Zimbabwe: lying when it suits us

What is the natural order that Mugabe usurped?  That blacks must not think.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame aptly put it: “I think the West does some injustice to us. They don’t want us to be ourselves, to develop into partners, into people who also have sense, values, and a culture to live by. It is another version of the West’s economic policies. We can’t process our own coffee here, we’re supposed to send it to other countries to be processed and then buy it back from them.

“Even in politics, we are never meant to graduate from being pupils of democracy or governance. We are always people to be brought up, educated, told what to do, to be consumers of ideas and practices that come from the West. There is no point at which you graduate.”

A British peer Lord Palmer succinctly pit it this week when he asked the UK foreign Secretary whether Britain has considered recolonising Zimbabwe in view of what is currently happening. This was not a joke. A lot more people share that view and sadly this includes some Zimbabweans because this is exactly what they are calling for when they ask the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and the United Nations to intervene. Why can’t Zimbabweans talk to each other and find solutions to their own problems? Ego.

But this falls right into the West’s plan which author Naomi Klein describes as “disaster capitalism”. She says the West makes sure that a country moves from crisis to crisis because “in moments of crisis, people are willing to hand over power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure….”

Zimbabweans are clamouring for a solution to their crisis right now and will welcome anyone who claims to have that solution.

Mnangagwa’s government could fall into that trap too. In its desperation to get things going it could fall prey to dubious investors who claim they have solutions to Zimbabwe’s problems.  The government should therefore be careful because it might attract the wrong type of investors- crooks, money-launderers, the mafia……

Maybe, Zimbabwe should seek solutions from its own people, internally first, rather than look out for external investors. There are so many things that Zimbabweans can do for themselves, if they unite and put the nation first.  Of course, this is easier said than done, because every crisis is an opportunity for some to make money. Clean or dirty- to them money is money. But there are more honest citizens than dirty ones. So why not give the honest ones a chance, poor though they might be, non-vocal though they might be?

Only Zimbabweans can build their own country. Abdicating that responsibility to someone else is only a temporary solution.

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