By Mashingaidze Gomo

IT is ex-Rhodesians and their white and Western (and black) sympathisers who are vehemently opposed to Zim-ASSET as a way of growing the Zimbabwean economy as an indigenous economy no longer susceptible to neo-colonial enemy action.
And, this hinges the success of Zim-ASSET on the capacity of the new indigenous owners of the economy to consistently go back into the history of the liberation struggle for inspiration.
And, while many have been quick to say that they are tired of being told that they were liberated through the armed struggle and now want to move on and reconcile with the unforgiving enemy, as well as forge new partnerships with the declining economies of the West and not the emerging economies of the East, the truth of the matter still remains, kuti historical facts are stubborn because they are ‘read-only-memory’.
The history of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle (from the First Chimurenga to date) is unambiguous about who the enemies of black economic empowerment are.
On April 27 1898 the ancestors of the Rhodesians who are today claiming to be champions of the black man’s human rights murdered a black woman, Nehanda, for leading the resistance to the dispossession of black people in order to empower their own white descendants.
‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ became beneficiaries of land tenure that was racially exclusive of black people.
‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ became beneficiaries of forced labour laws that hog-tied black people for exploitation by white people.
They benefited from the labour of black people without commensurate remuneration.
In the instances they paid any wages at all, they paid them slave wages and they did it without any conscience.
‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ looted African livestock and took over all natural resources, mineral, flora and fauna for exclusive exploitation as rights of conquest.
‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ lived in racially exclusive locations, went to racially exclusive schools and enjoyed racially exclusive amenities.
Then, on April 28 1966, exactly 68 years after the murder of Nehanda on April 27 1898, the first shots in the Second Chimurenga to liberate Zimbabwe were fired at Chinhoyi.
All the seven ZANLA guerrillas who took part in the battle lost their lives, and it is again ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ benefitting from the racially exclusive economic set-up in Rhodesia who took up arms and for the next 14 years, committed genocide on black Zimbabweans in a futile defence of their racially exclusive interests.
Then, in 1980, in a rare gesture of magnanimity coming after 90 years of genocidal racist abuse, Comrade Robert Mugabe proffered a hand of reconciliation to ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ but, in retrospect, subsequent racial relations indicate that the gesture of reconciliation was not mutually appreciated.
When the time came to free landless black Zimbabweans from the willing-seller-willing-buyer land tenure requirements of the Lancaster House Constitution, it was again ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who had always benefitted from the still racially exclusive post-colonial economic set-up who vigorously campaigned against the economic empowerment of black people through compulsory acquisition and re-distribution of land.
It was ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who campaigned for illegal sanctions against black Zimbabweans.
It was ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who crafted the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) which illegally interfered with Zimbabwe’s international credit lines.
And, their argument was that the economy which they (Rhodesians), and not black Zimbabweans, owned would collapse.
And, another argument was that the ‘millions’ of landless black workers they were holding in economic hostage on their farms would become jobless.
And, the surreptitious concern was that it would hurt their righteous hearts to see their God-given ‘beasts of burden’ being jobless.
In his racist documentary: Mugabe and the White African the tactless Benjamin Freeth even has the arrogance to say: “If they (black people) do not work for us (white people), whom do they work for?”
And, another racially sadistic case in point (in the same documentary) is the episode in which white farmer Ruth laments that Belinda’s family (black) will have nowhere to go if the farm is taken because generations of the family have laboured on the farm and have all been buried on the farm since the white family (Ruth’s) dispossessed black people of the land in 1901.
And what that means is that after a century of slaving for white people, the black labourers are coming out of it with nothing.
And the Christian, self-righteous and self-proclaimed human rights activist Benjamin Freeth actually sees nothing wrong with that!
And the racist Ruth actually wants the African world to believe that with a conscience deadened by racist convention she can do to her African labourers what God gave generations of her racist family a whole century to do and they succumbed to greed and harvested affluence from the lives of fellow human beings.
And today, in the advent of Zim-ASSET, ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ have re-invented themselves as ‘infallible civil society’ and seek to define the black man’s challenge to their ill-gotten affluence as a violation of legitimate human (property) rights.
And, it is obviously not in their (Rhodesian) racist interests for black Zimbabweans to consistently go back into the history of liberation struggle for inspiration because if they do so, the fear is that they will identify among ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’, people like Eddie Cross, Roy Bennett, Iain Kay, David Coltart and the late apartheid war criminal, Mike Campbell, now survived, and speaking through a foundation directed by his British-born son-in-law, Benjamin Freeth, husband to Laura Campbell.  
And what all this means is that if black Zimbabweans cannot recognise that the Rhodesians who inherited a racially exclusive economy from those who dispossessed and murdered Nehanda, are ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who committed genocide in defence of the travesty; and ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who took reconciliation for granted; and ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who opposed land re-distribution to empower black people; and ‘THE SAME RHODESIANS’ who are vehemently opposed to, and are prophesying doom in the wake of Zim-ASSET, then, we have a problem.
Tine dambudziko!