Africa’s oldest leader, president Robert Mugabe from Zimbabwe, appeared in public again after he had not been seen for weeks
Mugabe, who turns 90 on February 21, spoke at the burial of his younger sister Bridget.
Belying recent rumours of ill health and even death, he spoke for an hour at a graveside in Zvimba, some 100km west of the capital Harare.
The old ruler who wiped out his political oppostion in a genocide in the 1980’s, is now the only survivor among six siblings. Bridget died in hospital on Saturday, aged 78.
“Zimbabwe’s land, its natural resources, belong to the people of Zimbabwe,” Mugabe eulogized.
“It is a relationship which is natural, God-given and which makes you owners of your wealth and therefore masters of your destiny,” he said.
The poverty-stricken people of the former Rhodesia is being ransacked by criminal mobs, aided by Mugabe, in the Marenge diamond fields, a scenario often seen in Africa and portrayed in the film The Ambassador (2011).
In the film, a Danish journalist uncovers chilling corruption linked to diplomatic title brokerage and blood diamonds in the CAR. Observers say it is similar to what is happening in Zimbabwe.
“Sure, we will need partners, but we need partners who do not become our masters,” Mugabe said at the funeral.
Mugabe’s health has been the subject of speculation in recent years, with some media suggesting he sought medical treatment in countries including Malaysia and Singapore.
News of political figure Robert Mugabe’s death spread quickly earlier this week.
However the January 2014 report has now been confirmed as a hoax. The Zimbabwean president is alive and well.
Rumors of the political figure’s alleged demise gained traction on Wednesday after a ‘R.I.P. Robert Mugabe’ Facebook page attracted nearly one million of ‘likes’. Those who read the ‘About’ page were given a believable account of the Zimbabwean political figure’s passing:
“At about 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday (January 08, 2014), our beloved political figure Robert Mugabe passed away. Robert Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924 in Kutama. He will be missed but not forgotten. Please show your sympathy and condolences by commenting on and liking this page.”
Hundreds of fans immediately started writing their messages of condolence on the Facebook page, expressing their sadness that the talented 89-year-old political figure was dead. And as usual, Twittersphere was frenzied over the news.
As the story had not been carried on any major Zimbabwean network, it was revealed as a fake report. The death of a political figure of Robert Mugabe’s stature would be major news across all networks.
On Thursday the political figure’s reps officially confirmed that Robert Mugabe is not dead. “He joins the long list of celebrities who have been victimized by this hoax. He’s still alive and well, stop believing what you see on the Internet,” they said.
Some fans nevertheless say the hoax proves his extreme popularity across the globe.
It’s been a good year for the former freedom fighter. The 89-year-old Mugabe is the highest-paid political figure in the world, according to People With Money.
He earned an astonishing $46 million between December 2012 and December 2013, a nearly $20 million lead over his closest competition.
Christmas has arrived with a bombshell to Zimbabwe this year. A seven page photocopied form has flooded what’s left of privately owned, legally operating businesses. It’s called the ‘Notification of Extent of Indigenisation and Indigenisation Implementation Plan.’ All ‘foreign’ owned businesses have been instructed to outline their plans to hand over 51% of their companies to ‘indigenous’ Zimbabweans.
At first glance you assume that ‘foreign’ refers to non Zimbabweans but that assumption isn’t the case. According to the Form, an ‘indigenous’ Zimbabwean is defined as “any person who, before the 18th April 1980 was disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the grounds of his or her race, and any descendant of such person and includes any company, association, syndicate or partnership of which indigenous Zimbabweans form the majority of the members or hold the controlling interest.”
This phrase, and those that follow, leave you with more questions than answers, no matter how many times you read them. It seems that by including the word ‘descendants’, the term ‘indigenous’ also refers to generations yet to be born, conceived or even dreamed of. Then there’s the question about just exactly who is indigenous. If you are a Zimbabwean born Indian, or mixed race or white Zimbabwean, can you be called indigenous? If you are a black Zimbabwean whose parents, grandparents or great grandparents were not born in Zimbabwe – are you indigenous? If your skin is not black but you have a Zimbabwean ID card, a residence permit or a work permit can you be called indigenous? If you were born after 1980, regardless of your skin colour , are you therefore not regarded as indigenous? Or have we all been condemned because of the colour of our skins, regardless of our beliefs, values and actions both before and after 1980?
The most worrying question of all is: Are non-black Zimbabweans, born and resident here, working, employing and paying taxes, to be punished for eternity for something that other non-black people did?
All companies have been told they must submit the Indigenisation Form by the 1st of January 2014. A list of over 50 categories of businesses are itemized on the Form and with each line your heart sinks. All the things that everyone has been doing to survive since farms were seized and the economy went into freefall, are on the indigenisation schedule.
The Indigenisation Form stipulates that every business must ‘cede a controlling interest of not less than 51%’ of its shareholdings to ‘indigenous’ Zimbabweans with effect from the 1st of March 2010 or within five years from the commencement of business. According to the Permanent Secretary for Indigenisation, non compliance with the Indigenisation law will lead to arrest. Lawyers say they are waiting for people to come forward and challenge the legislation but they aren’t offering pro bono services and for companies struggling to stay open, lawyer’s fees aren’t in the budget, nor is the ability to swallow the outrage that you must give away a 51% controlling interest of your company because of the colour of your skin.
While this ugly plan is unfolding in Zimbabwe, we tried to follow the events in South Africa but it wasn’t easy. ZBC gave almost no coverage to the death of Nelson Mandela or the week of international memorials and tributes. ZBC TV waited until the day after the Johannesburg memorial service and then screened just a few minutes of the service, not providing the audio of any of the speeches of world leaders. They didn’t give Zimbabweans the chance to hear US President Obama say words that we so wish were also true for Zimbabwe. President Obama said that because Nelson Mandela was not only a leader of a movement but also a skilled politician, South Africa now had a Constitution that was: “true to his vision of laws that protect minority as well as majority rights, and the precious freedoms of every South African.”
This is my last letter of 2013 and I wish all Zimbabweans, and people who follow our trials and turmoil, a happy, peaceful and safe Christmas. Thank you for reading this letter and supporting my books for so long, without you I wouldn’t have had to courage to keep going. Until next time, love Cathy.
State media in Zimbabwe largely ignored Mandela’s death. On Zimbabwe’s only television channel – the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation – Mandela’s death was not given any prominence.
The station focused on the late Brigadier General Misheck Tanyanyiwa, who has been declared a national hero.
President Robert Mugabe sent his condolences however, in which he hailed “the great icon of African liberation, freedom fighter, a beacon of excellence and a humble and compassionate leader”, despite many Zimbabweans declaring that Mandela was not a hero.
Mugabe was clearly referring to Mandela’s legacy of terror and violence, but Zimbabweans in general were less forgiving.
“The problems South Africa is facing today are originating from the time when he was the president. He is a famous prisoner who sacrificed the dream of his people on the alter of expedience,” one said scathingly.
Mandela’s death stirred debate in Zimbabwe as the former terrorist is often compared to Mugabe.
Mandela was 95 and Mugabe is 90, and both spent long periods in jail in their quest for independence – Mugabe spent more than 10 years held by the Ian Smith regime against Mandela’s 27.
They clashed publicly in 1998 when Mandela over the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) following a rebel offensive in that country.
Mandela as chairperson of the Southern African Development Community opposed bailing out Laurent Kabila when Mugabe wanted military intervention. Zimbabwe sent its forces to back Kabila.
Mandela’s most scathing attack on the Zimbabwean leader came in June 2008 when he spoke at a dinner in London against Mugabe. Mugabe had just lost the first round of elections against Morgan Tsvangirai from the opposition MDC.
Mandela then spoke of “the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe”.
Mugabe also lambasted Mandela for going out of his way to please white South Africans.
“They [whites] will praise you only if you are doing things that please them. Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of [blacks],” Mugabe said. “That is being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint.”
Rights activist, Ben Freeth, have laid a complaint of crimes against humanity against several high ranking Zimbabwean officials.
The action stems from alleged human rights abuses by the Zimbabwean government against farm workers, commercial farmers and the opposition. They want the police to investigate the claims and eventually have the perpetrators prosecuted for crimes against mankind.
Enough evidence exists for police to start investigations. Some 33 affidavits of Zimbabwean farmers and ordinary citizens have been collected to support their claims.
Zimbabwean Human Rights Activist Ben Freeth says: “The attack has gotten worse, almost all those farmers and farm workers have been left without anything at all.”
AfriForum Legal Representative Willie Spies says: “It is important to bring the actual perpetrators to justice. Our legal system do allow for that. SA is party to the statute of Rome. In terms of our international legal obligation, SA is obliged to investigate complains that have been laid by victims.”
The Zimbabwean embassy declined to comment on the matter. Unisa International Law Professor, Gus Waschefort says, “The decision by the Zimbabwean embassy not to comment is driven by a political dimension. The crimes were committed by individuals, not the state.”
The action was prompted by the Supreme Court of Appeal that ordered the NPA to investigate crimes against humanity and human rights abuses according to the Rome Statute.
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister denied on Wednesday that he put pressure South Africa while he was in office to remove Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe in a military operation.
Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s ex-president, said in an interview that Britain wanted to topple Mugabe during the political and economic crisis of the late 2000s.
A spokesperson for Blair’s denied the charge.
“Tony Blair has long believed that Zimbabwe would be much better off without Robert Mugabe and always argued for a tougher stance against him, but he never asked anyone to plan or take part in any such military intervention,” he told AFP in London. Blair stepped down in 2007.
This was not the account Mbeki gave to Al-Jazeera news channel, in the interview published on November 23
Mbeki said: “Tony Blair… was saying to the chief of the British armed forces: ’You must work out a military plan so that we can physically remove Robert Mugabe’. We knew that because we had come under the same pressure, that we need to cooperate in some scheme. It was a regime-change scheme even to the point of using military force.”
Mbeki’s spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga told AFP the ex-president stood by his words.
Mbeki, who led South Africa from 1999 to 2008, was the head mediator between Mugabe and his arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai after violent attacks followed disputed polls in 2008.
Mugabe and rival Morgan Tsvangirai formed a power-sharing government which ended with Mugabe’s election victory on July 31 this year.
Mbeki had always called for a negotiated solution, resisting neo-colonialism.
“Why does it become a British responsibility to decide who leads the people of Zimbabwe?” he told Al-Jazeera.
In November 2007 Zimbabwe put its military on high alert after retired UK army chief Lord Charles Guthrie said London had discussed invading its former colony during Tony Blair’s premiership.
Mugabe, 89, has governed since former Rhodesia won its independence in 1980.
Relations with Britain turned sour after land reform programmes seized farms from white farmers without compensation — the majority of them of British descent — to give to black farmers.
On the same day stories of an affair between Blair and Wendy Deng, the Chinese wife of press mogul Rupert Murdoch, also surfaced again. Sources close to Murdoch in London claim that Blair, 60, and Deng, 44, had ‘multiple encounters’ without 82-year-old Murdoch’s knowledge.
Blair denied an affair with Deng. A ‘terminal’ rift has severed relations between Murdoch and Blair however over reports of Blair’s friendship with the entrepreneur’s wife.
A friend of Murdoch said: “Rupert Murdoch will have nothing more to do with Tony Blair. Not ever.”
A court ruling that the SA Police Service (SAPS) can investigate alleged Zimbabwean crimes against humanity was described as a landmark decision on Wednesday.
“The court’s decision makes it clear that South Africa has a legal obligation to investigate the perpetrators of international crimes wherever those crimes were committed,” said Priti Patel, deputy director of the SA Litigation Centre (Salc).
Salc said the finding by the Supreme Court of Appeal earlier in the day was a landmark decision for local and international justice.
Salc and the Zimbabwe Exiles’ Forum (ZEF) brought the case to the South African courts.
Patel said the ruling confirmed that the dispensing of international justice was not restricted to international forums.
“It commits the South African authorities to play their part in ensuring that torturers and other international criminals are held accountable for their actions.”
Salc submitted a document to the National Prosecuting Authority in 2008 containing evidence of the alleged involvement of key Zimbabwean officials in perpetrating crimes against humanity in relation to the torture of opposition party members in March 2007.
They wanted the NPA and the SAPS to initiate an investigation into the alleged crimes. The NPA and the SAPS refused to investigate and Salc and the ZEF appealed to the high court. It found in Salc’s favour.
The SAPS and the NPA appealed against the finding to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
The SCA held that the SAPS was empowered to investigate alleged human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
The court dismissed the appeal of the national police commissioner and national director of public prosecutions in the matter.
The SCA rejected the police’s submission that crimes against humanity were deemed to have been committed only once the perpetrators set foot in South Africa.
The court held that the police could investigate, irrespective of whether the alleged perpetrators were in the country.
It further found that, under international law, the SAPS was obliged to initiate an investigation into the alleged offences.
The court found that, on the police’s own version, there was enough evidence to initiate an investigation. This included determining whether the alleged perpetrators were in South Africa.
“No doubt, in conducting that investigation, the police will consider issues such as the gathering of information in a manner that does not impinge on Zimbabwe’s sovereignty,” the judgment read.
The court said it could not tell the police how to investigate such issues. – Sapa
South Africa’s top appeals court on Wednesday ordered the police to investigate Zimbabwean officials who are accused of carrying out torture in the neighbouring country.
The case was brought before the Supreme Court of Appeal following allegations of torture of opposition party members in March 2007 in Zimbabwe.
The allegations include charges of water-boarding and electrical shocks being applied to the genitalia of activists opposed to long-serving President Robert Mugabe.
“This decision is really significant and is very much a precedent,” said Priti Patel, the deputy director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), which had filed the suit.
“The court’s decision makes it clear that South Africa has a legal obligation to investigate the perpetrators of international crimes wherever those crimes were committed,” she said.
According to SALC, the suspects visit South Africa, and therefore the government had an obligation to investigate the allegations.
The South African National Prosecuting Authority had claimed before the court that it was not required to investigate the alleged perpetrators because they were not presently in the country, but this was rejected by Judge Mohammed Navsa.
The NPA can still appeal the decision to the Constitutional Court, the country’s highest court.
Mugabe, who won elections this year to extend his 33 years at the helm of Zimbabwe, has denounced the attempts to investigate the 17 officials accused of torture as an assault on his country’s sovereignty.
An investigation could strain relations between the two countries. – dpa
Across Zimbabwe, dozens of factories lie idle with peeling paint, rusting machines and broken roofs in once bustling industrial districts, symbols of the huge economic challenge facing President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party.
On the surface, things look rosy after Mugabe’s landslide election victory in July: growth forecasts are looking more positive as agriculture recovers, inflation has been tamed and the stock market is starting to buzz again after some listless post-election trading.
But look behind the headlines and the landlocked southern African nation’s manufacturing heartlands, which accounted for a quarter of the economy a generation ago, are now wastelands – and some fear the decay is permanent.
From Harare in the north to the second city of Bulawayo in the south, companies are working at a third of capacity, down from 55 percent a year ago, according to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI).
“Businesses are collapsing, and the economy will need a real big push-start to get going again,” said an accountant winding down tube-making firm BMA Fasteners and Tube and Pipe in Harare. He declined to be named for professional reasons.
“At this rate, it’s frightening to think what the future holds,” the 42-year-old said, scratching his head. “I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say it might just be hell.”
Although they are careful not to blame politics, industry bosses say business confidence has fallen since the 89-year-old Mugabe was declared the overwhelming victor in the July 31 election, which the opposition MDC rejected as rigged.
New finance minister Patrick Chinamasa expects the economy to grow 6.1 percent in 2014 from 3.4 percent this year but that will make no dent in unemployment estimated at over 80 percent.
Zimbabwe’s economy shrank by 45 percent during a decade-long crisis blamed on ZANU-PF, but bounced back in 2009 after Mugabe was forced to share power with arch rival Morgan Tsvangirai after violent and disputed elections the previous year.
The July election put paid to that coalition, and with it what some critics saw as the MDC’s moderating influence on Mugabe and ZANU-PF nationalism.
FOREIGN INVESTMENT
In its most blatant form, that nationalism was manifest in Mugabe’s “indigenisation” push, under which foreign-owned firms have been forced to sell majority stakes to local blacks.
However, with the economy so desperate for capital – some estimates put domestic credit demand at $12 billion, more than double total bank deposits – Mugabe may be forced to soften his anti-foreigner stance.
“We are likely to see a more pragmatic approach by the politicians,” said Grant Flanagan of Amigo Partners, which manages a Zimbabwe-focused investment fund, noting some faint signs of a softening of policy.
Most notably, in his new cabinet, Mugabe swapped combative indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere for a mild-mannered technocrat who has already suggested the government is open to discussion about the extent and timing of black ownership.
However, there are no details and when asked by Reuters about indigenisation, another member of the government, Industry and Commerce minister Mike Bimha, declined to discuss something he said was outside his remit.
Without a decent period of clarity and consistency, investors are unlikely to be writing any cheques.
“ZANU-PF must realise they are in trouble over the economy,” independent economic commentator John Robertson said. “Investors, particularly in mining, where they have an opportunity, will want to see whether there really is any softening. If there is, then definitely the economy stands some chance.”
DAUNTING CHALLENGE
Even then, turning the ship round will be difficult.
The African Development Bank estimates that fixing the infrastructure needs $14 billion, a sum that in reality can only be met by the World Bank and IMF, which stopped lending to Harare in 1999 because of unpaid debts.
Private investors will then have to address a manufacturing vacuum filled by cheap imports, mostly from China.
Nowhere is the evidence more glaring than at David Whitehead, a large textile firm that used to employ 2,500 people in Chegutu, 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Harare, but which collapsed two years ago and stands empty today.
A handful of people are contracted to maintain machinery. Most of the time, only a couple of guards are on patrol.
Elsewhere, the factory sector built during the years of isolation imposed on white-minority Rhodesia has lost makers of everything from shoes to medicines, carpets to building materials and chemicals to food.
In 1986 manufacturing contributed 26 percent of GDP. Today it is just over 2 percent.
The industrial graveyard includes Ziscosteel, once the largest integrated steel works in the region, which shut in 2008 due to what analysts said was gross mismanagement and a failure by the state-owned firm to upgrade its equipment.
The government has been struggling to revive it with a number of foreign firms, including lately Essar from India.
“There is a long way to go and the starting point for our companies is retooling. There is no other way. There is idealism, and then there is reality,” says economist Prosper Chitambara, a leading private economic consultant.
WAIT AND SEE
The Harare tube firm, which used to employ 300 people, says it was a victim of a range of factors – price controls, foreign currency problems, power cuts, and then cheaper imports from India and China.
“Everything that could go wrong went wrong,” said the accountant in charge of its burial rites.
For ZANU-PF, the absence of the MDC as a coalition partner means it has no-one to blame and nowhere to hide.
Robert Mugabe taking a nap
After the July election, it launched a Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Social Economic Transformation, although the document was culled from the black empowerment parts of its manifesto, leading many to see it as more of the same from a party well-known for its empty economic blueprints.
However, aides say Mugabe himself is taking greater interest in the economy in a bid to rebuild a legacy tarnished by the hardships and hyperinflation of the last 13 years.
A glimmer of hope lies in tobacco farming, where state and private support for small-scale farmers is expected to push production to 200,000 tonnes from 45,000 in 2008, the pit of a slump blamed on Mugabe’s seizures of white commercial farms.
Many also see huge potential in mining and diamonds if the government can assuage concerns over forced sales of stakes to locals.
“We have to wait and see,” said the security guard manning the entrance to the David Whitehead factory in Chegutu, echoing a refrain heard in boardrooms from Harare to Johannesburg, London and New York. – Reuters
(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg; Editing by Ed Cropley and Giles Elgood)
The rag tag unemployed youth that were ululating and dancing on ZANU(PF)’s election “victory” are nowhere to be seen. Now all you see are young girls fetching water in the early mornings in urban Harare some wearing yellow ZANU(PF) t-shirts that say “indigenise, empower, employ develop”. What a joke!
Around 10 in the morning, you can see the same youths playing pool or gambling to while away time. Some recently died from drinking “Zed” a lethal cane spirit imported from Mozambique that costs only a dollar. There is erratic power so bathing is not a priority for them. All this, as Mugabe flew to New York with a plane load of 80 cohorts not only to shop, but to insult the Americans and the British. The new ministers will no doubt be getting their flashy Mercs soon to maneuver in Harare’s potholed roads.
The masses are a truly sorry lot!
Listening to Julius Malema campaign sent some chills down my spine and I sincerely hope that I am not alone. The habit of creating exaggerated anticipations amongst the poor masses during electioneering continues to work. Here in Zimbabwe those rural folk who were allocated peri-urban land before the elections are now being evicted. They have delivered the vote.
Progressive black South Africans must be very worried. The masses are ignorant and have no inkling of what it takes to run a successful economy. All they want is better salaries, better houses, social grants and jobs today but these come through intelligent economic management and not through the outright repossession of land and companies by politicians and their cronies.
Ownership alone has been overplayed here in Zimbabwe. Some of our chefs and their cronies own multiple farms and yet we can’t feed ourselves. An estimated 2 million people face starvation in Zimbabwe this year. Most state enterprises are sitting idle or are being run to the ground as those politically appointed to run them earn obscene salaries and perks.
As Malema demands economic freedom through repossession of assets, South Africans who want a future must fight this buffoonery with all they have. The fight is not on twitter or facebook but must be on the ground in the townships and rural areas. The poor masses will sell themselves short as they always do, so they must be educated and informed of what Malema falsely is promising them. Here in Zimbabwe, air time vouchers goats and exaggerated promises of jobs and indigenization at political rallies are nowhere to be seen and the masses have returned to their poverty.
The black middle class poses a serious danger through their lack of participation in politics. Most just wait for voting day and yet, if Africa is to develop we must all be activists everyday. We must educate the short sighted poor masses of how year after year they deliver their vote to political parties who cannot deliver to them.
Malema will not deliver economic freedom through his rantings at rallies simply because he seeks to use the same methods that decimated our economy here in Zimbabwe. There is no depth in what he is promising and I question his appreciation of economics.
Politicians in Africa have failed to deliver sustainable development mainly because they focus on self interest and taking what others have sweated for under the guise of economic justice. That will not create new jobs or the economic prosperity they continue to promise.
I urge all progressive black middle class South Africans to fight these lies; the lie that taking over assets owned by whites creates wealth; the lie that we are entitled to reap where we have not sown. This does not work; it actually destroys wealth and investments as we have seen here in Zimbabwe. Nothing can replace hard work and patience.
The emerging picture in South Africa is pretty worrying to us progressive Africans who know that Africa will never develop by taking from others but by building new economies and wealth while educating the masses so that they may make better life decisions.
We must all work to reject that narrative that we are victims and some one out there owes us. We must reject being continually duped by clever politicians who continue to re-frame how imperialism is our enemy. Yes it may be, but our number one enemies are blacks who are hiding under empowering of the masses and yet all they do is to accumulate personal wealth without sweating. Our enemies are those who take advantage of the ignorance and poverty of the masses and make promises that they can’t meet.
Malema is doing just that and must be stopped!
Vince Musewe is an economist based in Harare. You may contact him on vtmusewe@gmail.com
Cyanide has been used to kill more than 300 elephants in Zimbabwe’s biggest nature reserve – three times the original estimate as new photographs show the scale of the slaughter.
The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange National Park has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst massacre in Southern Africa for 25 years.
Pictures reveal horrific scenes. Parts of the park can be seen from the air to be littered with the corpses of elephants, often with their calves dead beside them.
There is now deep concern that the use of cyanide – first revealed in July – represents a new and particularly damaging technique in the already soaring poaching trade. Zimbabwean authorities had said that 90 animals were killed in this way. But the hunters say they counted more than 300 carcasses.
Poachers killed them by lacing water holes and salt licks with cyanide. Animals are drawn to them during the dry season in the arid section of the 9100km2 park.
Authorities say the cyanide is planted by villagers who sell the elephants’ tusks for about R4750 each to cross-border traders. They can be resold in South Africa for up to R15 800 a pair, according to court papers relating to one recent incident .
Zimbabwe has one of Africa’s biggest elephant populations, and half of its estimated 80000 are thought to live in Hwange.
Conservationists say the African elephant is under so much threat from habitat loss, illegal poaching and hunting that it could be extinct within 50 years. – Daily Telegraph
I was still pondering the implications of “black colonialism” as set out in a previous column when it struck me that some of South Africa’s ethnic categories are completely wrong.
Afrikaners were the first group in the country to refer to themselves as “Africans”, as long ago as 1707 when Hendrik Biebouw said: “Ik ben een Afrikaander.” However, today Afrikaners have been defined as an out-group by South African legislation that simply classes them as “whites”.
Most of our affirmative-action legislation has been imported from the USA and BEE is just an adapted form of what is called “minority procurement” over there. So there is nothing “African” about the current race-classification system!
In German, “Afrikaner” means simply “African”, yet the current laws define Afrikaners as Europeans. The ultimate irony is that ANC and especially SACP ideology has been constructed by recent immigrants from Lithuania (like Joe Slovo) and, of course, Britain.
Imposing racial quotas on everything from the medical schools at Afrikaans universities to the Blue Bulls rugby team is bad enough. But stripping us of our age-old Africanness by legislative fiat represents the ultimate insult, making us interlopers in our own country.
Searching for answers, I reread Thabo Mbeki’s “I am an African” speech, but it is simply a fanciful restatement of American multiculturalism, with echoes of (Swedish) Gunnar Myrdal’s “melting pot” idea. So nothing “African” there, either.
We urgently need to bring back the term “Bantu” and I have begun to recommend its use on social media and everywhere else. There seems to be a certain squeamishness about using this word, meaning “people”, which is unfathomable. Even the famous Xhosa definition of “ubuntu” contains it: “Ubuntu ungamntu ngabanye abantu.”
Anthropologists, linguists and other people in need of proper definitions have never stopped referring to the “Bantu peoples”, “Bantu languages”, etc. Even Bantu education has been rehabilitated by such leading authorities as Dr. Mamphela Ramphele and a lecturer at Wits Business School, Mr. Rabelani Dagada, both of whom consider it better than the current schooling system.
The first ANC-supporting newspaper in the 1920s was called Abanthu-Batho and today there is a clothing brand which is thus advertised: “Abantu is a ladies wear brand which creates timeless pieces which speak to the South African audience.”
The Bantu peoples inhabit East and Southern Africa. For them or their Lithuanian theorists to arrogate unto themselves the sole right to being called “Africans” is not only intellectually unsound, but also unfair. After all, there are 200 million North Africans, including Egyptians, Arabs, Berbers, Copts and so on, who are Africans, by definition. West Africa too, is given the cold shoulder by Bantu imperialism.
In the nineteen-twenties some leading German and French anthropologists claimed, upon the basis of very ancient mining activity in these parts, that whites may have inhabited both South Africa and Zimbabwe as long ago as 3500 B.C. They must have been the first Afrikaners and we should venerate them as our true founding fathers, together with the Khoi and San.
Either we must qualify for affirmative action like other “Africans” – and even the Chinese! – or the Bantu must clearly announce their pretensions to being a kind of continental nobility with special privileges.
Recently I watched a so-called “debate” on SABC2 on what was referred to as “land reform”. Most of the participants were calling for a Zimbabwe-style expropriation of Afrikaner-owned land.
For some time now I have been thinking that South Africa is perhaps the first country in the world afflicted with black colonialism. As ever, one’s perception of our socio-political situation is entirely determined by the paradigm or worldview from which one gazes upon South Africa.
Notwithstanding the anti-Western rhetoric of the black colonialists, they share the same culture, language and imperialist disdain for us as Lords Milner or Kitchener of yore, burning everything in sight and herding us into concentration camps. Black and white colonialists on the SABC2 were united in their thirst for land and for forcibly removing the rightful owners – like any conquistador in the days of the Spanish Empire.
Of course, black colonialism often clothes itself in leftist idiom. Hence, the white British Marxist Professor Ruth Hall of UWC was herself calling for the eviction of Afrikaner natives from their land in favour of some new form of plantation slavery, preferably lorded over by people with Ph.D.’s in dubious disciplines from the United Kingdom.
Seated in air-conditioned offices, the black colonialists wish to evict Afrikaner peasants from their ancestral lands. The colonialists commute in spanking new German luxury cars while the sunburnt Afrikaners in shorts and velskoens drive around on dusty roads in aged utilitarian bakkies. The arrogance of this colonialist land-grab project rivals and surpasses the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-85.
Our minds, like our universities, have been colonised. Hence the almost complete lack of critical perspective on the colonialist enterprise known as the “New South Africa”. The black colonialists are bourgeois through and through, vacillating between a kind of British comprador consciousness and dreaming of being African American, especially now that an African American is ruling the USA, that great imperial power.
The contempt for our indigenous Afrikaans culture, literature, cuisine, style and our very names have never been greater. Britain never changed the Voortrekker name of Pretoria, yet the black colonialists – who are also sadists – relish in humiliating us daily with their colonial folly of “Tshwane” which is about as foreign to South Africa as the Cyrillic alphabet.
South Africa is being pillaged by these colonialists who enslave and exploit us, confiscating our resources to finance their colonial lifestyle in ludicrous Italianate mansions.
Colonialism and imperialism are destroying us, both materially and spiritually. Our country is in dire need of national liberation. The first step is to liberate our minds of the rubbish that passes for the dominant ideology, justifying the land grabs and exploitation.
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