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Stephen Mpofu
You (yes, you) are not wide off the mark if you liken imperialism to mafavhuke/rinofa richimuka —the grass that dies in the intense summer heat and turns green again when  rain falls.

Thus, it is incumbent upon independent or decolonised countries in Africa not to cast off their loin skins when celebrating                                                             uhuru,  but instead keep their guard, as decolonisation which appears to die in the intense heat of the freedom struggle often resurrects in the camouflage of contemporary imperialism with racism as its trade mark in most cases.

Today, for instance,  contemporary colonialism knocks loudly on Zimbabwe’s door to be opened, as it does in other former colonial states,  for that oppressive rule to return in sheepskin and enslave our people once more, in the same way that that human evil tries, and in some cases succeeds, to enslave a people who believe to have embarked on a journey in self-determination without the white man cracking the whip on their backs.

Land reform in Zimbabwe shows in a succinct way the never-die character of imperialism with the West, led by the United States of America and Britain — with  continental European meekly following behind,  like cubs — imposing economic sanctions on Zimbabwe to punish our country for reclaiming land occupied by whites who seized it in the first place.

Now, after failing to effect regime change, Donald Trump, the US President,  recently signed an executive order re-enforcing the financial and economic embargo to punish this country and bring it to its knees on realising that the results of the July 30 harmonised elections made it impossible for the country to become an agent of contemporary Western imperialism.

Of course,  it is known that Zimbabweans who kow-tow to Western imperialism had visited  Washington before the elections with caps folded in their hands and pleaded with the Trump administration to continue with its punitive financial and economic sanctions that have crippled economic development in hopes that the embargo would kill the Zanu-PF government and open the door  for the running dogs of imperialism to rise to power.

After Zimbabwe, South Africa now appears headed for the eye of the US sanctions storm with Trump claiming in a tweet earlier this week that whites were being killed in South Africa as land was forcibly taken away from them by the Pretoria government.

Moves by the Pretoria regime to take away land from white farmers, as originally initiated by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party led by Julius Malema have made that country a target for punitive sanctions similar to those visited on our country by the West.

Whites who live in South Africa by far outnumber those in our country and it is common sense that blood being thicker than water, as that saying goes, the imperialist West led by America is wont to hit South Africa with a heavier economic hammer than that used on our country to try to bring the ANC government to its knees so that the Boers may continue to dominate that country which has become a permanent home away from the original home of their ancestors in Europe.

Zimbabwe decided to repossess farms owned by whites after Britain reneged on a commitment made during the Lancaster House independence talks in London and so Harare had no alternative but to take some of the land possessed by whites and redistribute it to the blacks who needed that asset the most.

But the ANC government appears to have fallen to a well calculated trap by Malema not to compensate white farmers for land taken away from them — a move that the EFF leaders must have known would make him popular with the black masses who at present occupy a tiny percentage of their land, while at the same time putting the ANC administration at daggers drawn with the West which feigns love for blacks while racism and hatred swell the hearts of “those without knees”.

Yet those in power ought to have been under no illusion following this country’s clash with the imperialists that Western countries would not fold their arms while their brethren protested the “seizure” of their land.

And, anyway the Boers have been berating the ANC for copying Zimbabwe’s land reform programme with no compensation being paid for farms repossessed for redistribution to our own people to improve their lives and our country’s economy overall.

Or did the ANC deliberately decide to touch the fire with its bare hands to try to discover if fire burns for sure: otherwise a better way to avoid Zimbabwe’s experience should have been sought to try to reach an internal solution to the land dispute and keep away haters of the black race.

Above all former colonial states around the globe should be prudent enough to realise that their erstwhile oppressors will always revisit the countries where their rule previously held sway to discover if time has obliterated their footmarks in order to reprint them where the mineral wealth and other riches continue to beckon to the outsiders with detrimental effects on self-determination by locals.