Zimbabwe

Two topics that should never be discussed at dinner... religion and politics. I have discussed religion at length now i will attempt politics. I think as people we dance around the subject too much and approach it with trembling and trepidation, but i can assure you this you cannot run away from politics, it is everywhere, it is all around you.

Being Zimbabwean, infact being the only Zimbabwean that some of you know, i frequently get asked about the "Zimbabwe Situation". So i will address it now and try to bring you up to speed with the facts and also my opinion of the current situation and my aspirations of thge future.

We begin with a short history lesson. As you know Zimbabwe was not discovered by Cecil John Rhodes he was just the leader of the first white pioneer column to arrive there.. but people lived there already. The people native to Zimbabwe, lived simple but sophisticated lives. Cave paintings in Zimbabwe tel stories of the lifestyle of Zimbabwe but the greatest testament to pre- Rhodes Zimbabwe is Great Zimbabwe http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/greatzimbabwe.html Great Zimbabwe is city of stone built by the Shona people at least 7 centuries ago. The most amazing thing about Great Zimbabwe is that it is built entirely of stone with no cement or mortar to hold the stones together.. just stone atop stone and it has stood for over 7 centuries. In colonial times a lot of its history and artefacts were destroyed by a regime so intent on prooving that black people were incapable of such genius that they began excavations to prove that some mystery white race must have developed the structure. the more they dug the more it proved the brilliance of early shona architecture.

I digress a bit for i am wholly proud of this magnificent structure. It is Africa's largest ruins, bigger than any pyramid, tomb etc etc. In fact the name Zimbabwe comes from this ruins. The name Zimbabwe is Shona and when translated means Big House of Stone.

Anyway as history will have it the settlers arrived in zimbabwe and drove the people off their land. At first the Zimbabwean people followed a policy similar to that of the allies just before world war 2 of appeasement. They simply gave the "new arrivals" land in the hope that it would satisfy them and they could co-habit. but as their greed increased and they wanted larger pieces of land the Zimbabwean people resisted and out of it was born the first "Chimurenga" which means war of liberation. Obviously the primative weapons of the Zimbabweans of spears were no match for the guns of the settlers and the revolution was subdued. The leaders of this revolution were a woman by the name of Mbuya Nehanda (i was born in a hospital named after her) mbuya means grandmother. and sekuru Kaguvi. sekuru means grandfather. These two were spirit mediums and they united the country against a common aggressor, and the first Chimurenga ended with their capture and execution. At her execution Mbuya Nehanda is belived to have warned that her bones would rise up again and free her people.

After the first Chimurenga the white settlers then exercised their strength and moved the people around at will destroying their cultures etc but also taking the best pieces of land forthemselves and enslaving the black natives. And as time went on the people became more and more disconcerted and revolted again. The Second Chimurenga.

The Second Chimurenga was primarily about land and the governing of black people in their own land without their consent. The exclusion of black people from education and a system similar to south africa's infamous apartheid., and the exclusion of black people in their governing ie blacks were not allowed to vote or run for public office. The second Chimurenga was ably led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. it culminated in Zimbabwe's independence on the 18th of April 1980. for the interest of time i have left out a few very major events such as ian smith's UDI and the details of the battles such as masscres at chimoio but before the historians in you chastise me for it i concede having left that out.

The situation before independence was such that the white minority which made up between 5 and 10 percent of the land owned at least 75 percent of the land. The remaining 90% were forced to live on the 25% of the land which was dry and arid (unfarmable land).

Zimbabwe enjoyed a period of bliss, quite as like South Africa did for a while and The Zimbabwe dollar was stronger thanthe British pound.

So how are you,? how is your day? just giving you a break from all these facts. if you are still reading i am impressed most people crash out after paragraph 2 and thats why they dont understand the zimbabwe situation because they look to tabloid headlines and do not bother to look further than the surface.

Fast forward to taday's problems. twenty years after independence the status quo was still true and all that had changed was the government and apartheidesque policies repealed, but the land situation was still the same, and racism particularly in farming areas still rampant. A situation that the majority of zimbabweans found untenable and so the government was forced to implement a land reform program, before the people implemented their own. infact the people instituted their own land revolution before the government formalised it.

The position that i hold is that Land Reform is necessary not just in Zimbabwe but in South Africa as well and Namibia because i guarantee you that without it what you see today in Zimbabwe will be in SA and Namibia in decade or so. The manner in which it has been conducted however is where the faults lie. Violence is not the way to go about from here on in, but a peaceful reform and its a realisation that both sides of the farming fence need to realise. True the Zimbabwean economy will suffer from a land reform as would any economy from such an undertaking but it is essential to know that between being able to bring up your family in decent environs far outweighs the advantages of a booming economy to the average man in a tin shack her shares with two other families.

But what do you about the people currently in possession of the land. They were born on it. they have lived on it all their lives?? here in lies the "zimbabwe situation" which in reality is a southern african question because this situation is true for most of southern africa.

this is part one of my controversial Zimbabwe Topic i will continue with this.. but yeah lets discuss where we've gotten to so far. i expect a lot of screaming questions....