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A big colonial lie vs the truth

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AS we look forward to celebrate the great achievements made by our great heroes in a week’s time, let us take time to sit back and look at some of the big lies that have been spread by our former colonial masters over the years in their bid to belittle the great achievements made by the black people in this country over the decades.
One of these big colonial lies goes: “When the English colonial settlers occupied our country in 1890 they were primarily looking for gold.
“However, when they got into the country they found very little gold which then forced them to go into agriculture!”
The other lie is that, from biblical times to date, Zimbabwe has always been a great gold trading country.
In this article we are going to show that the colonial master had lied when he said, he found no large gold reserves in Zimbabwe when he occupied the country in 1890.
Furthermore, that Zimbabwe was a great gold producing and gold, trading country from time immemorial up to the time of our colonisation all the way to today.
As a matter of fact, the colonial master had himself stolen hundreds upon hundreds of tonnes of our gold since his arrival in this country and shipped it to Britain.
In addition, that the great gold trade of the past had given rise to a diversified agriculture system in our country before the colonial master had set foot on our beloved soil.
One Henry Ellert tells us that, “gold followed by ivory, were the principal export commodities of the rivers (Zimbabwe) in the old days before colonialism.
“The early Portuguese spice trade from Malabar and the Banda Islands fuelled rapid commercial expansion in the 16th century and Zimbabwe gold – played a part in this commerce.”
As a matter of fact, Zimbabweans of old traded with the Portuguese.
No
They also traded their vast amounts of gold with the Indians, Arabs, Jews, Swahili, Indonesians etc.
The great gold trade by the Zimbabweans with other nations gave rise to the importation of a variety of crops which stimulated great agriculture expansion in the country.
Contrary to the lies peddled by our former colonial masters that they brought all the good crops we find in our country today, the truth is that the old vibrant Zimbabwean gold trade brought some of the exotic crops we have in this country while some of the crops are purely indigenous.
Let us take our staple maize crop as an example.
Maize is not a crop that was brought Nevarungu (by the English) as we were taught in our primary schools by the colonialists.
It is not an English crop.
It is a crop that was exported here by the Portuguese from South America in exchange for our gold.
It is also not a Portuguese crop.
The Portuguese only took it from Native Americans – the so-called Red Indians and exported to us.
This also goes for crops like tomatoes.
These are not English at all.
They were brought by our gold trade here again from South America.
One of the most important crops in this country is tobacco.
Because tobacco growing was monopolised by the English in this country, we were all made to believe that it had been brought here by the colonial master.
Not at all.
The English settlers found tobacco being grown here and in fact did not know much about the crop on their arrival.
And so are mangoes which were brought from India because of the gold trade.
It is therefore important to remember that there was a very vibrant gold industry involved in a lot of international trading way before the coming of the colonial settlers into this country.
Now did the colonial settler find our gold reserves depleted when they occupied our country in 1890?
No!
The country had as much gold as in the past.
If the colonial master had found no gold at all in the country, why then were Africans being press ganged to work under Chibharo in gold mines all over the country?
What were they mining?
Why were black Africans recruited in their thousands from Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Congo etc to work in our gold mines at Shamva, Tafuna, Jumbo, Penhalonga, Muriel mine, Rio Tinto, Gaika, Globe and Phoenix, Gwanda etc?
By the way, not only were black Africans recruited to work in those gold mines. Arabs from Aden and Chinese were also recruited at some stage.
Were these recruited to work on empty mines?
Let us give some statistics to refute the lie that there was no gold in Zimbabwe when the colonial master arrived here.
“During the early 20th century, several Zimbabwean mines were hailed as the richest producers in the world and these included the Globe and Phoenix Mine at Kwekwe, the Cam and Motor Mine near Kadoma and the Golden Valley at Chakari.
“In the case of the Globe and Phoenix Mine which was developed in 1902 (by colonial master) the mine has been in continuous operation with a reported yield of 450 tonnes and more.”
Other sources tell us that “Zimbabwe has a long and successful history of gold production.
“Throughout the 1940s gold was the principal mining product in the country then known as Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
“By 1965 Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) became the seventh largest gold producer in the World.
“In 1975 Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was ranked the fifth largest gold producer just behind the United States of America and well ahead of Australia.”
In summary, “More than 6 000 gold deposits have been exploited since the late 1980s producing an estimated 1 566 tonnes of gold.”
It is therefore absolutely scandalous for the colonial master to say he found no gold in Zimbabwe when he got here.
This is a big lie which is being spread to cover up the stealing of our gold reserves by the British during colonial times.

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