By Shephard Majengeta
IT is unfortunate that, for the longest time, blackness has been viewed as a curse, both by blacks and non-blacks.
This view has debilitated the African race, with many up to today continuing to argue that blacks have achieved very little in ancient and contemporary times pertaining to development and general improvement of humanity.
Sadly, this view of blacks being a burden on humanity has made us not just to be seen to be but also to feel inferior and destined to be forever the little brother or sister in the family of nations.
If we are to achieve Vision 2030 of an upper-middle income economy, we need to change our mindset as a people, as a nation.
We need a new frame of mind, a new way of thinking, a paradigm shift.
Firstly, it is important to note that the achievements of ancient Africans have been portrayed as Caucasian or Mongol civilisations.
Never have black people been uncivilised.
It is the black race that has given the world everything it enjoys, everything that has improved life.
For instance, Western scholars have made it their life mission to dismiss the fact that blacks built the Egyptian pyramids, medicine and literature.
It has been conveniently ignored that ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as blacks in paintings and sculptures.
To achieve vision 2030, it will be of huge benefit to do a little reading of our real history.
It will give us not just hope and inspiration but belief and confidence that we can achieve whatever goal we have set for ourselves.
If we care to revisit our history, we will realise that ancient Egyptians painted themselves with woolly hair and had soil-like skin colour.
In Asia, the Naga race which built countless monuments and introduced Buddhist philosophy, (yoga and gongfu, a form of martial arts) are depicted as non-black by Western scholars, even though the descendants of this race remain black today.
All over the world, our ancestors have left their images carved in stone and metal in the form of figurines, sculptures and colossal statues, some of which have been disfigured to obliterate our broad noses and fuller lips.
In western Asia, from Judea to Mesopotamia (Syria and Iraq) and even Persia (Iran), we find that the
inhabitants were black people, no different from the Egyptians of old.
The images of Assyrians and Judeans were no different until the Greco-Romans entered the region about around 400 BC.
While whites attempt to claim that they were the founders of the world’s earliest civilisations, they contradictorily admit that the Greeks were the first European or Western civilisation.
And this makes Western civilisation younger than all the above described civilisations.
The truth is that the world’s level of civilisation went on a continuous decline, to today, after the Greeks and, later on, when the Romans took over.
The people from the West have greatly benefitted from the knowledge of our ancestors while we have regressed.
The white race planted itself in Egypt, Judea, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
However, it should be known by all black people that this non-black presence is recent.
The towers and monuments in those lands predated the arrival of the southern European race by centuries and millenniums.
A reading of history will tell you that the Caucasians who make up the northern European race had been out of the scene and not an entity in the known world except during the Crusades period which began around 1100 CE.
They were Barbarian tribes who lived in caves north of the Caucasus Mountains before moving south to Europe in the 5th Century CE.
Their entrance into the region was detrimental to the
Roman Empire which was plundered and ravaged by the Barbarians.
They destroyed infrastructure, ate the children of their victims and brought illnesses such as the Bubonic plague.
After suffering massive blows from the Barbarian attacks, the Romans went on a scheme to convert them into Catholics.
This they succeeded, particularly in France through King Clovis I who Catholicised his whole nation.
The rest of the Caucasians would follow suit.
It is imperative that we realise that the people we venerate and consider paragons of virtue appropriated our achievements, physically broke our ancestors and conquered us mentally.
Did you know that when the Caucasian race became exposed to black civilisation, sophistication and resources, that is when they first tasted sugar, coffee and spices.
It was the first time they were introduced to daily bathing and divided meal courses.
White people, prior to their encounter with the black race, had been co-living with animals in homes that resembled barns until they learnt new construction skills and hygienic habits from the blacks they encountered.
This period laid the foundation and tone of the envy and consequent racial animosity that exists among whites towards blacks today.
If we read our history, we will definitely change our mindset and way of doing things, economically and socially.
We have everything we need to thrive. Up to today, it is black people, some from Zimbabwe, who are pioneering amazing things, bettering lives.
Until we know who we are, where we have come from and are going and why we are going there, we will have difficulties in achieving Vision 2030.
To achieve or not to achieve is entirely dependent on us.
We need a Zimbabwean mindset which will carry us to the promised land which is already in sight, considering the strides we have already taken.
