THE United Kingdom Government, on June 23 2016, broke away from the European Union (EU) saying it was going to go it alone.
This action by the UK has since been christened, ‘Brexit’.
When the British officials were asked to clarify what they really meant by going it alone, they said they were going to revive their old ties with various parts of the world.
In short, they said Brexit means the revival of the old British Empire in a new format.
So we must be on our guard.
In this article, we are going to show that the British Empire was a very cruel, heartless beast which should never be allowed to rear its ugly head again, whether under a new name called ‘Brexit’ or whatever, especially here in Zimbabwe.
To show that the British Empire was indeed cruel, we are going to remind our readers of the cruelty which the British meted out to the great First Chimurenga hero, Chingaira Makoni’s children, as well as the imposition of the diabolic Hut Tax in Zimbabwe.
When the First Chimurenga broke out in June 1896, Chingaira Makoni took the British settlers head on, sending them running for dear life from his Rusape area to towns like Umtali (Mutare) and Salisbury (Harare).
He went on to cut communication between Mutare and Harare, after which he ordered all the British settlers to leave his area.
The English settlers who had been thoroughly beaten asked their mother country to send soldiers, which they did, led by one Colonel E.A. Alderson.
That British force with maxim guns and seven pounders was also defeated by Makoni.
Again another British force led by one A. Tulloch went to attack Makoni, but once more, it was defeated and was not able to capture him.
The British then resorted to the use of dynamite, but still, they were not able to dislodge Chingaira from his stronghold at a place called Gwindingwi.
In the end, the British were only able to capture Chingaira by tricking him, lying that at last they were for peace, so they asked to meet and discuss with him the terms of that peace they were proposing.
Thinking that the British Empire builders could be trusted, Chingaira laid down his arms and went to meet them.
Alas, the Brits did not live up to their word.
They killed him by a firing squad as soon as the two sides met.
You can’t trust British Emperors.
Now let us come to how some of Chingaira’s children were maltreated by those Brits.
Two of Chingaira Makoni’s children were abducted by the British soldiers who had just murdered their father.
The boys, about 11 and 12 years old, were given English names.
One got the name ‘Archer’ and another, ‘Paris’.
Now, here are the terrible things those boys endured.
They were turned into slaves, called ‘tea boys’ or ‘garden boys’ of the British soldiers.
They were put under one Harding.
As slaves, they were ordered to bring tea and coffee at the battlefront.
Here they were totally exposed to great danger.
No wonder one day when Paris was bringing tea to Harding during a battle, he was wounded.
Paris had his thigh shattered directly by a bullet.
Infection set in and he died.
The older boy, Archer, still remained with Harding.
Coming to the cruel Hut Tax, it is documented that for many years during the late 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century, Hut Tax was a well-known and accepted feature of British colonial policy in Southern Africa.
Hut Tax was first imposed in Zimbabwe by Ordinance No. 5 of 1894 at a rate of 10 shillings per hut, payable in cash.
Then a decade later, a new Native Tax Ordinance 1904 was enacted and a full tax of one pound on each adult male and 10 shillings on each polygamous wife was imposed.
Provision for the issue of tokens was contained in the corresponding rules and regulations framed under that Ordinance.
Now what is interesting to note is the issue of those tokens.
The Hut Tax tokens issued by the colonial administration in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) were made of brass and varied in size and shape from district to district.
Similarly large tokens were issued for men and small ones for women.
The tokens were also pierced so as to enable them to be strung and worn like identity discs around the neck.
Now here you had the situation where the African was reduced to a dog really. Don’t forget whenever dogs were vaccinated against rabies, metallic tokens were strung around the vaccinated dogs to show they had indeed been vaccinated.
And so the blackmen had to move around with the metallic Hut Tax tokens around their necks.
If they didn’t have any, then they were arrested and jailed.
On top of this, the amount of the tax itself was quite heavy for the ordinary villager.
What was this Hut Tax which resulted in people being reduced to the level of dogs meant to achieve?
Hut Tax obliged many blacks to seek employment in order to meet their tax obligations.
The resultant creation of a labour pool and corresponding migration of job seekers to the towns, farms and mines was considered a desirable consequence of the legislation.
In Southern Rhodesia, the underlying objectives of Hut Tax legislation soon became apparent when, only a year after promulgation, the concession allowing tax to be paid in kind was effectively withdrawn by an official policy of declining grain or stock so as to encourage natives to earn their tax through labour.
And we must not forget that, when the African was employed by the colonial master, he was a mere slave enriching the British Empire.
The cheaply employed Africans ensured our resources were looted easily and sent to Britain.
Besides Hut Tax enriching the British Empire, it had also other sinister motives.
Yes, the humiliation and degradation of the African by forcing him to wear a ‘dog token’ reduced him to the level of an animal easy to control and therefore exploit and in the process, enrich the British Empire.
Now that we know what the Brits are really up to with Brexit, we should be on our guard so that we are not enslaved once again by them using new tricks and that our resources are not looted again by the use of a new form of Hut Tax during the Brexit era.