THE longer perspective shows that the anti-establishment political frenzies following the December 22 1987 Unity Accord of the patriotic front formations of ZANU and ZAPU right up to the launch of the Movement for Democratic Change on September 11 1999 were not unrelated but a paradigmatic design whose trajectory was supposed to spawn a puppet S tate foreign-sponsored to protect exclusive white interests.
Scholars of history should be forgiven for coding meanings into the timings involved.
The British settlers who occupied Mashonaland had arrived at their occupation destination on September 11 1890 and officially launched Rhodesia on September 12 1890.
The dissolution of Rhodesia would be exactly 89 years later, through the Lancaster Conference launched on September 10 1979.
The conference would be a timely initiative to avert the imminent military takeover by the patriotic front formations of ZANU and ZAPU which would have translated to irrecoverable losses for the settlers.
The resultant agreement translated to a de-legitimisation of the liberation struggle. Notwithstanding the supreme price paid to liberate the land, the survivors of the struggle would not have it as the prize of struggle.
They would be constitutionally bound to buy it from those who had committed genocide to gain it.
But, the willing-buyer willing-seller obligation would expire with the associated Constitution in 1990 and relevant constitutional amendments would be made to re-legitimise the liberation struggle.
The International Donors Conference convened to mobilise funds to restore the legitimacy of the liberation struggle through land redistribution would be held from September 9 to 11 1998 but, notwithstanding the good intentions, the stage had already been set for the bid to flop.
It has already been established in earlier instalments that, the Catholic-Coltart conspiracy had, in 1997, ‘broken the silence’ on the post-independence ‘moment of madness’ but remained mum on Catholic Father Beiler’s First Chimurenga recommendation for the massacre of the Shona population above the age of 14. The Catholic Church had also invoked a strange right to silence regarding the burial sites of the First Chimurenga heroes whom Catholic Father Richartz had ordained for execution by another Catholic executioner Patrick Hayden.
A strange right to silence had also been invoked regarding homosexual Cecil John Rhodes’s instruction to kill everything black even under conditions of surrender.
And, most curiously, David Coltart, the Catholic author of ‘Breaking the Silence’, had also ‘mutely’ invoked his own obscene right to ‘silence’ regarding the mineshafts into which he ‘alleged’ he was forced to dump his own black victims of the Rhodesian genocide.
The Selous Scout has also maintained his silence on exactly who, in the Rhodesian mafia chain of command, instructed him to dump bodies of black victims in disused mineshafts.
The launch of the MDC regime-change outfit would be on September 11 1999, exactly one year after the orchestrated failure of the International Donors’ Conference on September 11 1998.
In essence, the launch of the MDC regime-change outfit would be an attempt to re-launch Rhodesia exactly 109 years after it had been initially launched on September 12 1890.
It would also be exactly 20 years after the September 10 1979 launch of the Lancaster House Conference that had only ‘nominally’ diffused the same Rhodesia.
On a more interesting note, September 11 is also written as September 11 or 9/11 which translates to a distress signal in the United States.
In the United States, 911 calls are emergency calls for help, and it turns out that the launch of the MDC massively hand-held by the Rhodesian Mafia (Roy Bennet – treasurer; David Coltart – legal advisor; Eddie Cross – policy chief) was, in essence, a 9/11(1999) white settler-call for help to which the American war criminal, President George Bush, responded with Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) which imposed illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe to force a restoration of the threatened exclusive white interests.
Interestingly, the US ZDERA vindicated Chitepo’s observation that:“If you look at the whole of the economy of Rhodesia, there is a massive attempt to draw the big international capitalists of the West to come and participate in the exploitation because they think by doing this, you then get the support of the big capitalist nations in the world. Therefore, you are able to continue the exploitation. You are even able to get the involvement of big countries. They will be able to send armies because they are ruled by their companies. The companies are the biggest influences in America and in various countries.If, in fact, these companies get threatened by the indigenous people, you will no doubt find that they will send troops to go and save their so-called properties in these areas.”
And it turned out that the ZDERA was penned by the products of the University of Zimbabwe Law Department who included MDC founding secretary-general, Welshman Ncube and MDC spokesperson Learnmore Jongwe, among others.
Ample video footage is available to show how the generational victims of colonial dispossession avidly defended the regime-change travesty.
ZDERA was enacted on December 21 2001 and it turns out that like September 9, 10, 11 and 12 equally important meanings can be read in December 21 and 22, dates for the patriotic front formations.
The ZANLA guerilla attack on Altena Farm in Mount Darwin on December 21 1972 marked the beginning of the second and final phase of the armed liberation struggle for Zimbabwe.
The December 21 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, exactly seven years later, would bring the ceasefire.
The December 22 1987 Unity Accord signed between the patriotic front formations of ZANU and ZAPU, exactly eight years later, would save Zimbabwe from the ‘moment of madness’ that had threatened to tear it apart.
US war criminal Bush’s December 21 2001 signing of the ZDERA into law translated to a brazen breach of the UN convention against interference in the internal affairs of sovereign member-States.
Thirty years earlier, President Richard Nixon, who was then waging an unjust war on Vietnam, had signed the Byrd Amendment into a law that brazenly breached UN sanctions on Ian Smith’s UDI Rhodesia. The Amendment allowed the US to continue to trade with Rhodesia in chrome, nickel and asbestos, among other strategic minerals. The accrued revenue was critical in sustaining Rhodesia’s war effort.
The Byrd Amendment date was November 11 1971 and it was the 6th anniversary of the sanctioned rebellion!
Incidentally, one cannot help but notice an interesting comparison between the MDC generational victims of colonial dispossession who penned ZDERA and the generational victims of US enslavement of black people.
While MDC generational victims of colonial dispossession with knowledge of law penned ZDERA for foreigners to punish fellow generational victims for daring to recover what had been stolen from their ancestors, Afro-American generational victims of slavery refused to fight in Vietnam.
The iconic champion of this resistance was the legendary Mohammed Ali.
His position was that his real enemies were in America and not Vietnam.
And, not even the loss of his World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion title would change his position.
Not even the fact that earlier activists for black civil rights like Malcom X and Martin Luther King had already been murdered for it could change his mind.
In time, the Afro-American Civil Rights Movement would give way to the contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement still protesting State-sponsored gross human rights abuses against black people almost 250 years after the 1776 Declaration of US Independence that constitutionalised the equality of all human beings regardless of race.
Ironically, when Biti and Nelson Chamisa visited America to lobby the US Congress not to lift illegal sanctions against fellow black Zimbabweans for alleged human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, they found the Black Lives Matter Movement on the bloodied streets of America demanding civil rights that were almost 300 years overdue!
One is reminded of the Nyadzonia Massacre by Rhodesian Selous Scouts.
When the Selous Scouts were mopping up Nyadzonia, in other words, finishing off the wounded, a black Selous Scout, Mlambo, had recognised a girl from his home area.
He does not say that he finished her off but he says that he walked away and did not want to think about it. One imagines that, like the Selous Scout Mlambo, Biti and Chamisa probably also recognised the Black Lives Matter activists as fellow black victims originally from Africa. It is needless to mention that the pair chose to proceed with their betrayal of the rest of the race, not wanting to think about the implications.
ZDERA literally sought to relaunch Rhodesia by enforcing a restoration of exclusive white settler-minority interests. The role of the MDC generational victims of colonial dispossession in that process foregrounds a disturbing characteristic of African educational systems.
It foregrounds the question: Whose interests is our educational system designed to serve?
How does the Law Department of a nation’s institution of higher learning produce the leadership of a political party that invites negative neo-colonial interference against the nation?
Universities are institutions of higher learning. We go to university after a minimum of 15 years of being ‘educated’ according to a curriculum, which, for the seriousness of its purpose, must be meticulously designed to serve definite interests. A curriculum is a policy influence that seeks to create a default ideological position to quarantine the unfamiliar until confirmation.
In the foregoing respect, institutions of higher learning come across as national think tanks and, by extension, national defence units – an advance guard that scouts unfamiliar territory and informs executive decision makers. Think tanks research to inform policy and development in the same manner military scouts perform reconnaissance to inform fighting strategy.
In Rhodesia, the University College of Rhodesia created the poisons that were used against the patriotic front formations.
In Rhodesia, the curriculum was designed not to advance black majority interests.
It is pertinent to ask again:Whose interests is our educational system designed to serve?
How does the Law Department of a nation’s institution of higher education produce the leadership of a political party that defends exclusive enemy interests?