In South Africa, a whole violent and often lethal movement against African immigrants has now taken root. We have witnessed wanton acts of black-on-black, African-on-African violence, all in the name of protecting South African jobs or even vending sites. Yet no white immigrants are affected, even though South Africa’s Economy largely remains in white and foreign hands, as is also the case in many African countries.
This is a racialised war of black African underdogs, couched as nationalism, a fight for servitude by equally disempowered Africans, whatever their countries of origin. This attacks the very heart and soul of our solidarity as Africans uniformly objectified by long colonialism.
Here in Zimbabwe, the opposition has been paid to mobilise their supporters to demonstrate against Chinese investments, including at Bikita Minerals.
Ironically, Bikita Minerals was only taken over by a Chinese investor earlier in the year, after being owned and exploited by Western interests for many years since the resource was discovered back in colonial days.
The mine has been teetering on the brink, until these new Chinese investors came to the rescue injecting fresh capital with which to expand operations, thereby securing jobs for Zimbabweans. When the mine was in western hands, those who now raise protests, sat in contended silence.
Throughout our whole region, our peoples and communities are being weaponised in the name of resource nationalism, all for fights in which they do not have even an iota of interest or gain. The time may have come for us in leadership to take a firm stance against this insidious form of false and fake nationalism, in reality a resurgence in a more aggressive form of recolonisation.
It threatens the Pan-African spirit which won us our Independence and freedoms; it also threatens the spirit of internationalism which laid a firm bedrock upon which we pursue our interests worldwide, guided by mutually gainful partnerships by whomsoever is ready to work with us.
Above all, it gives a racist ring to our mantra of Zimbabwe is open for business. That mantra must never be understood to refer to Western business interests alone. We have opened up to the whole world, with the West electing to place impediments in its way through needless sanctions and other restrictive measures.
That negative stance by the West should not hold us back. Or block alternative capital from flowing in. We run free economies which are not indentured to the West or any other power. We pursue our interests, free from disabling histories and legacies.
As the generation of Liberation, we cannot be indifferent to this wave of disruptive fake nationalism I have alluded to, which the West has been sponsoring to draw a wedge between us and investors from other regions, and between our historically-rooted sister countries. That would be a great disservice to our founding values which won us independence.
Long Live Africa!
By President Emmerson Mnangagwa for the Sunday Mail
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