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By Tichaona Zindoga
MANY users of the Internet, particularly the Google search engine and sister application, Google News, might have been left surprised by a Google News section dubbed “Harare, Rhodesia”, which was set up recently on the American version of Google.
Could there be any greater atavism, at worst, or mischief, at best, than this development which ties the capital of an independent Zimbabwe to the old colony called Rhodesia? And we always thought, hoped and said that “Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again”?
What is the rationale of tying Harare to the old Rhodesia rather than Zimbabwe, which rightfully displaced the former colonial institution that derived from one Cecil John Rhodes who had the misguided dream of “painting Africa red”? The same Rhodes can be recalled as the one sickly fellow who came to Africa to get a feel of its good weather so that he could recuperate from ill health.
As history will record, this man was later to return the warmth and hospitality of Africa by leading plunder and rape of the continent, stashing away its rich resources in diamonds and gold among others.
(He even created a fund for Anglo-Saxon scions to study at Oxford University so that they continue to deprive Africa of her resources.)
He, of course, dedicated his plunder to his country of inclement clime, resulting in him dedicating, after calling the country after himself, the capital of his new find to Lord Salisbury of Britain.
The history of plunder, rape, abuse, dispossession and all other ills related to colonialism, summed in the larger evil of the under-development of the continent, is on record. How Zimbabweans, with the help of other African States and international supporters, repossessed that which had been stolen from their ancestors is also recorded.
Zimbabwe got its independence from Britain in 1980 after different phases of anti-colonial struggles, which began in 1893 with the “Ndebele Uprising” followed by the First Chimurenga (1896-7); through non-combat struggles of the 1950s to the armed Second Chimurenga of the late 1960-70s, which eventually earned Independence.
Zimbabwe has since followed up on the gains of liberation by embarking on the Land Reform Programme, dubbed the Third Chimu-renga and the current indigenisation drive, which some people refer to as the Fourth Chimurenga.
Given this historical continuum of a people fighting the alien invader, it is to be wondered how the connection of the name of the capital of an independent Zimbabwe can be tied to the colonial skeleton called Rhodesia. Or it is true that Rhodesia never dies, after all?
The last decade or so has seen just how the old beneficiaries of colonialism are unwilling to let go as Zimbabweans, led by the revolutionary Zanu-PF party has threatened to wipe off the last vestiges of colonialism.
When Zimbabwe embarked on the successful land reform programme which resettled over one million people whose land was previously occupied by about 4 500 white farmers, Western countries went bellicose. The West tried to destroy the programme itself first and foremost and other institutions, industries and individuals that buttressed the agrarian revolution.
Thus the West imposed broad-based sanctions against Zimbabwe with the United States of America crafting the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (2001), which the European Union followed up on in 2002 with a raft of sanctions.
Both sets of measures also entail support for “pro-democracy”, political, civil and media organisations and individuals seeking to undo the Zanu-PF-led revolution, which needless to say, was deemed a travesty of Western democracy. This is the democracy of property and human rights – two aspects the Western world so conveniently conjures up when their interests are threatened and never when they threaten other people’s interests.
Suffice to say Western media do not look back with revulsion on realisation that they acquired the “rights” to property through the evil called colonialism (and even earlier, during slave trade). Nor do they mention that when they dispossessed and deposed and killed, maimed and butchered Africans it was a denial of both property and human rights.
Many African countries, Zimbabwe included, only got to reclaim and enjoy these rights after they waged a bloody struggle of reclamation and liberation.
But Western media, Google included, led a campaign that justified the punishment of a Zimbabwe that sought to complete its quest for re-humanisation, after the long night of slavery and colonialism. The campaign to criminalise Zimbabwe and its revolutionary leadership that has been spearheaded by these media and their local counterparts is and has been there for all to see.
It is arguably one of the biggest; most consistent and belligerent onslaughts history has recorded in recent times. And a little absurd too: the sheer imbalance of the forces, little 13-million-inhabitant Zimbabwe on one hand, the mighty Europe and America on the other, paints the desperation of the situation. It is a story of immorality.
That Google decides to cap its war against Zimbabwe with a nostalgic recall of Rhodesia is as desperate as it is very telling. First, it is but a continuation of Western media’s attempt to bring the old days of plunder on behalf of its capital by waging a propaganda war that revolves and rallies around the old colonial ideal called Rhodesia. This war entails painting the country as ruined and in need of the salving hand of the West, who after all brought Christianity to this part of world.
Related to this, the revolutionary leadership of and in Zanu-PF is portrayed in bad light to not only justify why they should be wiped off the face of the earth. Portraying in bad light Zanu-PF leadership, or anyone perceived to be aligned to it, is matched by the glorification of Western-funded and created organisations on the other hand.
In this regard, it is small wonder that the “news” on this new application, which carries the same old imperialist agenda, all come from pro-Western media houses.
At the time of writing, for example, the top stories of the page came from anti-Zanu-PF and anti-Zimbabwe media houses such as The Zimbabwean, The Standard and NewsDay. Needless to point out, the stories ran the common thread of bloodying Zimbabwe for the shark of Western imperialism. The same imperialism, it can be added, reposes in the US where Google is based.
The US has said it is better placed to achieve regime change in Zimbabwe, having not been the coloniser like Britain or a minnow like New Zealand but all in the quest for racist domination of black people of Zimbabwe and negation of their right to resources.
In the broader international context, it has been observed that Western media organisations like Google itself are leading the domination of the Third Word through cultural and scientific imperialism.
Does it come as a surprise then that the tiff between China and Google in 2010 brought to the fore the issue of Chinese sovereignty which was at stake and which thankfully was never upset by Google, which happened to be but a small player in the Chinese market?
One blogger noted that “Google is just another US company subjected to US laws and it (is) a tool for the US to use in promoting its Western based style of freedom, cultures and brand of human rights.”
The blogger said “Google had been trying to paint a negative light of China that it does not follow universal humanity rules” while the company tried to defy laws of the country even if it followed rules in other countries.
One journal specifically points out Google, among other media and cultural players, as leading a war of imperial domination and Western “soft power” in this age.
“Some believe that the newly globalised economy of the late 20th and early 21st century has facilitated this process through the use of new information technology,” said the journal. “This kind of cultural imperialism is derived from what is called ‘soft power’. The theory of electronic colonialism extends the issue to global cultural issues and the impact of major multi-media conglomerates, ranging from Viacom, Time Warner, Disney, News Corp, Sony, to Google and Microsoft with the focus on the hegemonic power of these US-based media giants.”
These companies’ hegemonic power over information and culture is in the larger imperial interest of the mother country of US and its allies.
These agents of imperialism have been behind the ongoing communication-technology driven “revolutions” in North Africa, which the Western architects even hope to replicate as farther down as Zimbabwe. Thus Google News’ “Harare, Rhodesia” application, a throwback to that ill-fated “Zimbabwe-Rhodesia” project that sought to derail the attainment of Independence, is a means towards establishing or re-establishing Western hegemony.
That in part entails, destroying real revolutions like the one spearheaded by President Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
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