SLAVE narratives make interesting reading for this writer in so many ways.
There is the long, winding and sometimes bumpy road to recognition for the enslaved in a country that can never embrace and accommodate the African-American.
When that ‘recognition’ is finally ‘given’ to the slave, yet more challenges emerge.
To the slave/African-American, the world is just one horrible nightmare that his/her can never escape from.
All the doors have been locked no matter how much Du Bois or Booker T. Washington try to unlock them.
There is that reality that Bigger Thomas is trying to come to terms with as depicted in Native Son.
Temporary relief, respite if one prefers to call it that, is given to the people of colour in the form a ‘black’ president who they call Barack Obama.
Obama, our brother from another mother, huffs and puffs but soon buckles under the weight of the heavy chains around his neck.
They call America ‘the land of the brave, the land of the free’.
That is where it all begins and ends.
Waiting at the end of that tunnel is one Donald John Trump, a man whom the world cannot just ignore.
Trump is admirable in many ways.
He does not hesitate to bring to the fore the ‘real America’.
And this an America the Americans have been exporting to the world for many years.
Trump’s America gives the world, especially the black people, rare insights into what the self-proclaimed super power is all about.
It redefines global politics in such a way that we all get to know what ‘big brother’ thinks of us, we the downtrodden of the earth.
This is one lesson that seems to elude some brothers and sisters of ours.
Nelson Chamisa.
Tendai Biti.
Welshman Ncube.
Their minions.
And everyone else who still bizarrely looks up to the ‘nonsense’ that their American handlers continue to spew to the world.
A thought, so serious it cannot be ignored, gripped me as I was having a conversation with one of our ‘intellectuals’ last week.
The academic believes President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s trip last week to the US was just a visit to make up numbers.
I challenged him to defend his malicious assertions.
He said he would respond through an opinion piece.
I am waiting for that.
But while I wait, I have decided to produce mine as follows.
One of the significant outcomes of President Mnangagwa’s New York trip was his interaction with people across the board and the nature of the discussions.
It was about telling the real and true Zimbabwean story which, with due respect to my learned friend, is far detached from him.
To my supposedly learned friend and to a certain grouping of Zimbabweans, our story should be that of strife, suffering and negation of any prospects of growth and development.
In their eyes, we are supposed to be a Zimbabwe that is defined by cholera, potholes and a dead economy, you name it.
We will in future discuss this at length but as the Zimbabwean story unravels, we draw inspiration from that beautiful narrative in order to tell our story, with our own pen and paper and from our own perspective.
We write and tell this story from what we see on the ground and without blinkers.
So, Zimbabwe is charting a new way forward.
It is building something big, something beautiful.
This is what Professor Mthuli Ncube, himself a prime target of our critics, tells us when he announces to the world that an international advisory board is being put in place.
The international advisory board will provide a platform for the adoption of best practices, assess and adopt emerging trends and explore innovations that advance President Mnangagwa’s Vision 2030.
Vision 2030 is President Mnangagwa’s plan to make Zimbabwe a middle-income economy by World Bank standards within 12 years.
Zimbabwe is primarily looking to countries such as China, away from Germany, from France, from the UK and from the US.
“So we are looking at a board in the order of maybe 10 people. This is not an unusual path. Pakistan has announced its international advisory board. It was done by the new Prime Minister Imran Khan. Somalia has just set up a board, Somaliland has a board as well,” Prof Ncube told the media in New York last week.
“Rwanda has a board.
“In Nigeria there used to be a board, but I’m not so sure now.
“But this is common practice, we should get the best minds to assist us.
“We have to reduce the public sector wage bill and deal with subsidies, but we also have to expand the tax base, increase tax collection efficiencies and ensure compliance with the laws.
“There is no reform without pain. We are determined to fix this economy within five years.”
Before the ink has dried on this announcement, brickbats will be thrown at Prof Ncube and President Mnangagwa.
We will have to be patient with this anti-Zimbabwe lot.
We will have to tolerate those who wish ill for our great country.
We will have to contend with their negativity.
We will have to find ways of showing them that Zimbabwe is on the rise.
It takes you and me to do and achieve that.
Let those with ears listen.