KNOWLEDGE of history is indispensable for those in the business of law.
It provides the precedents upon which all objective judgment can be premised.
In that regard, any advocacy for anything that disregards historical precedence is made on slippery ground.
I say this in specific reference to Nelson Chamisa and Tendai Biti’s ‘high level’ advocacy meetings with the US State Department, Congress, Global Business figures and US Civil Society.
According to Chamisa, they were not in the US ‘purporting to be representing the Government or the ruling Party … (but, they) were representing all genuine peace-loving, freedom-craving and progressive Zimbabweans’.
He is obviously oblivious to the cold fact that the precedents of US intervention in Iraq and Libya and the terrible state of those countries today cannot inspire any ‘genuine peace-loving, freedom-craving and progressive Zimbabweans’ to applaud their advocacy for US interference in our internal affairs.
This is especially given that ‘genuine peace-loving, freedom-craving and progressive Zimbabweans’ have already set a world-class precedent of a peaceful transfer of power without the loss of life.
Meanwhile, in the US, the Trump administration is beleaguered with allegations of receiving Russian assistance in their election campaign.
Americans do not take kindly to foreign interference in their elections.
The allegations have already claimed the careers of several diplomats.
It is, accordingly, a bold matter of principle that they do not invite Africans neither to observe nor monitor the transparency of their elections.
They do not care what continental Africans think.
In such a case, one would naturally expect Americans to live by the same code of non-interference in the affairs of other nations.
It is needless to say that Chamisa’s timing could not be worse and that it is an insult to the intellect of ‘genuine peace-loving, freedom-craving and progressive Zimbabweans’.
And, if the Black Lives Matter Movement is anything to go by, the Trump administration does not even care what African-Americans think.
The administration does not even need to say it.
The constant lynching of blacks by the police speaks louder than any mouth could ever say it.
There are no British-Americans, Italian-Americans or French-Americans.
African-American is not an identity of reverence.
It is a mark for discrimination.
No other race is as discriminated against as African-Americans.
They went there as slaves four centuries ago and the stigma has determined their fate to date.
It would make more sense for Chamisa and Biti to be in the US in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement than to be there to castigate their own people for peacefully righting a wrong.
Biti is or was once a partner in the Honey and Blackenberg Law Firm and, it is a partnership that imposes irrefutable moral accountability on his political actions.
It is Honey and Blackenberg’s publicity pride that they are the oldest law firm in the land.
The law firm was founded in 1893, a year which those who have studied history must remember as a most terrible time for indigenous people, especially those in Matabeleland.
It is the time the Ndebele Kingdom was destroyed by British settlers purportedly to protect Shona people from the scourge of Ndebele raids.
The British settlers had themselves invaded Mashonaland in 1890 and were in the process of consolidating the robbery of the people they were purporting to protect.
It is the time King Lobengula was run out of Bulawayo and never seen again.
In the following five years, outstanding leaders of the resistance to British occupation in Mashonaland (Nehanda, Kaguvi, Chingaira, Chinengundu) were murdered to facilitate dispossession that has benefitted descendants of British settlers to this day.
The case in point is that if the Honey and Blackenberg law firm was founded in 1893, the main law business of the day would have been conveyancing with respect to the stolen land.
In that respect, it should be safe to surmise that the firm may have been specifically founded as a fraud vehicle for legitimising the dispossession of black people.
What this means is that while contemporary partners in the law firm cannot be held responsible for its possible criminal foundations, the indigenous ones, can be trusted to know (from the company history) the dirty details and, out of loyalty to blood which is thicker than water, be relied upon to furnish Zimbabweans with the hard evidence of how it was done.
And, even if they decide to keep it to themselves, it is knowledge that, by its very nature, should still inexorably impose grave moral restrictions on the political actions of the later day indigenous partners.
A reasonable human being purporting to fight for universal human rights cannot know the horrific details of dispossession of one’s ancestors and then proceed to oppose or restrict acts of re-possession that empower the victim’s descendants.
It is difficult to understand Chamisa and Biti.
It is difficult to know what they want.
For two decades, they have threatened former president Robert Mugabe with violent removal.
Their leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, did not mince his threat of violence to the then president Mugabe: “If you don’t want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently!”
And now, at a time when Zimbabweans are celebrating and being celebrated across the world for a peaceful removal of one the pair have always wanted removed (albeit, violently), Biti and Chamisa are not among those celebrating.
They are not even accepting any promise of equally peaceful, free and fair elections by the new administration.
For them, the only acceptable guarantee of peace must come from the Americans who destroyed Iraq and Libya on the pretext of giving them democracy.
They want Americans to threaten the new administration with the same violence and destruction they brought upon Iraqis and Libyans.
This is the irrefutable long and short of what Biti and Chamisa are saying.
What the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) did is being called the ushering in of a new era.
A press statement issued by the war veterans long before the dispensation acknowledged their role in the creation of the situation that almost gave birth to a state capture.
It must have taken bravery and a lot of soul search and remorse to do so but, it is undoubtedly the greatest declaration ever made to save this nation.
But, it also came across as a challenge for everybody to show their clean hands.
It is a challenge that still awaits those who invited sanctions upon the innocent majority to also come clean.
It is a challenge that still awaits the Rhodesian settlers who benefitted from the exclusion of black people to acknowledge that any demand for compensation even for improvements on the stolen land is historically unjustifiable.
Above all, war veterans’ opening up is also a challenge that still awaits an explanation as to why the fortunes of the belligerent MDC leadership ironically grew under sanctions.
It is the time they moved from the ghetto constituencies like Kuwadzana they represented to enjoy exclusive privilege in the leafy northern suburbs.
It is the time they travelled in first class chartered planes.
It is the time they acquired bullet proof luxury cars exclusively meant to protect individual lives from possible harm.
It is the time they went on ocean cruises on luxury yachts in the company of beauty pageants.
It is the time they splashed US$300 000 settlements for impregnating women.
And, in all that time, the constituencies they purported to represent were groaning under sanctions purportedly targeting the leadership of the ZANU PF Government.
Surely, the question must be asked kuti: Was their own operation an Animal Farm parallel arrogating to themselves the very same excesses they had set out to stem?
Is it fair for Biti and Chamisa to invite foreigners to hold our new hope hostage until their own selfish interests are met?
Is it fair for them to seek foreign guarantors of a peace that has already been secured without foreign aid?
Is it fair?