By Mashingaidze Gomo

RECENT overtures by the white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) and regime change Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to partner the ZANU PF government in fighting the very same sanctions they unilaterally designed together with the naivety with which the overtures were received in certain indigenous quarters can be looked at from yet another very critical perspective.
The audacity of the CFU and the NGOs to even expect a positive response comes across as a brazen insult to African intellect and the gullibility exhibited by some of us irrefutably confirms a fundamental African weakness that we, Africans, have tragically chosen not to acknowledge.
They confirm Africa’s refusal to record, read and learn from her own tragic historical experience.
And, in the case of Zimbabwe, they confirm a tragic inconsistency in the scholarship which we so proudly celebrate.
One feels that even as we proudly showcase and celebrate the literacy excellence, the investment seems to have been made for its own sake and not to address, in functional terms, the knowledge gaps that are critical to our own development. There seems to be no awareness that if we do not record, read and learn from our own historical experiences, no one will sincerely do it for us.
There seems to be no appreciation that those who write any history write it in their own interests and those who offer to write other people’s historical experiences do so informed not only by their own historical experiences, but most importantly by their desire to identify and exploit the historic weaknesses of the client subject. And, those who offer solutions to other people’s problems do so to serve their own interests.
In the heated debates initiated by the CFU and NGO proposals, I asked a self-proclaimed prayer warrior completely taken (hook, line and sinker) by the Pauline pretensions of the racists, if he read anything else besides the Bible and his emphatic position was that his Bible was ‘his everything’.
It was history, language, science and everything.
He refused to accept that if we are all children of an all-loving God who created us in his own image, then Zimbabweans created and existing in the image of that God could not be subordinate to the Jewish image of the same God.
But, I could not convince him.
He preferred to know the Jewish exodus from Egypt more than he wanted to know about the freedom fighters’ journey from Mozambique and Zambia to Zimbabwe. He didn’t want to know the travesty that happened at Fort Salisbury on September 12 1890.
He seemed to want to know Paul’s Epistle to the Romans more than the Rudd Concession which the British used to steal his birthright.
The prayer warrior’s stance was: “Zveropa regamba kwete!
“Tinoda ropa regwayana!”
And, he looked forward more to a new heaven, a new earth and a new Jerusalem instead of a new world order in which all nations are equal, and a new Zimbabwe in which black people own their own economy with a new Harare that is the hub of regional commerce.
There was no awareness (in the prayer warrior) that the history of Israel is not the history of Zimbabwe.
There was no awareness that history only makes sense as a hierarchy of experience beginning with the personal experience of an individual born in a specific place, expanding right up to the experience of a nation groaning under illegal sanctions in a racist uni-polar world order; an individual being born in colonial Rhodesia kuUmtali, growing up under the tyranny of a British Native Commissioner, dropping out of school at Grade Seven because the system needs to harvest his life for the exclusive benefit of white settlers, then deciding to join armed liberation struggle to correct the evil.
There was no awareness (in the prayer warrior) that history always gravitates into patterns that turn prophecy into a science anyone can study and practise with distinction.
There was no appreciation that if African scholars take the potential of history seriously, the future African prophet shall not be a Bible-toting man of the cloth whose pride is knowing nothing else but the history of Israel.
He shall (in one person) be a scientist and a patriot who celebrates self-knowledge through the forensic study of his own Zimbabwean history.
He shall be a scholar who shall use the patterns of history to prophesy and redress national problems.
He shall be a policy maker empowered by patterns of history not only to recognise a tragedy repeating itself, but to take corrective measures before the tragedy takes its toll on his constituency.
The task to interpret the CFU and NGO overtures therefore falls squarely on the shoulders of the African scholars who must research and inform Government policy makers.
It is scholars who must research and interpret new phenomena for their own people.
It is Zimbabwean scholars who are better placed to question the judgment of Zimbabwe outside the global historical context in which the same people who condemn violence in Zimbabwe are the very same ones who condone it in Libya; and, the very same people who condemn Iran’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction are the very same ones who stock Israel’s very real arsenal and support the clear intentions to use the same against Iran.  
It is Zimbabwean scholars who must research African solutions to Zimbabwean problems and, in interpreting the CFU and NGO overtures, the following are the irrefutable patterns of world history without which Zimbabwean scholarship cannot be functional:
l The Western nations that enslaved black people are the very same ones that purported to champion the abolition of the same slavery.
The history they wrote is loud on the slave masters (Abraham Lincoln and William Wilberforce) who decided to oppose the trade after they had benefitted from it, and it is silent on the slaves who were relentless in resisting the crime against humanity.
l The same Western nations that purported to champion the abolition of slavery are the same ones that proceeded to colonise Africa and enslave the African in his own homeland.
l The same Western nations that enslaved Africans and then purported to champion abolition of the same slavery while colonising Africa to enslave the African in his own homeland are the same nations that crafted the United Nations  Human Rights Charter purporting to recognise the equality of all men while running apartheid white minority governments in Africa.
l The same Western nations that crafted the United Nations Human Rights Charter purporting to recognise the equality of all men while running apartheid white minority governments in Africa are the same nations against which Africans had to wage bloodied armed struggles to access the inalienable rights.
l The same Western nations that ran apartheid white minority governments in Africa and mass-murdered Africans are the same nations now claiming to champion democracy and human rights for the Africans who survived their colonial tyranny.
l In Zimbabwe, the very same white person (Eddie Cross), who supervised the resettlement of black people on barren lands to make way for his white kith and kin settlers is the very same white person now claiming to champion his black victim’s rights.
l The very same white criminals (David Coltart, Roy Bennett, Iain Kay, Mike Campbell) who defended white minority rule by illegal force of arms are the very same white people now claiming to champion black majority rule.
l The very same CFU and NGOs that championed the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy are the very same ones now seeking to be the champions of its resuscitation.
These are the patterns that should inform Zimbabwean reaction to the CFU and regime-change NGOs proposals.