By Davet Muzwidzwa

FOREIGN domination was entrenched into the African fabric in a significant way as early as the slave trade era. Powerful foreign institutions literary paid or sometimes looted Africans as goods for sale on faraway lands. They, like donkeys and oxen, toiled the fields building economies for no gain. The African slave lost all the human dignity bestowed on him by God. Thus, the Western economies were built by domination and not fair play. When slavery was no longer sustainable, due to massive revolts in the plantations in the 1830s, the very beneficiary of slavery crafted slavery into modern forms of exploitation. While forms of slavery have changed, the fundamental ‘slave-master’ relationship merely transformed into ‘dominating-dominated’ nations. Today Africa continues to be the cheap source of labour and resources. Africa has been successful in breaking the physical chains of slavery and the colonial machinery as seen through downing of colonial flags and governments. Africa’s biggest challenge now is breaking the chains of slavery and downing the colonial flags and governments that found safe storage in the minds of the African.
These chains have been stored and become permanent memory of the African child. The slave reflexes have been coded in our psychomotor systems as involuntary actions. Therefore, it is common to hear some Africans sharing their nostalgic thoughts about Rhodesia. Some Zimbabweans are dreaming of a day when Zimbabwe will rejoin the British Commonwealth. This group of Zimbabweans are like the ‘obedient slaves’ of the past. To understand this we need to share what we mean by slavery. By slavery we refer to an inhuman civil condition where a person is deprived of liberty, free will, freedom, self determination through control and duress by a powerful, dominant master who usually desires free or cheap labour and products.
If a person is subjected to these ills for a long time, the human involuntary system tends to acculturate the life of a slave.
The slave takes some of the harsh treatments as normal. Thus, you see a slave taking duties and fulfil them as a slave even if the chains are removed.
This is referred to as an ‘obedient slave’.
Out of hundreds of years of slavery and colonialism, Africans have become obedient slaves taking chores without chains and whip to whip them into line.For instance, Africa has vast natural resources. The African has the skill and capacity to extract these resources and make them available for use. From the coffee in Ethiopia, cocoa in Ghana, tobacco in Zimbabwe, Africans toil to produce these high value goods. Diamonds and gold in Zimbabwe, DR Congo, Botswana and South Africa, oil in Angola, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan, its Africans who toil in their production. One will notice that Nigerians will queue for oil sometimes being rationed when Nigerian oil is pumped 24 hours a day destined to the dominating nations.
You would hardly see a Zimbabwean wearing a diamond ring or even a gold ring or bracelet. The closest most Zimbabweans can go is wearing imitations such as brass rings. You will notice that we are prepared to eat lowest grades of beef while we send our tender succulent beef to the European Union (EU). We do this not because we are irrational, but because the invisible chains of slavery are still tight on our necks and hands.
All African economies are designed to export cheap raw materials and labour and huge ports are built to achieve that.
Africans are very rational, but they are still enslaved.
First, they fought and won the battle against physical slavery, they fought and won against slavery disguised as colonialism.
It is unfortunate that the indigenous Americans and Australians lost the battle. They are now the minority in their native lands.
The challenges Africa is now facing relate to these invisible chains of slavery disguised as globalisation, rule of law, pluralism, democracy, individual rights, war crimes and International Criminal Court (ICC). These invisible chains together with the after effects of the physical slavery and colonialism of the past have resulted in reinforcing the benefits of the dominating nations and entrenched the suffering of the dominated Africa.
Zimbabwe has a lot of deep scars as our platinum, chrome, gold, nickel and other resources are exploited and exported for the benefit of the dominating nations. These minerals have no domestic market other than being shipped raw abroad in totality.
Our ancestors mined gold, copper and silver. They sold some of these minerals to Arabs and Portuguese, but surely they were among the most ornamented in the world. They manufactured out of gold, copper and silver highly valued rings, ornaments and bracelets. They decorated themselves with these ornaments from head to toe.
At Mapungubwe in South Africa which was Murenga our war hero’s headquarters, archaeologists discovered a Rhino artefact made of the finest gold.
Zimbabweans are the first people to mine gold on earth. Archaeological and historical evidence exist. With such a very rich heritage what are the modern Zimbabweans doing to sustain that heritage?
Zimbabwe accounts for over 25 percent of the world’s diamonds.
How are Zimbabweans showing for that rich heritage?
This revelation confirms the assertion that the current challenges faced by Africans arise from lack of the right mental state as the psycho-systems have acculturated some of the inferiorities induced by years of mental subjugation spanning over a thousand years.
While other nations, some very poor compared to Africa, are pursuing space programmes, Africa continues to grapple with poverty and disease while its resources nourish other nations because Africa continues to be mentally enslaved with new methods every time. Without Africa declaring war against mental slavery, the slave-master economic order will prevail where Africa is the dominated while the West and Asia are the dominating.
Addressing mental slavery is a long term programme. For Zimbabwe, Zim-ASSET is a noble short term intervention, but are we not going to have hidden puppets among us who have a deep nostalgia of Rhodesia and its pound, who will stop at nothing to ensure that Zimbabweanising agendas never succeed?
In light of this negative mental state that evolved from years of enslavement and colonisation, Zimbabwe has to take a bold stand against this state of mind that makes our brethren look up to foreign intervention for challenges that require homegrown solutions. Catch Zimbabweans young.
In them plant the software of self confidence, determination, the desire to break new ground, viewing selves as equals with others in the international arena.
The new mindset of every Zimbabwean must be very clear about the Zimbabwean dream. If Zimbabwe, through the education curriculum and other interventions declare an all out war on mental enslavement, perhaps we may see a Zimbabwean satellite in space in our lifetime. It is all about us believing in ourselves.
Self-cleansing shall set us free from mental subjugation and enslavement.