IN 1990, soon after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela, while visiting in the US, was asked by one African- American woman from Harlem what plans he had for a free South Africa since all newly independent African countries never seemed to have the ability to create and run viable economies. 

Being a lawyer and having lived in Harlem all her life, this woman should have known better about the production relations obtaining in African countries at the time. 

Mandela told her that only one company held 75 percent of all the value on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange explaining that this kind of monopoly, white monopoly, was what left Africans destitute in the land of their birth. He told her that kind of monopoly was responsible for the abject poverty of the Africans and entrenched the obscene opulence of the white man in South Africa. This is what had to be rectified in a free South Africa so that Africans could live normal lives in the country of their birth. 

When the West smugly claims that democracy has failed in South Africa and cites the abject poverty in which many South Africans live, they conveniently ignore the socio-politico origins of this economic imbalance. 

That democracy, that socio-politico construct they impose on us, never had a chance. 

What is there to democratise when all the wealth is squarely in the hands of the white minority? 

Only Jesus is said to have worked the miracle of feeding thousands out of five loaves of bread and two fish, with crumbs left over! Who owns the majority shares on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, if I may ask? 

The South African constitution says no-one should go hungry but we say donors cannot o fulfil the dictates of the constitution of a sovereign country. 

Firstly, it is anathema that South Africans should go without food, under any circumstances, let alone that they should assuage their hunger with crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. 

If the constitution of South Africa says that no South African should go without food or education then the solution is that the State, which is the defender of the nation’s constitution, should acquire control of the nation’s resources in order to fulfil the dictates of its constitution. 

Why should South Africans be fed crumbs from the white man’s table when it is rich in gold, platinum, diamonds, iron, copper and nickel! 

Why should any South African go without a meal when the country is overflowing with riches. 

Don’t tell us South Africans are hungry, don’t tell us they have no money to send their children to school, to afford good shelter and to pay hospital fees. This is not the truth of the matter. 

What happened to their minerals, who stole them and why was that allowed to happen? 

Is it even rational to talk of democracy under such circumstances! 

It is a crime against humanity that a people so richly endowed should be so completely expropriated of, and alienated from their wealth to the extent many live in abject poverty. 

Zimbabweans are equally rich, if not richer. Zimbabweans are the richest in the world per capita in terms of mineral wealth. The country is endowed with gold, diamonds, the platinum group of metals (PGM), iron ore lithium and others . . . So, by what logic do Zimbabweans go hungry, without shelter, without medical care or clothing? 

How is that possible! 

When Musikavanhu endowed our country, Zimbabwe, with vast reserves of gold; when He gave us the second largest reserves of platinum in the world; the best quality chromium in the world; vast reserves of diamonds; lithium and mother minerals, He intended this for our subsistence. If we let others take it all away, leaving us with only small change then we are our own worst enemies. 

Millions cannot subsist on small change. 

Why give them 90 to 99 percent of what is ours and leave the children of Murenga to live on one to five percent? It is a travesty. 

No number of economic forums, agents from Davos or wherever can hide the basic truth that we are a rich country and economic problems arise because someone is stealing our wealth, claiming the right to do so because they have the machinery and capital to take it out of the ground. 

What is in our soil is ours. 

If the capitalists want it, it has to be on our terms. 

I am not talking about petty thieves, those who steal a few millions here and there. This country is filthy rich. We are talking of the real thieves, the mega thieves who take away billions worth of our mineral wealth. Those are the thieves we should worry about. 

Those who loot billions worth of our mineral wealth are the ones who foment civil strife so that we hack each other to pieces over Mercedes-Benz cars and other top-of-the-range vehicles, over mansions, and such like. This is ridiculous. These are storms in a teacup, brewed, created, so that while we are busy hacking each other to pieces, they will loot our mineral wealth while we are thus foolishly obsessed. 

Petty thieves are not the principal enemies of the people. 

The petty thieves do not deprive us of so much that the economy can crumble. That is a popular myth spread viciously to say we Africans are failures. Some are corrupt yes, even in America and the world over, but their economies still stand. Why? Because they have control over their resources, minerals in particular, theirs and what they loot abroad from us. There are corrupt individuals, but this is blown out of proportion to shield the major robbery of wealth which is going on by those who loot our mineral resources. 

It is this looting and plundering that brings the economy to the knees, not the petty thieves. The petty thieves cause some ripples because the looters and plunderers leave the economy with nothing. However, these petty thieves are not the principal cause of our economic problems. They just take a small portion of the one slice left by the looters and plunderers. They only aggravate an already desperate situation. We can fight over the one slice of bread left by the looters and plunderers, but that can never be enough no matter who divides it. 

By all means indict the petty thieves, let them pay for defiling the nation. However, sell all their cars and mansions and see if the proceeds can sustain the nation even for a single year? 

They are culprits, but not the major culprits. 

Get the petty thieves behind bars, though that will not right the economic situation. Above all, get hold of your resources, own your own resources and you will have sufficiency for everybody, and you can pursue the petty thieves from a vantage point. 

We must stop the mega thieves, the robbers; don’t let them take 95 percent of the proceeds from our minerals and give us five percent. That is unconscionable! 

When we take the majority share of what is our God-given heritage, this is what will turn the economy around because we will have something to work with; not to be forced to define an economy in a vacuum where all wealth is expropriated. 

London, Paris, Washington and Brussels, among other metropoles, cannot control our economy if we are in control of our resources. It is a betrayal of the masses to leave our resources in the hands of private individuals and companies. 

Without control of our resources, locking up the petty thieves will not assuage the people’s hunger and poverty. 

It is not about cars and houses, but more about who takes control of our resources. People allow themselves to be terrorised and mesmerised by social media posting all kinds of nonsensical details, because of greed and lust for conspicuous consumption while ignoring the substantial issues relevant to the nation. 

Who had a lavish wedding at the Victoria Falls, and gave the bride a mansion for a wedding present is not the business of a serious, intelligent nation. To view anyone living a lavish life as an enemy is beneath our dignity. 

Do your research, find out who owns what in your country, not who owns what grocery shop or petrol station but 

who owns the mineral resources, oil resources, gas resources, how much of that finds its way back to the national Treasury then you will understand your economy, you will not bark at every rich person. 

Don’t be willing tools of the billion-dollar thieves who take away your minerals only leaving craters in your country. Don’t be willing tools of these mega thieves who steal your wealth and pay you to hack each other to pieces while they walk away with billions. 

Ask yourselves how much of the billions harvested in your country find their way into the national coffers. That is the answer to why people go hungry. 

You cannot mismanage what does not exist; if there is no money you cannot mismanage nothing. 

African governments are not incompetent; there are no resources at their disposal. Though they are rich, they are forced to tell their people that donations from the billion-dollar looters and plunderers are their only salvation. 

What’s the point of mining mountains of lithium, platinum, diamonds or gold if the maximum we get from such untold wealth is 10 percent or less. It is ridiculous. In that case there is no need to say the minerals in our soil are ours. It means they truly belong to those who have the means to dig them out, not to us the indigenes. 

The scandalous hypocrisy of these looters is that they go on to lend us money from the zillions they have looted from us at usurious interest rates, creating fertile ground for more poverty. 

It is all about production relations and who controls the resources