of Parliament
fatally endorsed for reasons best known to him.
What we saw by way of this false debate was but the tip of
an huge white iceberg controlled remotely by resurgent UDI.
The goal was to fly the kite or, in ordinary motor mechanic
parlance, to dip the stick in order to see if there is enough traction for
back-to-Rhodesia politics ahead of 2023. The best actors for such probing
attacks are mavericks to allow for maximum deniability in the event the
experiment backfires. This it did, and hence Hwende’s belated, perfunctory
denial.
When we all pay for national ideological poverty
Thirdly and fatally, Zimbabwe is paying dearly for the
opposition’s ideological poverty we have always raised. Unable to gather enough
thoughts to provide an alternative vision to Zanu-PF rule, all the opposition
can do is to hanker after white Rhodesia which founded them and which parents
of its leadership served variously.
In any case they stand beholden to their paymaster, namely
the embittered Rhodesian landed gentry who, at critical times and against desperate
anger, divest themselves of all pretences.
Zimbabwe, too, is paying dearly for Zanu-PF’s limited
success in reproducing itself in every successive generation after 1980 or soon
before.
As a ruling class, its ideas are failing to be the ruling
ideas in the Marxian sense. Jamwanda. Herald
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