SOON after her recent meeting with the Minister of Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo, the British ambassador to Zimbabwe had this to say about the relationship between Zimbabwe and Britain, “…we also reflected on the steps both sides need to take to make the relationship better.
“However we feel certain statements made by different players affect the relationship.”
Being a diplomat Catriona Laing did not rush to specify who the different players are and whether these players are in government or in business or indeed ordinary Zimbabweans.
Further she did not spell out whether the relationship is being affected positively or negatively by what is being said by these different players!
Ordinarily, however, such an utterance would automatically imply the relationship is being affected negatively.
One hopes that the good ambassador was also not referring to our media and its treatment of issues associated with the Brits!
Our media has been robust and unflattering to most for quite some time, in any case well before she ever set her foot in this part of the world!
We Zimbabweans believe in freedom of expression and freedom of the media and will not be silenced by anyone for the simple reason that we had to fight for those freedoms denied us by the British from 1890 to 1980.
In any case Zimbabwe has been on the receiving end of an international onslaught spearheaded by British media, and here we are still standing, and surviving the ill-will of the British and their powerful friends!
The good ambassador may want to know why most Zimbabweans are not rushing to shout their welcome of the British from their rooftops–the reasons are simple and straight forward:
a) The British and their European counterparts have been at the forefront of demonising Zimbabwe and its leadership, isolating the country and imposing economic sanctions against it for over 15 years in the hope that its people will rise up and get rid of its leadership.

b) How then are we as Zimbabweans, going to normalise our relations with Europe when that same Europe does not wish to normalise its relationship with our head of state?
By retaining its so-called travel ban on our head of state and his wife while claiming to have lifted all illegal economic sanctions imposed against our country for over a decade now, the British and their friends look confused and confusing. They want to have their cake and eat it! Surely the British ambassador will agree this is not the kind of behaviour people associate with grown-ups.

c) For over 15 years the West in general has deliberately gone out of its way to mishandle and distort ‘the Mugabe factor’ in all things Zimbabwean in order to degrade him and defeat him politically, but up to now they have failed to achieve their desired outcome.

d) for us, the struggle for our nationhood, the struggle against British tyranny and for our freedoms and human rights, that struggle which forms the bedrock of our foundation as an independent country has come to be symbolised by two faces and voices, those of Robert Mugabe and the late Joshua Nkomo.
And this is not because these two fought the struggle alone but because in our minds and psyche they have come to represent at many levels of our existence and memories the groundbreaking archetypal journey we have had to travel to escape from the clutches of British tyranny and oppression.

Accordingly, there is no way that we can talk about Zimbabwe’s identity as a country and a nation while excluding the role and significance of these two iconic figures in our history; they are already part of a national psyche that is difficult to destroy.

It is like trying to imagine the existence of independent Africa of today without factoring in the role played by Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and other founding fathers to bring it about!
It is also like trying to imagine the existence of the United Kingdom without its monarchy.
And we all know that most of the British people do not take kindly to anyone who dares to speak ill of their monarchy.
In our case the British have been working day and night since 2000 to get rid of our president, and by a strange twist of logic, the same British expect us to cheer them for their diabolical attempts!
In other words to try to separate Robert Mugabe from Zimbabweans is doomed to fail not because he is infallible, but because his ideas and dreams are already embedded in the psyche and imagination of current generations and are bound to be passed on to future ones both in Zimbabwe and beyond.
Mugabe’s implacable vision about sovereignty, independence and ownership of resources is not a personal one but collective one with many takers in Africa and beyond.
The more demonisation he is subjected to the more his stature has grown, especially in Africa where he is more often than not likely to receive standing ovations whereever he visits!
e) In the same interview the ambassador said “We looked at…issues around indigenisation law and the full alignment of laws in the Constitution, which happens to be a good Constitution…”
The ambassador may be well meaning but with due respect she is not qualified to intrude into our affairs and to pass patronising judgements about how good or bad our constitution is!
Neither is she qualified to suggest schedules pertaining to the alignment of our laws with the new constitution for the simple reason that she does not know our priorities.
For us it is like welcoming a guest at home who after a warm reception, starts giving orders about how that home should be run.
After all, the ambassador comes from a country which has no written constitution to speak of.
How many of our African diplomats and or ministers have gone to Britain and started giving English natives instructions on which laws are good or bad for them?
A bit of humility is in order either way!