Five things Africa (and Zimbabwe) has to do to be its own master- Mnangagwa

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa says Africa and Zimbabwe can develop using their own resources and outsiders should only come in to support.

Writing in his column in the Sunday Mail, Mnangagwa listed five things that need to be done for Africa to be its own master and rejected the notion that Africa was a new frontier for a second scramble by foreign interests.

On Zimbabwe, he said:“We have domesticated this continental thinking and aspiration through our mantra, Nyika inovakwa nekutongwa nevene vayo! We govern ourselves, eschewing anything that derogates from our full sovereignty; we build our own country, brick by brick, stone upon stone and step by step, with outsiders coming in to support, or to participate through skills, capital and technologies, in development options we will have freely chosen, and we will have set for ourselves,” he said.

“We develop our country and continent on the strength of our resources. Africa has abundant resources; many of these resources are yet to be exploited. They should be exploited by us Africans, for the benefit of our continent and her posterity. We thus reject the notion of Africa as ‘a new frontier’ for a second scramble by foreign interests.”

Below is the full article:

More than a century after its colonisation, and over 66 years into its Independence, Africa must begin to claim, define and assert its own century.

The dream of a politically decolonised continent, which Africa’s founding fathers declared at the inception of the Organisation of African Unity, OAU, now African Union, AU, in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in May 1963, is now a virtual reality. Only Western Sahara remains outstanding.

The road to full decolonisation was long and arduous, starting with the independence of Ghana in 1957. Thereafter, several African countries gained Independence, all the time widening Africa’s vistas. The toughest phase of that decolonisation process was here in Southern Africa, where colonialism had assumed a settler form, and thus got deeply and bellicosely entrenched. To dislodge it, bloody armed struggles became necessary. Africa showed its unity and resolve, leading to the independence of our sub-region. Africa at 60 thus is a celebration of freedoms well won through huge sacrifices, and out of the unity of a determined continent.

Today our continent must harness this protracted historic victory over entrenched multinational colonial imperialism to set upon a new course leading to an African Century. Multinational because most Western countries on that fateful day, February 26, 1885, signed the General Act of the Berlin Conference.

These were Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the USA, France, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Norway and Turkey. Today we build on the legacy of our resistance as a continent to catapult ourselves forward towards a new destiny in which the African is his/her own master. What, then, needs to be done?

First, the guns must be silenced on our continent. Guns of fratricidal conflicts of whatever hue or complexion. Violent internal contradictions; insurgency, inter-state conflicts or surrogate wars: all these must give way so our continent consolidates peace and cohesion for it to move forward. Africa cannot continue to fritter away her resources on guns, instead of spending them on butter.

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