ZIMBABWE, nay Africa, and blacks in general are lagging behind because of neo-colonialism.
We subconsciously hate ourselves and love our slave masters, as in the days of slavery and colonisation. What the whiteman hates, we have been subliminally set-up to hate — and what he likes we like.
Our cuisines and fashion have changed, not in our favour or to the indigenous standards of health or beauty — but those of whites.
Likewise, medicine is patented in Western style, with the use of chemicals rather than herbs. This, we chose to accept as a way of life at the expense of our traditional lifestyle and systems of governance.
Even more so, we have inherited the whiteman’s education. Our perception of life is based largely on concurring or disagreeing with the hypothesis of our former colonisers. This is because it is their books we read in school, not those containing the African reasoning towards the topics raised therein.
The result is a mind that can only search out from within the whiteman’s scope of thinking. We have become like horses with blinders that keep their eyes on the track.
Envisioning God in the whiteman’s image, seeing beauty in his physiological traits as opposed to one’s own instills self-hate and the hate of blacks, and blackness in general. This is because they are other than white and subconsciously deemed undesirable.
It becomes normal to wear a tie, lip stick, fake nails, hair and eyelashes, simply because it is in line with trying to assume the desirable traits which are European.
In cases like hair texture, which is hard to change, the whites made blacks cut off their locks in school and workplaces. Short African hair was also definitively black, even when combed, and a slight notch above bald was set as a hair standard for blacks.
This was appropriately called the English cut, not because it is common among Englishmen, but because it is the cut that the English find appropriate for blacks.
The disdain of whites towards African hair has also been inherited by modern blacks. Their criterion of what is to be considered formal and their standards of beauty are wholly Western. One may find it hard to find employment if he/she has natural dread locks for instance.
There is a saying: “Your enemy’s enemy ought to be your best friend.”
This entails blacks not recognising figures that the West consider heroes as good, and those they consider villains as bad.
Yet blacks believe figures such as Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi, among others, were (during their reign) truly the villains that the West makes them out to be.
The truth is, these men were fighting colonialism and domination while agitating for peace, independence and sovereignty for their nations. Yet the West makes heroes of blacks like Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela who turned the other cheek by serving the interests of the whites.
Men like Steve Biko, Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X, who were murdered for upholding the cause of black people are neither remembered, taught about in schools nor positively written about in Western media.
This generation is worse than most people think.
The youth can read but they choose not to. Thus they remain oblivious to written history besides that which they were taught in school — the syllabi of Africans is almost entirely Western.
The youths of today do not enjoy returning to their homelands, rather preferring to live in the cities.
They are disconnected from their roots and cannot download information from tribal elders into their heads so as to eventually pass it down to their offspring.
Oral history thus dies with the elders while the youth remain culturally and politically ignorant.
What then are we as a people if we know not our history, cause and destiny?
Every Zimbabwean knows the names Samora Machel and Hebert Chitepo, but few among the youth know how they got assassinated in a plane and car bomb respectively.
Some youths do not even know about Marcus Garvey, arguably the father of pan-Africanism in our era.
But they pass exams about William Shakespeare, Napoleon Bonaparte and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, among others.
When I ask people my age about the Black Panther Movement, they all think I am referring to the marvel comic-based movie. They have no idea who the likes of Huey P. Newton, Aldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Geronimo Pratt and Matulu Shakur, among others.
Yet we consider ourselves educated.
As a people who have undergone oppression for a long time, we ought to keep logs of names so as to hold our oppressors accountable for their sins when the time is appropriate. Our friends who help us in any way during our times of trouble must also be remembered.
There will, inevitably, come a time of reckoning and our experiences should give us a common cause. But if we do not know where we are coming from, how can we know where we are headed?
Our species has unavoidably been divided into races. Thus your race is bigger than your family, tribe and nation. We therefore should not rest until blacks, even those outside one’s family unit, tribe, nation and continent, are free from colonisation and neo-colonialism.
The Chinese are admirable in looking out for their own people, regardless of where they may be located on earth.
They call themselves Huaren when they leave their land for the Diaspora. They are in touch with their government and help out in times of trouble such as the Japan-China War. They study Chinese although they may acquire foreign languages in the places they go to.
They import their own food and medicine as well as establish China towns from whence they procure commodities they are used to. They observe traditional festivals, like the Spring festival, and promote Chinese art and culture by doing so.
Blacks do not rely on their traditional foods and medicines, even in Africa. We eat Portuguese-introduced corn (maize) that we acquired from the indigenous Americans for sadza instead of our millet (zviyo).
We import rice, yet we can produce our own brown rice (mupunga). We rely on pharmaceutical medicines from the West and no longer trust our own leaves, tree bark and roots from indigenous herbs as a way of healing.
Yet Europeans have come together under NATO to assist any European nation that is at war, in or outside Europe.
Let us stand for a bigger cause besides our selfish ends, only then can we achieve true unity and pan-Africanism.
The power of unity in numbers is the backbone of the modern Chinese nation which has become prominent in terms of development in our era.