ONE of the problems that is afflicting black Zimbabweans today is the colonial mentality.
The colonial mentality is a terrible disease of the mind mostly found among black Zimbabweans.
Here the victim suffers from a terrible inferiority complex in relation to the white man.
The poor sufferer of this disease always takes the white man, everyone from the West, as the paragon of excellence, while on the other hand the same black sufferer looks down upon himself and all blacks as inferior beings capable of doing only ordinary things – nothing really to write home about.
Furthermore, the black sufferer always looks to the white man to take the lead in everything because he is superior in farming, science, industry, commerce, education, language, culture manners or etiquette, books, jokes, mining, everything.
Now how did the black man acquire this dreadful disease?
Surely he did not acquire it through sexual contact with the white man like HIV and AIDS?
I would like to show that this terrible disease was introduced into the head of the black man by the various practices and regulations which past racist governments passed in this country.
These evil pieces of legislation and practices were then watered, manured, nursed and cultivated by colonial policemen, civil servants, politicians, churchmen, business people etc. until they grew into this monster we are grappling with today. Below we look at a few of the policies, practices and laws which had a big influence in the growing of the colonial mentality in the head of black Zimbabweans.
We shall start with a policy statement that was made by one of the longest serving Prime Ministers of Southern Rhodesia, Godfrey Huggins.
This is what he said on March 30 1938 about the black man.
“In his own area the black man must be able to attain to any social or industrial position of which he is capable excepting only ‘at the very top’”, he said.
“Thus though the native may become his own lawyer, doctor, builder, journalist or priest the senior ‘administrator’ must be white.
“The two races will thus be able to develop side by side under ‘white supervision’. “In European areas the African will be welcomed as a ‘labourer’; he will exist only as an ‘assistant’ to and not as a competitor with the white.”
And this man was Rhodesia’s prime minister for 24 years?
And for these 24 years the Africans were poisoned by their prime minister being taught that they were always to be led by the white man as your ‘senior administrative officer’, ‘supervisor’, and it didn’t matter if they were doctors or lawyers, they were always to work as the white man’s ‘assistant’, or ‘labourer’.
It should therefore not surprise us when the African slowly became infected with the colonial mentality Disease.
In 1951 the colonial government of Rhodesia passed the Law called the ‘Land Husbandry Act’.
This law led to the depletion of African herds of cattle, forced removal of Africans from their villages and many critics say violated all African cultural practices and values quite fundamentally.
Here is for example the arrogance with which the African was told to completely abandon his culture under this law.
“There is no place for sacred shrines and graves, spirits did not speak through mediums.
“Land had an economic, but not a spiritual value.
“Cattle were raised for the abattoir not for the social act of giving dowry for a wife.”
And this law left the African homeless, landless and cultureless.
And so the African had no choice, but to learn the ways of the white man by working for him and dropping his culture completely.
This law cultivated the growing of the colonial mentality in the African heads to perfection.
In the end all what the African would do when he saw the white man was to say “hello baas”, even if the white guy was a nutcase.
When the colonial government had finished with the black man in the rural areas, he decided to turn the African into a slave to work for him for ‘mahala’, on the farms, mines and towns.
And so he enacted a law called the Compulsory Labour Act of 1943 – the Chibharo Law.
Under the above law, Africans worked from six to six for nothing for the white man.
They were reduced to the same level as horses, oxen and donkeys which the white man used without paying a salary.
On top of this, the black man was beaten the same way oxen and donkeys were beaten by sjamboks.
This kind of treatment made the African think the white man was God.
And when the black man joined the white man in the towns, he was dumped in slums, barred from entering posh areas and generally told his place was to be inferior to the white man in every way and so the colonial mentality grew and grew to monstrous levels.
How then should we get rid of the colonial mentality from our people?
First and foremost, black people should be reminded time and again that the liberation war defeated the white man.
He is gone.
Second, the black man must be told that the white man will never come back to do good things for him in Zimbabwe.
The white man never did good things for the black man in the past, why should he come back and do good things this time around?
The cry for the white man we hear day and night from some of our fellow men is a complete waste of time and tears.
The black man is at the centre in Zimbabwe.
It is about time we all realise this fact and move on to Zimbabwe’s prosperity.