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The myth of conquest by Jameson

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IF people think they are greater than others, then there is a problem.
There is no-one greater than the other, all are equal, guns or no guns; jet fighters or no jet fighters.
We proved it in our liberation struggle from 1890 to 1980, which we waged and won.
We are second to none, takazvibudisa pachena kuti hapana rudzi ruripasi porumwe rudzi asi kuti marudzi ose akaenzana.
“Take it, it is yours, you have conquered,” said Leandar Starr Jameson to the mercenaries he had recruited to fight King Lobengula.
He was urging them to take the thousands of hectares he was parcelling out to them from the land of the Ndebele as he had promised when he recruited them for this evil mission.
From the outset, Jameson promised his recruits to this criminal war, a share of King Lobengula’s great wealth, his herd, which ran into thousands, his gold, ivory and of course the land which they believed was richer in gold than Mashonaland.
And so he went ahead, parcelling out thousands of hectares of the land of the Ndebele, King Lobengula’s herd and for himself and his lieutenants, the gold and ivory.
The racism, callousness, falsity of Jameson’s statement was exposed for the sham it is when in 2000 Zimbabwe’s freedom fighters claimed the land they had liberated.
The white farmers, the British, their European relatives and their American friends found this unpalatable.
They could not accept that the freedom fighters had conquered and had right to the land they had redeemed.
Unlike Jameson, who falsely claimed he had conquered when he actually had robbed, the freedom fighters had truly won because they had fought and defeated the enemy who had robbed them, they had fought and redeemed their birthright, Zimbabwe, which the British had usurped.
It is absurd and an extreme abrogation of justice that the freedom fighters and Zimbabwe are vilified for having taken back their land which they had liberated; that the British and their American friends imposed illegal sanctions on our land for this very just act.
It was ‘correct’ for Jameson to seize land and wealth on the false pretext these were spoils of war and when those who truly conquered claim their prize, the British, their friends and relatives still act according to their colonial mentality and ‘punish’ the victors of a just war, still applying the very colonial mentality which they used to justify their armed aggression on a people because of greed and covetousness.
You don’t say to someone, ‘I have better guns, a better equipped army therefore I will fight you for what is yours and when I defeat you everything that is yours becomes mine’.
There is no justice in that, what you are saying is that you are an armed robber, and yet there is no law which supports armed robbery except ‘theft laws’ which are created to ‘normalise’ theft.
Rhodes, Jameson and the British bandits called by various names, Pioneer Column, settlers and so on, were colonialists who did not hesitate to use guns to get what was ours.
You do not rob people at gunpoint and say you have conquered.
You cannot conquer what belongs to others, what belongs to others is theirs, not yours; nothing changes because you have used force to get it.
If you take what belongs to others because you have guns, then you are a robber; if you say you have conquered when you have taken what belongs to others because you have guns, you are morally wrong; you have no legal right to what you have stolen, you are an usurper.
You cannot conquer what is not yours; to take what belongs to others by force is to rob.
Each people have their particular portion of the globe where they have full inalienable rights.
To say to people who are settled in the land of their ancestors, ‘you do not belong here but we do’, is not correct, but this is what Europeans did to the indigenous people of America.
They took it over by military force and today they call it US and the Indians are now confined to reserves, like some tourist attraction.
This trend of going all over the globe and taking what belongs to others by force is criminal.
Wherever you are is where you are supposed to be, don’t rob others because they seem to have something better than yours.
If you need what is theirs, trade with them and respect the terms of trade they set for what is theirs, don’t impose terms of trade for what you don’t have.
It is wrong to say something is correct for us, but not for others.
We of Zimbabwe shall never countenance that; we shall never accept what is wrong.

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