APART from his exceptional prowess in the ring, Muhammad Ali, who died last Friday, shall be remembered for his unwavering opposition to the racism that has always infested the US.
This is especially so in former colonies which are struggling to free minds subjected to years of carefully strategised mental conditioning, where blacks were systematically led to accept the superiority of whites.
And Zimbabwe is no exception.
The racism that Ali experienced in America made him realise the extent to which whites tried to build an impression they were superior to blacks.
Just like in Rhodesia, blacks were brainwashed through education, religion and entertainment to believe that everything white is good.
This included Jesus and angels.
Ali observes: “Even Tarzan, the king of the jungle in black Africa, he is white.”
The racism against blacks Ali battled in America should be a useful reminder of our own situation in Zimbabwe, as a former British colony.
A few examples from Ali’s experiences will serve as a useful guide in helping us rid of this inferiority complex.
At 18, after winning an Olympic gold medal for America in Rome, Ali was barred from a whites-only restaurant back home.
In disgust he threw the medal into a river.
But then that’s the nature of racists.
They use you as a means to an end.
Look at Iraq and Libya to today.
The Iraqis and Libyans celebrated the demise of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadaffi and looked upon the West as saviours.
Chaos is now reigning supreme in these countries, but the West is only concentrating on exploiting the oil fields.
The dripping blood is now none of their concern
Even here in Zimbabwe, we might be fooled into believing that the West are genuine friends when they dish out cash to encourage organisations that want to effect regime change.
Once that happens and they get free access to the natural resources, that’s the end of the friendship.
The bloodshed and hardships that may follow are irrelevant to them, just as is happening in Iraq and Libya today.
Ali was originally called Cassius Clay, but because of his dislike of racism, he abandoned it as a ‘slave name’ which his parents had inherited from slave masters.
But unlike Ali, Zimbabweans seem to take pride in colonial names if we are to go by the names of some schools, roads, hotels and a host of other residential locations.
First names like Kennedy and various British monarchs are monotonously familiar.
Why shouldn’t we be proud of names that resonate with our indigenous identity?
Ali refused to be inducted into the American army.
He found no justification in fighting ‘brown people’ in Vietnam on behalf of American white slave masters who treated him like a dog.
After all, even if he joined the war, he would just be considered another American on the warfront, a government issue (GI), a statistic irrespective of his beliefs.
During the so-called world wars, Rhodesian blacks who helped the British to defeat Hitler were rewarded with watches or ties.
On the other hand, their white counterparts were given large tracts of land.
That’s racism at play, which Ali would not tolerate.
The rampant racism in America radicalised Ali.
That is why he became a member of the Nation of Islam which called for separate black development as opposed to the inclusive approach advocated by civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King.
That is why in Zimbabwe we eventually opted for guns to liberate ourselves as opposed to talks with the white colonial regime with a promise of majority rule in the unforeseeable future.
Although Ali is gone, we can still refer to his experiences in our endeavour to decolonise ourselves mentally.