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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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11 October 2010 By Reason Wafawarova
ON September 18, Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s Finance
Minister wrote a piece titled "It’s All About The Zanu-PF
DNA" in the Saturday Herald, and he made a detailed
analysis of Nathaniel Manheru’s September 4 piece
published by the same paper and titled "Privileged
proletarians: when the beautiful ones are not yet
enough".
In an aside dig at Manheru’s otherwise prolific art
of writing, Biti accused collectively all members of
Manheru’s generation for coming out of university so
confused that it is Biti’s reckoning that the group
does not know the difference between big words and
intellect.
Biti wrote, "Of course, his writing style is
loquacious and prolix which is typical of university
students of his generation who thought that big words
and verbosity are a sign of superior intellect."
Why Biti did not use "talkative" for "loquacious"
or "wordy" for "prolix" is a matter of Biti’s
democratic right to choice, but Manheru must be
wondering how a copycat of his style would choose to
pretend to attack that which he so much admires
without making an absolute fool of himself.
Away from attacking what one deeply cherishes, we
may take interest in looking at the substance of what
Biti wrote.
Inter alia with Zimbabwe’s economic empowerment
program, Biti also looked at the now concluded fight
between Kingdom Bank’s Nigel Chanakira and Meikles’
John Moxon.
He argued that the middle class and elites of
Zimbabwe are opposed to the economic empowerment
policy because they associate the programme with "Zanu-PF’s
DNA", and he defined that DNA as "patronage and
cronyism".
Zanu-PF as a party cannot exonerate its entire
leadership from allegations of patronage and cronyism
without being dishonest.
Biti is quite right in saying that black capital
has been politicised and cantonised by some key
leaders in Zanu-PF.
What needs interrogation is Biti’s outrageous claim
that this deplorable dent on the collective character
of Zanu is in reality the DNA of the party.
Zanu-PF is not made up of black capital, the middle
class, or elites above them.
That is incorrect and borders on mischief.
Zanu-PF is a product of a people’s uprising against
colonial dispossession and humiliation. Zanu-PF is
about rivers of blood and burdensome suffering for the
emancipation of the masses and that is why the late
Elliot Manyika sang "Zanu ndeyeropa . . . Zanu
ndeyekushupika."
Zanu-PF did not engage in a 14-year war of
attrition so that it could form a club of black
capitalists who worship at the shrine of patronage and
cronyism.
It is a revolutionary mass-driven liberation
movement whose idea of liberation goes far beyond
attaining flag independence and merely changing the
name of the country and its various other places.
Zanu-PF’s understanding of liberation is about
black consciousness, mental liberation, social
liberation, economic liberation, mass empowerment and
total sovereign rule.
That is the DNA of Zanu-PF, and the errant
behaviour of its leadership, however egregious, does
not and cannot alter that DNA.
Reducing the economic empowerment programme to a
mere act of patronage and cronyism is quite in line
with Western rhetoric, and equally pliant to this
rhetoric is the assertion that the land reform
programme only benefited "Mugabe’s cronies", whatever
that means.
Tendai Biti is a high ranking worshipper at the
altar of Western rhetoric and his attack on Zanu-PF is
just one well launched missile on behalf of the god
that blesses his party financially for its troubles in
providing a black voice where a white one would be
dismissed easily even by classical lunatics.
Biti says the black elites are the ones questioning
the economic empowerment programme and this is because
they are scared of precedence, not because they are
anti-empowerment.
But who said the black elites in Zimbabwe are the
intended and targeted beneficiaries of this policy?
Zanu-PF’s DNA dictates that economic empowerment is
about the masses and about the collective benefit of
the nation, and not about a selected club of some
middle-class that is aspiring to join privileged
elites.
This is why Zanu-PF rubbished the argument that
commercial farms needed to be given only to elites who
could be trusted with capacity to capitalise
operations, as well as with the skills to produce on
the same farms. Zanu-PF said the land belonged to the
people and the people could make elites out of
themselves right from rags to riches.
Yes, post independence leadership in Africa
inherited economies that had artificial GDPs
calculated on the basis of minority economies that
treated the majority indigenous populations as part of
the flora and fauna.
This legacy is the major inhibiting factor in the
attainment of the goal to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals by 2015.
The economic growth figures for African countries
and for countries like India are still only reflective
of the interests of a minority few investing
capitalists and these figures have no correlation with
the needy masses on the ground.
Yes, the African leadership has kept the gates for
these skewed economies and in many cases tried to
accommodate the masses without growing the same
economies correspondingly as they ought to have done
after flag independence.
Tendai Biti makes good analysis of this, but
glaringly missing from his analysis are the
machinations of Western countries in maintaining the
economic status quo in former colonies — all in the
self-interest of protecting the privilege of their
profiteering investors.
For someone who so intensely quoted Franz Fanon and
Amilcar Cabral, Biti surely knows what the West does
whenever their colonial privileges are threatened.
He also knows this from personal experience as he
is the Secretary General of a party funded to maintain
this status quo, and to look after the interests of
Westerners in Zimbabwe.
He is a lawyer smart enough not to miss the
intentions of his handlers, if only for their
moneybags.
This writer is tempted to say the DNA of MDC-T is
treachery and puppetry, and no doubt such rhetoric
would find buyers, particularly from Zanu-PF quarters.
However, the MDC was actually hijacked into
treachery and puppetry from its original makers, the
workers, and it was of course taken over by the mighty
powers of Western moneybags.
Zanu-PF is part of our past, as much as it is part
of our present and our future.
The MDC is part of our recent past and seeks to be
our present and our future, and that the people
appreciate.
When one is shorn of one’s past and does not see
the direction of one’s future, and when one is very
uncertain of one’s present, then one cannot tell from
whence one comes and where he is going.
The result is a tormented soul.
When there is a manipulation of time and a
manipulation of the past, there is also a manipulation
of perception, experience and self-esteem.
Our time is being manipulated when we are told we
live in the era of "democratisation and human rights";
concepts only valid in the perception and
interpretation of a minority group that only makes up
10 percent of the world’s population; the Westerners.
Our past is being manipulated each day as we are
told that the liberation movements that brought us
freedom from colonial rule are no more than tyrannical
movements.
We are lectured that the founding fathers of our
nations do not even rise to the level of such brutal
men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams, James Madison, or Captain James Cook of
Australia, men who are highly honoured despite the
indisputable record of genocide by some of them. Cook
and Washington are honoured over the dead bodies of
millions of Aboriginal people and Amerindians
respectively.
Why does the West delight in denying Zambians the
privilege to give the honour of a founding father to
Kenneth Kaunda, Mozambique to Samora Machel, Zimbabwe
to Robert Mugabe, Congo to Patrice Lumumba, Ghana to
Kwame Nkurumah, and so on?
Our African youth sometimes completely embrace the
demeaning of their founding heroes, that way
blissfully promoting the demeaning and distortion of
African history at the expense of the continent’s
future.
This writer recently attended a Kenyan function
where Kenyans in Sydney were celebrating the recently
introduced new constitution.
An Ethiopian gentleman and a white lady in his
company went to length praising the legacy of Jomo
Kenyatta, providing a few quotes from Kenya’s founding
father.
The silence from the Kenyan audience was deafening
and disturbing to this writer, until one young man
broke the silence by asking, "Was he that good?"
Ironically, the Ethiopian gentleman said he was not
happy and comfortable mentioning the name of the
Ethiopian leader who was there when Kenyatta, Nkurumah,
Kaunda and others founded the OAU and headquartered it
in Addis Ababa.
So you have an Ethiopian who cannot even say Haille
Sellassie in public and Kenyans who are absolutely
flummoxed to hear that Kenyatta was a man of great
honour.
When Westerners play with our history they are
playing with our sense of time, playing with our sense
of place and who we are, and what we are about.
History is not just an elective subject in high
school.
It is the foundation of life and the cornerstone of
nationhood.
Who deserves to be immortalised between George
Washington or Jomo Kenyatta, between Captain James
Cook or Haille Sellassie, or Kwameh Nkurumah?
Washington and Cook would have overwhelmingly carried
the African vote if we had decided to carry out one
that evening.
They are admired because their descendants have
become a symbol of civilisation and prosperity — all
covering their oceans of iniquity and brutality.
So a US-based near anonymous human rights group
takes it upon itself to define as genocide what
happened during the civil conflict that happened in
Midlands and Matabeleland after Zimbabwe’s
independence.
They boastfully announce that this they have done
to pin down Robert Mugabe for his iniquities against
white commercial farmers from whom he took colonially
stolen land, and surprisingly they have admirers from
the Zimbabwean folk.
Being robbed of a future makes a people lose
identity and they become euphoric and mystical — free
of both anxiety and motivation. A people robbed of a
past become infantile and they live in a torpid state,
they become egocentric and inhibited.
Being robbed of the present makes a people
catatonic, depressed and even schizophrenic. This is
when one gets the feeling that the "world is moving on
but we do not".
Life must carry a sense of direction, from past to
present, to the future. That way life is worth living.
People with a present shorn of a past and a future
become preoccupied with death and failure and they
behave like schizophrenics.
What this means is that when our attitudes are
manipulated toward our past, our consciousness,
capacities and abilities are also manipulated.
Tendai Biti must take note of this when he
correctly blames the colonial education system for
creating a dependant African.
Our history not being taught to us correctly
ensures that our potential will be forever undeveloped
as a people and that we will not challenge those who
dominate us.
Intellectual structures and powers are undeveloped
when we suffer from amnesia; they are restricted and
alienated.
Not knowing much about one’s history does not spare
one the harm brought about by being taught wrong
history. Those who boast that they do not know any
black history but they know science, mathematics,
accounts and so on must not think they have escaped
the harm of having no history, or having the wrong
one.
Being cut off from one’s past only means that one
has gained knowledge at the cost of being alienated,
effectively it means one has gained an alienated
knowledge. Alienated knowledge can only be positively
used in the interest of aliens.
Democracy taught by aliens when one is cut off from
their own history is only good for the interests of
aliens.
Who do those who have computer science knowledge
work for?
Who do those who have degrees in political science
work for? Who do those who have Harvard knowledge
about governance work for?
These are the unwritten rules.
They teach us Mathematics, science and democracy to
the degree that we forget who we are and what we are —
we forget our history; we forget our connectedness
with our own people.
One cannot use alienated knowledge for themselves
or for the benefit of their own people.
Knowledge must be connected and contained in a
historical structure, in a cultural structure and this
is why youth national orientation is not a "militia"
idea but an essential aspect of nation building.
Otherwise we have a people with the highest levels
of degrees in business administration and yet they
build no businesses themselves.
We have people who become CEOs of Microsoft or Coca
Cola yet they have no idea of building their own
business.
These are the foundational requirements that one
cannot bypass and it is futile to dream of an
economically free and prosperous Africa when our
leadership still operates on alienated knowledge.
Learning about Western democracy is not going to
free and prosper post-independent Africa and Biti
knows this from the Chinese and Singaporean
experience.
But he is totally wrong to say these two countries
are not democratic.
They are democratic because they are building
strong economies for and on behalf of their people,
not for the benefit of Western corporations and
capitalist elites.
When politicians make friends with Westerners in
order to safeguard the privileges and benefits of
imperialism and neo-colonialism then we have a serious
problem.
When such politicians win elections what we have is
government by the people for the politicians and their
masters, and one needs to look at urban councils in
Zimbabwe today to see what happens when politicians
loyal to foreign interests are brought to power.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can
be contacted on
wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafa warova.com
or visit
www.rwafawarova.com
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