ZIMBABWE was colonised by the British and thousands sacrificed their lives to redeem this land.
Who will dry their tears?
November 23 2022 was the 45th anniversary of the most brutal massacre of over 2 000, mostly civilian comrades who were encamped at Chimoio, Mozambique, unarmed and utterly defenceless.
There were amputees, patients in hospital, schoolchildren at Chindunduma and girls and women at Nehanda Base.
These comrades were butchered mercilessly with weapons of mass destruction.
Defenceless as they were, they were scorched in napalm and decimated by thousands of fragments and shrapnel from bombs.
They suffered unimaginable agony before they died; all this sacrifice to redeem our land from the British robbers.
The British and their European, American and South African relatives ensured that Rhodesia had a merciless, lethal arsenal as well as mercenaries to assist.
Many comrades came home with traumatic physical and psychological scars.
They came back home with shrapnel lodged in their bodies and these conditions have taken their toll on their health.
They have continued to pay for the freedom of this land for over four decades.
The principal cause of the liberation war was land and all the riches it is endowed with, the land of our ancestors, a great gracious gift from Musikavanhu.
We defended and liberated it with our blood from the wars of 1893, 1896-97 and 1963-79 because it is a priceless gift exclusively for descendants of Murenga, a gracious jewel, the plateau between the Zambezi and the Limpopo Rivers.
This writer participated in the Second Chimurenga and after we defeated the British invaders and their surrogates, the Rhodesians, they sought terms of surrender in late 1979.
These were discussed and agreed upon on December 21 of the same year at Lancaster.
The fundamental issue at Lancaster was that the antagonistic contradiction between the British and MaDzimbahwe was that the British had robbed us of our land at gun point, and since we had defeated them, we would take back our land as owners of the land, the Africans of Zimbabwe.
It was agreed that the government of the liberation forces, representing the dispossessed masses of Zimbabwe who had heroically fought and defeated the British would not pay for the land repossessed from the white farmers.
This land never belonged to the whites in the first place.
They had seized it with force of arms and we had reversed that seizure with force of arms, with our victory in the armed struggle.
The British, the Americans and other Europeans, it was agreed and signed, would pay for land repossessed from their kith and kin, the Rhodesian white farmers.
They had taken this land as a right of conquest and we had reversed this with our own conquest of the British.
But when the time came, the British, the Americans and their European relatives refused to honour these terms of surrender.
“We are a new government without links to former colonial interests…I am told there were discussions in 1989 and 1996 to explore the possibility of further assistance. However this is all in the past,” boasted Clare Short, the then Britain’s Secretary of State for International Development on November 5 1997.
The British left the people of Zimbabwe no choice but to legislate for the compulsory acquisition of land which was theirs anyway, their ancestral land and for which they had already paid with thousands of lives.
And when we acquired our land on our own terms regardless, all hell fire was resuscitated against the land of Murenga – hell fire which still had been smouldering anyway because the British had never accepted that the land was ours.
Only the barrel of the gun had brought them to their knees.
The British, the Americans and their European kith and kin declared a full scale war on Zimbabwe.
They even planned to invade Zimbabwe through South Africa, but South Africa through the then President Thabo Mbeki refused to betray Zimbabwe.
The British dishonoured their terms of surrender completely and sought to punish us for insisting on those terms of surrender at Lancaster.
They (whites) mobilised each other for sanctions against this gracious great land which they had already tormented for 90 years – torment they had never compensated or apologised for.
Zimbabwe has been reeling from those sanctions, but it has not collapsed.
Further the British selected a group of traitors who had no compunction in selling their mother for peanuts to form a party to reverse the land reform and try to illegally topple the ZANU PF-led Government.
The same ZANU PF spearheaded the liberation of the land and repossessed it as per promise to the masses of Zimbabwe; the owners of the land.
Thus the British formed the MDC, led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, a stooge.
Who still remembers the ZBC video of Tsvangirai receiving numerous cheques from white farmers?
The MDC’s sole mission was to remove the ZANU PF-led Government by illegal means.
They would also call and lobby for illegal sanctions and all other economic hardships to cripple the economy so that the people, pushed against the wall, would rebel against ZANU PF.
The MDC would then ride on this tide of revolt, fuel it and use it to seize power.
The Trojan horse has been at it for at least 22 years.
It has not worked.
In previous editions, The Patriot has detailed the millions availed to the MDC by the British for all its expenses down to printing the membership cards and regalia.
The Trojan horse has been floundering.
It splintered into multiple fractions over the years and finally it has changed name and T/Shirts, now calling itself CCC.
What does not change however, is the mission, a catastrophic mission to carry the mantle of the British robbers, and pursue their mission as it was when they hoisted the Union Jack at Harare on September 12 1890.
We defeated this diabolic mission in 1979, but the British are seeking to retake the land by using quislings.
Now this is a dangerous mantle to carry.
It is a bloodied treacherous mantle representing the worst criminality ever unleashed on our people.
It is dripping the blood of Mbuya Nehanda Sekuru, King Lobengula, Sekuru Kaguvi, Mukwati and all the paramount chiefs murdered in the First Chimurenga.
This mantle is drenched in the blood of all those dynamited to death as they took refuge in caves and hill fortresses in the land during the liberation wars.
It is drenched in the blood of the thousands who starved to death as a result of the genocidal scorched earth policy of the British.
This mantle is steeped in the blood of all First Chimurenga warriors who died defending their land.
It is dripping the blood of all Second Chimurenga warriors who were tortured, tried and hanged for defending their land and their birth-right as heirs of their ancestral land.
It is dripping the blood of all the masses who were killed for their land, all those who were tortured, tried and hanged for this great gracious land and it is dripping with the blood of all those massacred at Kamungoma in Gutu and elsewhere in Zimbabwe, all those massacred in Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, those butchered at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Mkushi, Freedom and Pasichigare camps.
This is the mantle the CCC are carrying – the mantle of unconscionable thieves and murderers who carried out the bloodiest murders against us because they coveted our land and wealth.
The CCC now kneels before the Western world begging for sanctions, but it is not just about sanctions.
The sanctions are a means to a more sinister mission.
It is about the repossession of the land by the British so that it becomes as before, ‘the land of milk and honey exclusive for whites of the West’.
And the Nelson Chamisa-led CCC is willing to go all the way for a few pieces of silver.
For such to exist among us is a travesty of the most tragic proportions.
It is traitorous treachery that is unfathomable in a land so decorated with such deep heroism.
It is betrayal which cannot be forgiven by a land that has already shed so much of its blood to redeem and defend the heritage of Murenga!
Dr Irene Mahamba is proudly celebrating 10 years writing for The Patriot