Africans must unite to defeat mental slavery AU chairperson President Mugabe and AU Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma chat with a secretariat staffer (centre) in this file photo
AU chairperson President Mugabe and AU Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma chat with a secretariat staffer (centre) in this file photo

AU chairperson President Mugabe and AU Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma chat with a secretariat staffer (centre) in this file photo

Cuthbert Mavheko
Today, Zimbabwe joins the rest of the continent in commemorating Africa Day —the day the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) was founded. Africa Day is an occasion for us as Africans to pause from our day-to-day chores and reflect on where we came from as a once colonised people and where we are today in our struggle for economic freedom.

As we march towards our goal, the norms, values and ideals of our forebearers who ignited the flame of our struggle against colonial enslavement, should forever be our guiding beacon,

The African Union (AU) is the successor of the Organisation of African Unity, which was founded on May 25, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by representatives of 32 African governments, who included Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda.

President Robert Mugabe attended this august gathering as a ZANU representative, a liberation movement at the time. A further 21 states joined the organisation over the years with South Africa becoming the 53rd member in 1994.

This year’s Africa Day celebrations are unique to the people of Zimbabwe as they occur on the backdrop of President Mugabe’s election as the new chairman of the AU. Zimbabwe’s chairmanship of the AU is expected to see the continent consolidate its Pan-African agenda in the light of President Mugabe’s uncompromising views on African renaissance.

Indeed, it is disconcerting to note that while most African countries gained their independence before Zimbabwe, their erstwhile colonial masters still own land in these countries while millions of indigenous blacks are packed like sardines on small pieces of sandy, unproductive land.

President Mugabe is the only African leader I know who had the guts to defy the mighty Western empire by acquiring land from its kith and kin in the country and giving it back to its rightful owners — the indigenous citizenry.

In so doing, President Mugabe stirred a hornet’s nest and Western nations are baying for his blood. They have branded him a dictator, an autocrat, etc and imposed illegal economic sanctions against the country in a futile attempt to force a reversal of the land reform programme.

To lend credibility to their crusade against Zimbabwe, Western imperialists are now peddling venomous falsehoods through their mouthpiece — the private media — that they imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe due to “human rights abuses.”

These accusations are amoral, disingenuous and woefully devoid of realism. Only one suffering from debilitating naivety can fail to see that the West imposed the sanctions to punish Zimbabwe for initiating land reforms and other programmes aimed at indigenising its economy.

Zimbabwe is the richest country on earth with respect to untapped natural resources per person and has over 40 exploitable minerals that industrialised countries need.

In their pre-election campaigns political leaders promise the electorate a lot of things. However, the sad reality is that once they are elected into office they sing a different tune altogether — one that espouses personal glory and self-aggrandisement. They easily forget the promises they made and only remember them when another election comes around.

The late South African President Nelson Mandela was idolised by millions of people the world over and portrayed as the faultless father of the “Rainbow Nation.” However, this will not preclude me from being forthright and honest in highlighting my own personal opinion of him.

One of Mandela’s glaring short-comings was his unfounded belief that Africa will never develop unless it is guided by Western nations. I think this perhaps explains why he left South Africa’s economy in the hands of the white minority while millions of his own black people wallow in grinding poverty.

In Zimbabwe, the same belief is championed by the likes of Morgan Tsvangirai and his cronies in the disintegrating MDC formations. This belief actually began with the indoctrination of black indigenous people by the white settlers during the colonial era.

Sadly though, this has inculcated in the average black person a convoluted mentality — one that perceives everything white and from the West as superior to everything African or indigenous.

The Western imperialists have transformed this white-is-superior belief into a solid foundation on the basis of which they continue to plunder Africa’s resources willy-nilly.

The time has now come for us as Africans to unite and defeat this mental slavery, which has not only dichotomised us, but has also relegated us to second class citizens in our own motherland.

Africa will continue to move in circles, making no progress, development-wise, until we (Africans) refrain from looking down upon ourselves and using the morally-bankrupt West as our role model.

In any event, we must be awakened to the reality that the development of the Western empire is not above board and is, to a very large extent, premised on wholesale plundering of resources from other nations.

The plain truth is that the West, greedy and selfish as it is, does not have the time, will or inclination to see Africa develop as this does not augur well with its wicked expansionist machinations that are oiled by resources that it siphons from Africa for a song.

This is one of the major reasons why the West is vehemently opposed to Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and other economic empowerment initiatives being pursued by the Zanu-PF-led government. The West decampaigned President Mugabe ahead of the recent elections for a new chairman of the African Union out of fear that he would influence other African leaders to effect radical economic empowerment policies in their respective countries during his tenure of office as chairman of the AU.

These fears are well founded because, even as I pen this piece, there is already agitation for land in South Africa. It is time for Western nations to remove their blinkers and acknowledge the reality that winds of change are blowing across Africa; African leaders have now seen the light and will, sooner rather than later, give their subjects their birthright — land — and other resources that are in the hands of the white foreigners.

“An invasion of armies can be stopped, but not an idea whose time has come,” one author once said.

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