PUBLICATIONS

Mugabe has scathed black pride
KWINJEH
• Matshazi: 'Kwinjeh ridiculed Africans'• Mugabe's celebratory rant as Zim turns 25• Zim gone 25 years backwards, says MDC• Grace Kwinjeh: Happy birthday to an unfinished revolution• No cheer as Zim turns 24• Independence war mass graves found• Mugabe calls on exiles to return

Grace Kwinjeh's Independence Day article 'Happy birthday to an unfinished revolution' has attracted several comments from our readers. Kuthula Matshazi accused her of distortion. But lawyer Julius Mutyambizi-Dewa disagrees

READING Kuthula Matshazi, I quickly realise that there are some more questions that we as Zimbabweans must honestly ask ourselves.
The first is whether or not Zimbabwe is liberated and the second is when a country begins to be perceived as liberated or worse still, independent. To arrive to an honest conclusion on such a debate we should begin to think beyond the colour of our skins and patronage that arises from skin colour. To me the opinions that Matshazi advances, with due respect, are part of the 1960s discourse where the move on the African Continent was to replace white oppressors with black oppressors. The basic meaning of freedom to me is the absence of oppression and this I believe is not subject to cultural or racial relativism. And oppression is oppression, it is bad whether its practised by whites on blacks, blacks on blacks, or otherwise. Oppression knows no skin colour.
The black government in Zimbabwe to me represents everything of the bad governance subset and it is clear that with such a government at the helm, Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans are not free. I know we will all say well but they are the guys who wedged the war of liberation to free us but to me liberation comes as package, its not about changing the name of the country to Zimbabwe but it goes much further than that.

Of course I didn't participate in the liberation struggle but I am the first son of a father and mother who participated fully in the liberation struggle. But it will require more than simple white or black defeatism to convince me that there are any clear gains derived from the liberation struggle. First the government of Robert Mugabe loses it on all fronts. Was it a revolution to showcase the black man as a champion of his own fate?
But if that's the case then the ploy is lost and I can tell the Africanist that Robert Mugabe is the real Uncle Tom. Why? Because he has proven everything that white supremacists have said about perceived black ineptitude. For starters here is a hypocrite who claims to have championed a war for the freedom of blacks. Late in the day he enacts laws that take away the purported freedom from them. I don't want to repeat POSA and AIPPA which we obviously have heard before. The accusation that the blackman is a failure is made more apparent by leaders such as Robert Mugabe who has managed to run down an economy that was once sound. It is sad for me as a blackman when I have to say yes our economy was good, with a diverse base and production capacities only second to South Africa in the whole continent of Africa, Egypt included. But it is more humiliating when I have to say oh yes but it was in the era of Ian Smith!

Matshazi your children will never understand you when you shall one day tell them that "oh Zimbabwe was once under a whiteman called Ian Smith and we the blacks had to overthrow him". And if then they will ask "but was there any food then, I mean did you have bread and butter, meat and mealie-meal", you will certainly be ashamed to say" Oh yes, in abundance!"
Matshazi, Grace is wrong when she says this revolution is unfinished, no she is very wrong, this revolution is lost! Black pride is scathed, our face is not disfigured but dismembered. Zimbabwe is historically at its lowest. Remember it was this Zimbabwe that built Great Zimbabwe under Mwene Mutapa, it was Zimbabwe that under Tombolaikona Tjimwango (Changamire Dombo) of the Rozvi became the first in Africa to defeat a European army - the Portuguese. It was also Zimbabwe under the Rozvi that first used the mulomo wa kumba fighting method (cow horn formation) later made famous by Tshaka of the Zulu. It was Mzilikazi, a Zimbabwean and founder of the Ndebele nation, who pioneered freedom from Tshaka. His son Lobengula became the first Zimbabwean to embark on shrewd nation-building. I can go on and mention how Zimbabweans both black and white have been conquering not only Africa but the world. But we are at our lowest under this government and all the outstanding things that we are known for have been eroded, overtaken by events.

"Black pride is scathed, our face is not disfigured but dismembered. Zimbabwe is historically at its lowest"
JULIUS DEWA
The country that gave birth to Zion Christian Church under Samuel Hosea Mutendi, Johane Masowe under Sixpence Gandanzara, the country that pioneered panel beating, the pioneers of exploration of the Moon under the Rozvi of Lupandamanhanga Hupenga (Gumbolevula), and at one time manufacturers of cloud seeding aircraft in Norton. Who doesn't know the heroics of white-Zimbabwean pilots during the Second World War.
How do we get independent when we do not have economic freedom? This is the question that the government in Zimbabwe today has always asked itself. To address this, they have embarked on a number of projects under the term affirmative action and indigenisation. These are always good words but with our government, the propensity for bad intentions is very high. If we had embarked on indigenisation, to the true meaning of it in letter and spirit, surely Willowvale Motor Industry wouldn't be bleeding, Matshazi. Oh, the government would be buying Mazdas, and the President would surely have been driving in Mazda. Why not, they are assembled in our country with more than 33% Zimbabwean content. They would have created more jobs for Zimbabwe through the savings on foreign currency as the first family would no longer need EUROs to finance the purchase of Mercedes Benz from Bavaria in Germany.
The President's suits would be designed by Zimbabwen tailors and so would the First Lady, who would not go to Italy to design her shoes instead of Conte Shoes, Bata or G&D that are Zimbabwean. But this doesn't happen, well because our country hasn't come yet, the revolution was lost to bourgeoisis who tell others to think Zimbabwean while they don't think Zimbabwean. Come on, we don't need the West or the East we need ourselves but we have to co-exist in a world that is globalising. The so-called champions of Zimbabwe's struggle are self-servicing hypocrites.
:Phillip Chiyangwa boasted the other day of buying an expensive shoe from Italy but he is the owner of a shoe manufacturing company in Zimbabwe that is closing shop because there is no business. Thats their mentality, they belong there, where we all want to come from. Of course, indigenous Zimbabweans are black and white Zimbabweans alike. This is the reality of our society, we are a multiracial society! This is the same as in South Africa and Namibia, but not the same as elsewhere in Africa. Comparative analyses that do no take account of clear exceptions will not be worth their meaning. Africa as Africa will have a problem if we try to close our world as if we belong to another planet. Africa is on earth and trying to come with philosophies that talk of continental relativism will take us nowhere. I dream of a Zimbabwe that is a serious competitor economically and a rival militarily to the superpowers of the world and such a Zimbabwe can only be built by Zimbabwean white and black hearts and minds together. I believe as a blackman the oppression of a whiteman by my fellow blackman affects me in the same way as the oppression of a blackman by a whiteman.

The third thing will be my assertion that it is possible for blacks to oppress blacks. This is where the problem of Zimbabwe is today. And this the disease Africa has, that blacks can not oppress blacks. That Europe is raising the same issues with Zimbabwe as what the Zimbabwean opposition is, remains very coincidental. What is happening in Zimbabwe is bad and it is in the public domain. In Kalanga we say "usinyile tsime". It doesn't matter whether it is the man next door who says the same as my child, if I mess with drinking water I deserve to be rebuked, left right and centre. But to say Mugabe is right because he has been criticised by the West is clearly myopic. True visionaries do not say such things in public.

Lastly, Matshazi must ask himself why Yoweri Museveni, who defeated the Amin and Obote dictatorships in his Uganda, is not considered a liberator in Africa. For the record Front for National Salvation, FRONASA and later on National Resistance Army, which Museveni led, was trained in the same Tanzanian barracks and by the same FRELIMO and North Korean instructors that trained Zanu PF's Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (Zanla). But why is Museveni not part of the so-called Liberation Grouping of ANC, FRELIMO, PAC, ZANU PF, SWAPO and MPLA? Because he represents the new thinking of Africans who oppose black oppression and can do anything to defeat it. It is a sin in Africa to fight the black aristocracy and this is why MDC in Zimbabwe, MMD in Zambia and Democratic Alliance in South Africa will forever be demonised.
Further I want to leave you what my hero Josiah Tongogara said: "I don't care which post I will get but what I want is for the black child and the white child to grow together freely in the new Zimbabwe."
This was the revolution Matshazi, and it was lost. Remember what he said of the 1980 elections: "I want us to contest the elections as the Patriotic Front led by Dr Joshua Nkomo" and what happened later? Of course Gukurahundi would have been avoided if the true revolutionary had been heeded and the true revolution won!Dewa is a Zimbabwean laywer currently studying for an LLM International Law at the University of East LondonJOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMSdebate@newzimbabwe.com