WHEN people are at peace with themselves, there is no need to fight and Zimbabweans are at peace, they can afford to accommodate others.
When white people came, they knew that everything belonged to the people of this country, the Africans, but to justify unlawfully taking everything away from the owners, they had to create an ideology of white supremacy.
So they said we were primitive heathens concerned only with witchcraft, black magic and sexual orgies.
They said we were dirty, lacking any sense of hygiene, disease and pest-ridden, only served from extinction by the whiteman’s medicine and science.
The architecture of our Great Zimbabwe was credited to foreigners, the Phoenicians, for such ingenuity could not be the work of Africans, the natives.
The Africans had to be denigrated, until it seemed normal to rob them of everything; we had to renounce even our very names on baptism.
Xenophobia comes in various packages but this package never ceases to amaze because it is utterly outrageous.
You come from a foreign land, thousands of miles across the seas and because of greed and lust for what belongs to others you whip up such hatred, you utterly despise a people to the extent that you plan to exterminate them.
Even after we have fought and defeated them and extended the hand of reconciliation this hatred continues to fester in them.
When years ago it was decided to give the war-veterans ZW$50 000 each to give them a start in life, the whites closed up their shops, in protest; they locked out their workers and penalised those workers who came to work.
These combatants fought a just war, sought no revenge when they came home, sought no special privileges, but this deep rooted hatred reveals the core of their bone of contention; no African should be recognised for any worthiness, they do not deserve that which is theirs, they should bow down to those who took everything by force. But that, of course, will not happen!
The issue still is about our wealth.
With the land revolution at the turn of the century, President Mugabe became an ugly despot, Zimbabwe became a pariah state, everything in Zimbabwe became defunct, with the Western world ganged up on her. Tsvangirai and others who do not mind selling their mothers for a penny were mobilised and funded to destroy the land, the people.
And it still is the same issue; the land of the Africans cannot be for the Africans but for the whites.
The vitriolic condemnation of Zimbabwe, the complete intolerance of it to the extent of seeking to invade it, imposing sanctions against it and the Head of State and Government and other Ministers of Government is xenophobia at its worst.
It is only the spirit which led us to fight and defeat the white imposters that helped us survive and is still helping us survive.
To elevate greed to the position where it is the sole measure of what is correct is to sink to the dark ages and such is xenophobia.
Because of their laager mentality, they continue to build enclaves of the rich and privileged in the cities, where Africans are excluded.
The private police which patrol these places randomly questions Africans and routinely drive away those they feel should not be there, on the excuse that ‘right of admission is reserved. Some of the proprietors make it no secret that you are not welcome because of your skin colour although because of the laws of this country they have to do it surreptiously, and the issue remains the same, our wealth is not for Africans but for Europeans.
Xenophobia in Zimbabwe is not practised by the Africans.
Robert Moffat and his wife Mary came to our land where Mzilikazi gave them a place to settle, and they were safe among Africans; nothing happened to them.
After 90 years of bondage to the British and 16 years of bitter armed struggle in which thousands perished and people were subjected to untold suffering and grief, we still sought no revenge; we still extended the hand of reconciliation.
People employ prejudice when they want to unlawfully, unjustly exploit and rob others, when they covet what belongs to others when they want to reserve privileges for themselves, they create ideologies of exclusion and destruction of those they seek to marginalise, to exclude. This is all that Xenophobia is about.
The colonisers fight the indegens physically, they fight them psychologically, they fight them by all dirty means because they fail to get what they want by lawful means.
They create ideologies based on prejudice to justify their greed-driven aggression. A typical example being the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Those who coveted our land, its riches, our mineral wealth, our herds, our flora and fauna, more than a 100 years later still continue to stir the waters.
They go all over Zimbabwe seeking to whip up dirty sentiments and feelings of dissent. While in Matabeleland they say people should rebel because of Gukurahundi, they conveniently forgt about Chimoio and Nyadzonia.
Women are targeted; they are co-opted for the purposes of whipping up disenchantment and dissatisfaction with the Zimbabwe way of life.
Groups perceived to be minorities are targeted to advance theories of exclusionby the Government.
While the list is endless, let those who have always coveted Zimbabwe for its wealth be warned they face a brick wall; what they have successfully tried elsewhere does not work here.
We have a wholesome history and culture which do not include vengeance and xenophobia.
The idea is that if they can break Zimbabwe into multiple fragments it will be easy to take it back and exploit the people as cheap labour.
They do not rest; in Matabeleland they even sponsor writers to create a culture of hate and dissent hoping the seeds of xenophobia will sprout, but the Zimbabwe soil is not receptive to such; here and there they sprout but they wither away.
Our culture accommodates others, including the foreigner; we do not believe in revenge, we do not fight wars of attrition, we are peaceful
State structures are in place to take care of everyone, it is enshrined in our Constitution.
The people of Zimbabwe are at peace with themselves and as long as this peace prevails it is difficult to create chaos.