WHEN white invaders entered Zimbabwe in 1890, they were armed to the teeth.
They were prepared to kill anyone who stood in their way as they took our land, wealth and labour.
This is why the so-called ‘Pioneer Column’, that band of brigands, was very well armed.
Killing black people was premeditated.
What they planned was an armed invasion, an armed robbery and their weapons were not for defensive purposes, they were for aggression.
During the First Chimurenga, they revealed their utter brutality when they blew up our people who were hiding in caves with dynamite.
Thousands were killed in that most painful and inhuman way.
Their maxim gun, a machine gun which could fire 500 rounds a minute, was a weapon for genocide, pitted against a people with spears.
They pursued genocide and only Musikavanhu stopped them from annihilating our people in their quest to ensure their greed and lust for our land and wealth would not be challenged.
This is how far whites were prepared to go to get everything that is ours.
During the Second Chimurenga, they massacred thousands in Mozambique, Zambia and here at home.
They used bombs with the most terribly painful effect on the human body such as napalm which scorches the body at 1 200 degrees Celsius, causes unconsciousness, asphyxiation, hypothermia, dehydration and also kills from carbon monoxide poisoning and radiant heat.
They not only wanted to kill but they did it in the most excruciating manner.
A survivor of napalm bombing in Vietnam described the effect of napalm on the human body as ‘the most terrible pain you can imagine’.
They poisoned food, medicines and clothing destined for the camps at the rear.
They poisoned water sources here at home; they connived with sell-outs to poison clothing for the comrades and the victims died such agonisingly painful deaths.
The people were burnt in their homes, beaten, killed, imprisoned, tortured and hanged.
They looted cattle, goats and sheep as punishment for working with freedom fighters.
This is the scale of the brutality of the whiteman.
And what did he want? — our land, our minerals as well as other wealth and for this he was prepared to mete out the most horrendously cruel punishment on our people.
This is the same that he wants today.
That is why he is at war with us; creating mayhem in the economic sector.
It is the same war of 1893 or 1896-1898.
This is not fiction.
This is the character of the enemy we are dealing with.
And so what we see unfolding before us – the machinations aimed at creating economic turmoil — should not surprise us, but should remind us of the beast that stalks us.
We should remember the whiteman did not volunteer to relinquish control of our country.
He was compelled at gunpoint and he has never stopped trying to come back by all means devious.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at some stage even planned to invade Zimbabwe, but Thabo Mbeki, the then President of South Africa whom they asked to assist them in this devilish act, declined.
So, raising the prices of this and that, is not the real issue.
It is just a smokescreen.
What agents of regime change want is for someone to move out of the space they covet, the space that would allow them to loot and plunder our wealth as of old. If scorching people with skyrocketing prices fails, they will try something else.
They will even try attacking people physically so that the police can be blamed when they try to restore order.
This is what they did in Libya.
They set their terrorists on the country and when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi tried to control the situation, they said he was murdering his people so they had to intervene and save unarmed civilians he was ‘brutalising’.
So this is a perennial timely reminder.
The whiteman seeks no friendship with us.
He was defeated, but he works day and night to find means of getting back where he was; at the helm of our land and wealth, thriving on what is ours with his kith and kin while we languish in poverty.
This is the condition he wants to restore and he exploits any weak links in our system to achieve his ends, taking back our land, our wealth.
The fact that we do not produce most of the goods we need is our Achilles heel and right now they are riding on that, but they know we are resilient so they still have other irons in the fire.
We should not be surprised.
It is early days yet to 2018 and we haven’t seen anything yet.
The gloves have been removed and we are seeing the claws and the fangs.
The issue is the same one for which the First, the Second and the Third Chimurenga were fought: “Tinoda Zimbabwe neupfumi hwayo hwose,” and for this reason, there is no rest for us.
As long as we stand up to them, they will keep trying everything to dislodge us and install quislings.
This is the game that is being played out right before our eyes.
For our land and wealth, whites are prepared to do anything. Currently, among other strategies, they are using so-called international organisations and NGOs to effect regime change in Zimbabwe.
But all their efforts will be in vain because Mazimbahwe anoda Zimbabwe nehupfumi hwayo hwose!