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Property rights a venerated euphemism

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ZHT CEO Cde Pritchard Zhou (left) talking to Obert Gwerevende whose homestead was hit by the first gunshots in Chesa in 1973.

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ON Thursday, January 11 1973, the first gunshots in Chesa, Mt Darwin, rang out at Cde Obert ‘Mandizadza’ Gwerevende’s homestead. 

Three weeks earlier, on December 21 1972, the shots signalling the opening of the north-eastern frontier rang out at Alterna Farm. 

Comrade Rex Nhongo, later to become Zimbabwe Defence Forces Commander, General Solomon Mujuru, was in command.

Gerald Hawksworth was a land development officer (LDO) in Gwerevende. 

The two used to have political debates in which Gwerevende would warn Hawksworth not to meddle in affairs of the people of Zimbabwe. 

Gwerevende owned a general dealers’ shop at Nyakasikana, which was superintend by his son-in-law Mutandiro. 

Hawksworth coveted this shop and sought to dispossess the two of their property. 

His opportunity came when Gwerevende’s son-in-law, who ran and stayed at the shop, moved to Gwerevende’ s homestead with his family, leaving the shopkeepers in charge.

With the arrogance, typical of white colonial robbers, Hawksworth thought nothing of dispossessing the two of their shop and installing his lackeys.  

That  was the end of Gwerevende and Mutandiro’s ownership of their shop.

Gwerevende had put his all in building the business and Hawksworth took it, with no qualms.

Gwerevende and Mutandiro learnt of the robbery when freedom fighters who had been using the shop as a gathering point stumbled on Hawksworth’s men. 

When they learnt that the legitimate shopkeepers had been removed by the whiteman, they took Hawksworth’s men to Mozambique so they could not inform on them.

The British came to Zimbabwe and saw a beautiful land endowed with untold riches and decided it had to be theirs; it did not matter the indigenes owned it.

In fact, to them, these were not people; they were part of the flora and fauna. 

The same predator mentality was still virulent in Hawksworth.

He took over the shop and handed it over to a sell-out African to run the day-to-day business affairs.

This was the rule of law in Rhodesia; the law said what the British wanted, the British got.

Yet at the Lancaster House Conference in 1979, where the Rhodesians were discussing terms of surrender with the victorious ZANLA and ZIPRA forces, the whole debate centred around property rights.

The gist of the colonialists’ argument was that, we could not be trusted to respect, honour and protect property rights. 

The same property which they acquired illegally! 

The take-over of our land and all it had was illegal.

The economy and property they sought to protect was built from the sweat and blood of indigenes.

The basis of everything in Rhodesia — the political and socio-economic systems — was all illegal. 

The underlying travesty at Lancaster was that we were told we could only be free, provided we legitimised the initial robbery by the colonialists.

We were tied in knots of so-called legality by authors of illegality.

Which property did they acquire legally?

First, they would have us buy back our land; land which they stole from us and which we were regaining after losing more than 50 000 sons and daughters of the soil in a protracted liberation struggle waged bitterly for 16 years.

It is not that we did not know that it was a travesty that the white farmers should be compensated; whatever they made from those farms was not legally theirs, it was proceeds from land that was not theirs, from labour extorted from Africans.

It is us who needed to be compensated for untold suffering; for all those massacred during the First Chimurenga; all those who were blasted with dynamite as they hid in caves, all those mowed down by the Maxim gun; all those burned to death in their villages; all those starved to death after the whiteman burned down their crops and looted their grain and livestock; all those severely affected by the Loot Committee; all those who were massacred at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Mboroma, Mkushi, Freedom Camp, Kamungoma and many other places.

We need to be compensated for the loss of our land, our herds of cattle and all the material sustenance we would have enjoyed from our land and cattle for 90 years of colonisation.

The British do not know what justice is; it is us who know and understand it.

With self-righteousness and a sense of foolish superiority, on January 11 1973, Hawksworth, acting on a tip-off from some informers, chose to pursue the freedom fighters who were ensconced at the Gwerevende homestead. 

In the ensuing battle, he was captured. Two of his colleagues, Robert Bland and Denis Sanderson, were killed. 

The comrades took Hawksworth to Mozambique as a prisoner of war.

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