By Golden Guvamatanga BEFORE his attack on Africa’s leading light, Dr Kwame Nkrumah on Monday, true appreciation of MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s spectacular decline had been somewhat slow to gain consensus. This is because it is understandably difficult to garner widespread praise for anything he does because he is Morgan Tsvangirai, the man who is committed to tearing Zimbabwe and Africa’s independence for the benefit of the whiteman. It is even more difficult to mention his name in the same sentence with the great Kwame Nkrumah. It is a despicable abomination to have Tsvangirai’s name share the same paragraph with one of Africa’s greatest visionary leaders. The July 31, 2013 thrashing in the harmonised elections evidently set the ball rolling in his unprecedented route to extinction, but his Africa Day slur on Nkrumah all, but sealed his miserable fate. Yet here was Tsvangirai, on Monday, putting his treacherous foot in his foul mouth, attacking the legendary Nkrumah for allegedly encouraging Africans to pursue political freedom first at the ‘expense’ of economic freedom. “Was Nkrumah right or wrong? Of course, he was wrong because we also need economic freedom. Political freedom without economic freedom is meaningless. We do not eat flags and national anthems. We need jobs,” Tsvangirai foolishly charged. It was surprising that the MDC-T which has made its resentment of President Robert Mugabe’s economic empowerment programmes for black people and Kwame Nkrumah’s vision for African economic development no secret can have the guts to talk about economic independence. If it was on another day, on a different platform and a different subject on the table, many would have concluded that this was Tsvangirai reawakening moment; his Damascus moment. This is so given that last Friday he had admitted that he fell in love with ‘Rambai makashinga’ (continue to be strong) that jingle which became popular during the inception of the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme. But this was Tsvangirai, that man who abandoned the liberation struggle speaking on Africa Day, the day conceived and delivered by Kwame Nkrumah, Amical Cabral and Modibe Keita; a day the MDC-T do not believe in. The MDC-T long alienated themselves from the people’s struggle for economic independence when BBC splashed images of Tsvangirai with white farmers on that fateful September 11 1999 day in Banket. They could and can never walk in the same path with Nkrumah whose enduring footprints are manifesting in President Mugabe’s concerted push for Africa’s total economic emancipation. This new struggle, underpinned by the strength and success of the revolutionary land reform and resettlement programme only became alive and a reality after the attainment of political freedom from the Smith regime. How could economic independence have been achieved without political freedom? What was the reason for the various liberation struggles that were waged across the continent? Why those young men and women did sacrifice their lives and limbs in the first place? Those young men and women who perished at Nyadzonia and Chimoio? By attacking Nkrumah, Tsvangirai has created a huge mess for a Zimbabwe that is currently riding on the success of President Mugabe who is current African Union (AU) Chairman. Below are some of the quotable quotes from Kwame Nkrumah that should give Tsvangirai and his followers a reality check: “On this continent, it has not taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs; to construct our society according to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference. – May 24 1963. “We must unite for economic viability, first of all, and then to recover our mineral wealth in Southern Africa, so that our vast resources and capacity for development will bring prosperity for us and additional benefits for the rest of the world. That is why I have written elsewhere that the emancipation of Africa could be the emancipation of Man.” – Speech at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Summit Conference Cairo on July 19 1964. “In order to be able to carry out this resistance to neo-colonialism at every point, positive action requires to be armed with an ideology, an ideology which, vitalising it, and operating through a mass party with a regenerative concept of the world and life, forge for it a strong continuing link with our past and offer to it an assured bond with our future. Under the searchlight of an ideology, every fact affecting the life of a people can be assessed and judged, and neo-colonialism’s detrimental aspirations and sleights of hand will constantly stand. In order that this ideology should be comprehensive, in order that it should light up every aspect of the life of our people, in order that it should affect the total interest of our society, establishing a continuity with our past, it must be socialist in form and in content and be embraced by a mass party.” – Consciencism – Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation The social and economic development of Africa will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way round Morgan Tsvangirai! Although it may be too late, especially after your guff Tsvangirai, please take your time and read about the legendary Nkrumah and his African vision. Embrace your advisors too.