Time for Zimbabweans to reflect

Black American comedian Chris Rock says: “When it comes to acquiring a fortune, when it comes to acquiring wealth in the United States of America, different people have gone about it in different ways.

“There is a saying about wealth. There is saying about fortune. And the saying is that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. And there is some truth to that. Some of the richest people, some of the most powerful people in the United States are descendants of drug dealers.

“They call it bootlegging but that’s just the white man’s way of saying drug dealing. They didn’t sell boots. They sold the crack of their day. They killed cops and kids.

“When it’s time for other people to come up and acquire wealth, the rules change. One of the number one rules about acquiring wealth in America is that only the white man can profit from pain.

“If you are black or brown, you can make money in America. You can prosper in America but whatever you decide to do it must be positive because if one person is harmed you will be destroyed….White man makes guns, no problem. Black rapper sings guns, congressional hearing.”

One could be saying the same thing about Zimbabwe. The only difference is that there is no black and white. It is black and black. One is talking the language whites understand and the other, the language some blacks understand- that you took our land, we are taking it back. This is our country. We must own the majority shareholding in every enterprise.

Robert Mugabe won last month’s elections because of his promise to empower the people through indigenisation. People can shout rigging, theft and so on. The truth is that Zimbabweans want to create wealth.

Investors had banked on a Morgan Tsvangirai victory. Tsvangirai was going to open up the economy. Reverse indigenisation. But the people spoke. They want to create their own wealth, rather than to be employed.

Again back to Rock: “Wealth will set us free because it is empowering. It will set us free from poverty because wealth is passed on from generation to generation.”

This is what every Zimbabwean wants, especially the rural Zimbabwean who has never worked for anyone but for himself. Is there anything wrong with that?

Yes. The message that has been drilled into the people for over a century and the one being drilled into people today is that black Zimbabweans cannot create wealth without the help of foreign- read white- investors. The black man needs a white man to prosper, to feed himself, even to free himself.

If that were true, why did the blacks have to fight for freedom while the whites were creating wealth for everyone? And they ruled the country for 100 years?

That kind of reasoning sets us back. We can’t talk about the old days. We can’t even talk about the liberation struggle. That’s history. But we can talk about Mugabe’s 33-years of misrule. We can talk about how Mugabe has destroyed the country in 33 years. We can even lie that Mugabe is Zimbabwe’s first president. We can talk about Gukurahundi. But when it comes to the economy and the true history of Zimbabwe, it starts in 1999.

The very whites who want to invest in Zimbabwe can talk about the Second World War and Adolf Hitler. They can even talk about the First World War. They can even talk about their founding fathers. But Zimbabweans should not talk about the liberation struggle. It’s all in the past.

This is rewriting history to suit someone- a history that does not have white oppressors but just black dictators; a history that does not have black achievers but white rescuers; a history that does not have blacks feeding themselves and even exporting food before the arrival of the white man, but a history that had blacks destroying the country’s economy after getting back their land; a history where the country has been ruled by one man with an iron fist for 33 years; a history where, despite having the highest literacy rate on the continent people cannot even recognise that they have been rigged out of an election; a history where the votes of more than two million people do not reflect the will of the people but someone in Washington, someone in London, someone in Brussels, someone in Canberra, knows their wishes better than the two million.

Former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said the West was fond of humiliating Africans. And this is exactly what the West is doing now “The Jews are the most persecuted people on earth while the Africans are the most humiliated,” Moi said.

Sadly, to some Africans, it is OK to be humiliated by a white man but not by another black man. If not, why would someone be interested in an investor who is scared of indigenisation when indigenisation is a way to empower the majority? And why would someone think that the country would collapse if the majority are united in one common goal to get the wealth of their country back and use that wealth to empower future generations?

Zimbabwe lost $11.8 billion through illicit financial transfers between 1980 and 2009. This could have paid off the country’s debt, yet someone still has the guts to say foreign investors will rescue the country! Investors are there to make money. They are not interested in the welfare of locals.

Indigenisation is the only way to go.

“Think! It ain’t illegal yet. But they are working on it,” says another black American comedian Eddie Griffin.

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