This week Cain Mathema in his book Why the West and its MDC stooges want Zimbabwe’s Defence and Security Forces reformed that The Patriot is serialising says there was a time when Rhodes succeeded in militarily defeating the people as a whole and went on to treat them exactly the same way whether in Matabeleland or in Mashonaland as he continued to violently dispossess them of everything and raped them and brutalised them in all manner all over the across the country.
THE Zimbabwe Lancaster House negotiations or talks were not the first between the British and the black people of Zimbabwe.
The first negotiations took place between Rhodes and King Lobengula that led to the Rudd Concession and the negotiations between Rhodes and Chief Chibi that led to an agreement that was meant (on the part of Rhodes) to prevent the Afrikaners from claiming land across the Limpopo River.
The second negations between Rhodes and our chiefs in what is now called Matabeleland took place during the 1896- 97 war of liberation when Rhodes used divide and rule tactics against the blacks when he realised that his army would be too extended, and therefore faced defeat, if it were to fight in all the war fronts in the country as the war was all over the country.
So Rhodes sat down with the chiefs in the west of the country and convinced them to lay down their arms, and the chiefs agreed and Rhodes paid them handsomely in the form of guns, horses and money.
This enabled him to concentrate his military forces in what is now called Mashonaland.
Rhodes succeeded eventually in militarily defeating the people as a whole and went on to treat them exactly the same way whether in Matabeleland or in Mashonaland as he continued to violently dispossess them of everything and raped them and brutalised them in all manner all over the across the country.
The third time was in 1961 when the British offered blacks a constitution that made it clear that blacks were just inferior to whites; that constitution was rejected by the nationalist leaders and the people in general.
Then came the 1974 Victoria Falls negotiations attended by the Zambian government, ZAPU, Ian Smith, Muzorewa and Sithole who had been expelled from ZANU, ZANU led by Chitepo and Robert Mugabe did not attend.
In 1975 we had the Malta negotiations; and in 1976 we had the Geneva negotiations or talks.
What the British were looking for in all these talks and negotiations were black politicians, particularly within the leadership of the liberation movements, who would be willing to protect the interests of the British imperialists in the country.
In other words, all the British imperialists wanted were possible sellouts among the leaders of the colonised.
Unfortunately for the British, no genuine nationalist, no genuine leader of the people was willing to abandon the people’s cause and those Africans who wished to work for the British, were too insignificant politically to be considered by the British as they did not have any political clout among the colonised.
Therefore the British just had not found any African leader of the people to be handed over fake political power so that the country only received flag independence, neo-colonialism, as they did in many former colonies not only in Africa, but in many other continents too.
However, when the crunch did come eventually, that is, when the liberation forces were showing clear signs of victory, in the 1970s, some black leaders who had been at the forefront in the struggle for independence, began to side with the enemy.
These leaders included Sithole and Chikerema, that is why Sithole was removed as president of ZANU in 1970 for having denounced the armed struggle, and Chikerema broke away from ZAPU to form the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI) together with some ZANU leaders in exile.
It is these same leaders with Muzorewa who eventually ended up joining hands with Ian Smith to create what they called Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, a sellout outfit which continued committing atrocities against the colonised people, their internal political leaders, the guerrilla fighters within and outside the country, as well as refugees in Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique. By the time Zimbabwe-Rhodesia was created Herbert Chitepo and J.Z. Moyo had been assassinated by the British and their Rhodesian proxies.
On the one hand, to the British imperialists, who tried to play neutral in all the independence conferences and negotiations, the most important issue was to come out with a constitution that would protect British interests in the country.
On the other hand, for the Patriotic Front, the constitution was to make sure that independent Zimbabwe was to be a genuinely independent country with its own political and economic system that it owned and controlled, with the country’s land and the whole economy owned and controlled by the black people of the country.