By Davet Muzwidzwa

FOR a long time now, I have been meeting a lot of Zimbabwean citizens possessed with the Rhodesian demon.
They are African in colour, language and genealogy.
However, when one sees how they groom and behave, it is clear there is no inch of Zimbabweaness in them.
These Afro-Rhodesians hate their African skin, their African hair and their African language.
They take drugs to change their colour and import hair from abroad that flows down the contours of the back down to the hips.
Am I not one of those possessed with the Rhodesian demon? Are you not one of the Afro-Rhodesians?
Naturally, one would look around for true Zimbabweans, true sons and daughters of the soil.
I was blessed indeed to see that there are a lot of those among the living today. Those loaded with the responsibility to pass on the Zimbabweaness to future generations.
I will not bother you with their names, but what they represent.
“You see my brother”, one middle-aged man said to me.
“As you are aware that in Zimbabwe, everyone you meet who is about your age is a brother or a sister, if much older is your father or mother and if much younger is your daughter or son.
“That is how we relate.
“There is no stranger among Zimbabweans.
“You know, when you pass by someone you know or you have not met before, you are obliged to offer your greetings.
“That is very important because when you see someone doing wrong to one, that wrong is to all of us and everyone must attend to the wrong.
“If a thief snatches someone’s pocket, that wrong is to all of us.”
I nodded my head with some confirmation.
“You see, all that was eroded nechirungu chakauya ichi.
“Today one will look aside leaving someone being murdered.
“We are losing our collective approach to individualism brought into this country by Cecil John Rhodes.
“A child belonged to the whole community.
“A wife will be married into a community.
“All members of the community will jealously protect the child and the mother.
“Our collective responsibility was replaced by individualism.
“The effects are that no one is checking the behaviour of individuals.
“We are plagued with vices such as child abuse, domestic violence and rape.
“In a true Zimbabwean setting, you would not be allowed to beat your wife because elder women will say you have beaten them and you will be punished severely.
“(Ukarova mukadzi warova machembere, unotoripa kwashe).
“So my brother this individuali sm imposed on us by Rhodes eroded away collective responsibility the Zimbabwean way.
‘Let us go home, let us go back to the Zimbabwean ways.”
“Zimbabweans are men and women of integrity,” one sister from Mutoko said.
“They co-exist well with their neighbours.
“Zimbabweans are hard workers.
“They are honest and reliable.
“All countries they have gone to, they are highly regarded.
“Zimbabweans have a unique relationship with the soil.
“Even a director of a very big company, finds time to till the land.”
However, the Rhodesian demon taught Zimbabweans to be corrupt, selfish and irresponsible.
Today we hear more about high profile corruption pilferage and other vices. These are taboos in the Zimbabwean arena.
If you remember in the 1990s they went into university and taught our children to urinate into pots of sadza.
They were taught to challenge leaders with disrespect.
Unaware of the Rhodesian demon, our university students converted into wild monsters before helpless elders.
Our own children became looters breaking shops in Harare before our own eyes.
The Rhodesian demon had taken over and we watched the Zimbabweaness in them disappear in no time.
Unfortunately my brother, students will not remain students forever.
Today they are fathers and mothers.
They are in the economy as captains of industry.
They are in public service as our policeman and women, soldiers, nurses, clerks and senior officers.
They are in politics as leaders of political parties.
Some of them became members of parliament and ministers of Government. Everyone saw the Parliament we put in place in 2009.
That Parliament demonstrated to you what a Rhodesian demon is like.
No sane person will plead with other countries to impose sanctions on his or her own country in the process punishing his own people unless he is possessed by Cecil John Rhodes’s spirit.
In this 2009 Government our representatives were begging for whites to come back to the land we had succeeded in recovering.
They were begging for whites to come and take over the economy.
These possessed lawmakers were totally opposed to the indigenisation drive and laws.
Brother, can a normal person refuse to be afforded the opportunity to be owners of the means of production?
The Rhodesian demon is the only force that can cast such a spell on its target. There is no programme for exorcising the Rhodesian demon in them cast in them when they went to university.
We now have multiplier effect of the Rhodesian demon.
They are polluting their subordinates, their own children, their clients and everyone around them.
The Rhodesian demon is contagious.
It possesses everything it passes by.
Let me show you how powerful the Rhodesian demon is.
We have gone 34 four years into our independence.
We have not been able to free our education system from the Rhodesian demon. We continue to pursue a curriculum of hewers of wood and drawers of water. We continue to create job seekers and not job creators.
We all agree that the current curriculum is bad and something must be done about it.
Nothing will ever happen until the Rhodesian demon is exorcised.
Everyone continues to lament how bad our education curriculum is.
However, no one seems to have a clue on what to do about it.
The Rhodesian demon is sitting right on top of the curriculum cabinet and bellowing instructions to any officers of Government to back off and mind personal business.
It has case, the Rhodesian education curriculum is cast in stone in Zimbabwe just as the demon of Cecil John Rhodes is cast in granite at Matombo (Matopos).