YEARS of mental subjugation through carefully crafted instruments like education and religion have left a good number of us easy targets for manipulation by our erstwhile colonisers, long after we have achieved independence.
We must hasten to point out there is nothing wrong with religion per se, be it Christianity, Islam or Hinduism.
What is wrong is when it is twisted and used as a means to facilitate colonial ambitions.
The same applies to education.
There is everything wrong with a curriculum thrust upon a people that deliberately promotes foreign values at the expense of those of the indigenes.
There is nothing wrong with history books by British authors that speak glowingly about the resistance by the British to Nazi attempted occupation of Britain.
Here the portrait of heroes presented is justified.
But there is everything wrong when the same authors refer to Shonas and Ndebeles as ‘rebels’ because of their resistance to the Pioneer Column.
The Shona Rebellion and the Ndebele Rebellion are familiar chapters in history books in the colonial era curricula.
This time it is the portrait villains which is presented.
The whole idea is to impress upon recipients that the ideas or thinking of the British and the Western world are what should be followed and nothing else.
This philosophy is then spread by the international mass media they control.
This paves the way for the West to claim the right to impose leaders of their choice in sovereign states.
After colonising minds of unsuspecting citizens they then use them to turn against their governments, promising them heaven on earth.
They have done it in Iraq where they killed Saddam Hussein, in Egypt where Hosni Mubarak was disgraced and in Libya where Muammar Gadaffi was assassinated.
The chaos that followed in Iraq and Libya is public knowledge.
And Western instigators of the mayhem have virtually taken a back seat as they quietly siphon the oil reserves from their quarries.
That’s exactly what they are trying to do in Syria.
They want Bashar Al-Assad out and to them it doesn’t matter how many people will die in that process so long as Syrian resources will be at their disposal.
Indeed that is the rationale of infusing colonial software in the minds of colonial subjects and other weaker states.
It then becomes easier to persuade people to turn against their own governments regardless of the consequences.
But do we have to go as far as the Middle East?
Here in Zimbabwe, after almost a century of colonial rule we have blacks who believe their own people are villains if the West says so.
What else can you say about people like Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters, who invite sanctions on their own people to please the British and Americans?
Not only that.
They even wanted the British to intervene militarily and install Tsvangirai as president after the 2008 general elections.
Of course people are suffering because of sanctions, but the British are not concerned.
And if there had been a military invasion, many would have died, most likely including those who had invited it.
One thing for sure, the British would not have cared a hoot about it.
All they want is support from puppets in their endeavour to remove President Mugabe from power so they can install a pliant leader who will let them exploit our God-given resources, including land.
As we approach 2018 general elections we shall be seeing British and American involvement through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and fleets of brand new vehicles donated to opposition parties.
But Zimbabweans have seen through all this before and stand guided by events in Syria, Libya, Iraq and other victims of Western intrusion.