The European colonialists dispossessed our forefather of their land through a bloody and barbaric grab which left them poverty stricken and marginalised.
It beggars belief that the formerly dispossessed should now, a century and a few years later buy the same stolen land from those who got it for nothing other than deed of conquest.
This has been the recent development in Zimbabwe where the British Conservative Party sponsored ZANU PF, possibly bent on currying favour with their masters, recently paraded the remnants of our land looters after signing a $3.5 billion cheque to the former farmers in payment for land grabbed without even a penny paid. Whether any bank will honour the cheque presented, only time will tell.
The dastardly act appears to have totally ignored the plight of former farm workers who were thrown into abject poverty by the chaotic land reform. Their plight and suffering carries no value in the treacherous process, they are the non-existent entities who must bear their pain out of the limelight.
On compensation to the white farmers who is funding the exercise?
If it is, as is expected that the huge bill will be from the country fiscus, we have to imagine what $3.5billion could have done to transform the dire conditions under which the people live, one can cite underdevelopment in health, transport, manufacturing, all of which could have been transformational in the collapsed economy of the country.
Instead, the regime, in addition to this act of appeasement seem bent on mortgaging natural resources to the Chinese, thus taking us into another form of colonisation in return for substandard products and services.
If the intention is to have whites to return to utilise the land and their agricultural skills, and the government wants to cover the food production gap, they could lease the land from the government.
They must never be compensated for the land or any development or so called improvement on that land because they used profits of our stolen land to build on it. Why should the Europeans continue to benefit from theft and its proceeds?Â
Peace begins at home.Â
If you have offended your brother first make peace with him before stretching out with a gesture to neighbours. The amazing hypocrisy in the ZANU PF refusal to acknowledge and deal with crimes against ZAPU in the period1982 to 1987 makes mockery of their attempts to appear benevolent and magnanimous in the eyes of their masters in the west.
ZANU PF stole ZAPU properties. The reasons for the act were unsustainable then and never have been other than that, like the original land grab, they had the power of arms to do so.
That’s the saddest part that an organization that claims to have fought white supremacists used their laws to oppress their fellow blacks and still use the same law four decades later to deny the fellow black man right to his properties.
If Mthuli Ncube is to salvage a semblance of decency from the ignominy that has come to define his tenure of office in government he should forthwith deal with the plight of the ZPRA and ZAPU properties that left the owners of those from whom Zanu stole in a much worse situation than the farmers who have now been given the $3.5 billion bounty.
But we know why Zanu is dragging its feet on this; after that grand theft the properties were shared out to the obedient sons and sell-outs as payment for their treachery.
What a huge mockery by ZANU PF regime and what a slap in the face to all who paid the ultimate price fighting for Africa’s self-determination as the oldest stooge of British imperialism continues to bow and take orders from its masters.
The plight of the African child is secondary to appeasing the imperialist master whose colonial banditry descendants are super spoiled while Zimbabweans starve.
Iphithule Maphosa- National Spokesperson