IT was never because there was anything wrong with Zimbabweans that they had to suffer so much under British rule, but it was because they had so much that was so precious that they were fought so viciously for.
Their crime was that they were wealthy and others coveted their wealth and used their superior fire power to dispossess them of their wealth and consequently set up a cruel system to torment Africans so they could never regain their land, wealth and power over their own lives, materially and psychologically.
All the laws and government structures that were put up were to justify this daylight robbery; they are theft laws to support the forcible take-over of the land of African people of Zimbabwe.
Thus a people were tormented in order to justify the theft of their wealth, that they should be permanently duped as to the truth of their situation because colonisation is criminal aggression of the cruelest kind.
In Achebe’s words: “Colonisation may indeed be a very complex affair, but one thing is certain, you do not walk in, seize the land, the person, the history of another and then sit back and compose hymns of praise in his honour.
“To do that would amount to calling yourself a bandit; and nobody wants to do that.
“So what do you do?
“You construct very elaborate excuses for your action.
“You say, for instance, that the man you dispossessed is worthless and quite unfit to manage himself or his affairs.
“If there are valuable things like gold or diamonds you are carting away from his territory, you prove that he does not own them in the real sense of the word – that he and they just happened to be lying around the same place when you arrived.”
In such a scenario the colonised never owned the diamonds or gold in the first place, for to say so would be an admission that they are on the wrong side of the law, that they are robbers.
But how can they not own what is on in their land, where they live, which they govern?
This presents no problem to colonialist logic: “If the worse should come to the worst, you may even be prepared to question whether such as he can be, like you, fully human.
“It is only a few steps away from denying the presence of a man standing there before you to questioning his very humanity.” – (Achebe: 2009)
Sometimes the most instructive thing is to listen to ordinary people talking about everyday issues.
The theses of the ordinary people, different from intellectuals, are so simple and to the point.
It was just after this Christmas (2014), it was raining, drizzling beautifully, transforming the national Botanical Gardens into a blissful paradise.
In enjoying and admiring the splendor of the incandescent Botanical Gardens, we were all sweetly reminded of Zimbabwe’s entrancing beauty.
The conversation drifted to the visitors who come from abroad to enjoy our Zimbabwe and it was noted among us that they still come to visit because Zimbabwe is irresistible and of course we underlined that, the country was colonised in the first place because it has all that the foreigner is seeking, wealth and beauty.
On this note we three remained silent, deep in ourselves as it dawned on us that we were fighting the two foreign white women and their baby who had just been commandeering one of the workers to show them which way to bring their vehicle so that their baby would not get wet.
What was strange was that the driveway was clearly marked.
She was actually standing in front of it when she was asking for directions and I, together with the others, could not miss what this was all about.
Without saying anything, we all recognised this was the ugly face of racism, triggered by the recognition that this magnificent Zimbabwe would always belong to Zimbabweans, to the unassuming Africans, who bear such a grand heritage with such grace.
In our gentle Zimbabwean way, we fought quietly as we sometimes do when something is too harshly crass and when we do that, it is always a prelude to a storm breaking out, the proverbial calm before a storm.
Ian Smith and his predecessors had been fooled by our infectious smiles and had sworn ‘his Africans would never hold the gun against him’ until charira Chimurenga.
Racists have never learned their lesson and they never will because it is a state of being that is so completely perverse.
When someone stands in front of the driveway and explains to you which way it goes, then something should ring a bell if you are not beyond redemption. Apparently for the foreign white woman, no bell rang, for she continued to ask for directions about what was right in front of her eyes and we all noted something, racism’s insatiable appetite to demean and humiliate.
After the two white women had gone, we seemingly were peaceful.
We talked about the way we had grown up, dancing in the rains when they came.
We commented on why we never fell sick from this voluntary dance in the rain.
We contrasted this with the modern children who, like whites, are easily blighted by the natural elements.
Surely, we said, this was the result of the lifestyles stemming from contact with whites from the time they forcibly made themselves almost permanent edifices on our landscape.
Suddenly we were seething inside and we attacked everything the ‘just happened’ racism reminded us of.
It reminded us as one brother could not get over, that our women now dress so scantily in worship of whiteness, something shameful in our culture, making it so difficult for us to protect our morals.
At this point we paused, each with her thoughts once again, as a brother who had been the least vocal came in reflectively and said it was tragic if people did not see the situation the way President Robert Mugabe explained it; that everything belonged to us the Africans.
Then he stunned me when he put it so simply: “They came and coveted the land, the minerals and then took them over at gun-point.
“After that the whiteman sat down and wrote down some laws which said, this was now theirs, and any African seen around there would be trespassing and they would be prosecuted and punished according to these laws (sic).”
I could get so clearly the picture of thieves crafting a whole legal system and government to justify and protect a robbery.
It usually does not get clearer than this.
It struck me that the man in the street understands the President so well that he is able to articulate the message so simply and so accurately.
At the end of the afternoon, we had fought the two white foreign women and their baby and concluded that it was the depravity of their culture as well as their covetousness that caused them to take refuge in racism and it was they who were the losers and not us.
They could not control their greed, envy and jealousy for that which we have as ours and therefore took out their pain and frustration on us.
And as the rain petered out, from the silent depths of our souls, we sang: “Simudzai mureza wedu weZimbabwe,” and we knew our flag is eternal.