Opinion / Columnist
Smith Debate is a Stroke of Genius
25 Jun 2022 at 09:04hrs |
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We
have Lisah Ncube (Dutchess of Matebeleland) to thank for initiating the
Smith was better than Mnangagwa debate. I don't know whether she
planned it or not, but the results are damn good.
There are at least three results.
One,
it has upended the most important narrative abused by Mnangagwa,
Charamba, Mutsvangwa and their ilk: that they liberated us. Liberated us
from what? Into what? What's there to show for it? If Smith was
supposedly worse than ZANU PF because he killed black people simply
because they were black, what about Ndebele people who were killed by
Mnangagwa simply because they were Ndebele? Or are we to agree with
Mnangagwa that he killed them because Ndebele people (including the
Ndebele unborn babies who were ripped by bayonets from their mothers'
wombs) were destabilizing Zimbabwe?
How
can this regime argue against the brilliant argument that Smith never
killed his own people, and they are busy brutalizing and killing their
own people? While they could attain university degrees in five-star
prisons under Smith, today Mnangagwa and his friends abuse arrests and
prosecutions to put honorable parliamentarians like Job Sikhala and
Godfrey Sithole in kafiramberi detention simply because they criticize
the regime's corrupt rule.
And
facts speak for themselves that Smith specifically, not colonialism or
settler rule in general, killed less black people than Mnangagwa
specifically, if we consider both "leaders" using a combination of
deaths under them in prisons, by the gun, by torture, by abductions, by
poisoning, by mass starvation, by the destruction of people's means to
live, by malnutrition, by what should have been preventable diseases or
medical situations including childbirth, by lack of health care, etc.
Today
we mourn Moreblessing Ali, killed in the butcher fashion that Mnangagwa
has become associated with since he was in Mozambique. We mourn many
others too. Which white woman was ever treated by Smith in the way
Moreblessing has been treated? Show us one.
If
you look at.livelihoods, while the evidence is there for all yo see
that Smith built factories, organized import substitution under the
weight of REAL sanctions, and black people had a decent standard of
living, Mnangagwa acts like an idiot achizhinya daily while.signing
away our resources for trinkets from the Chinese, displacing black
people from their land, poisoning our rivers and wells, taking all our
natural resources in exchange for silly little things (as was being done
under white colonialism), and allowing Chinese people to flog and spit
on black workers. Kagame would never allow that.
Mnangagwa
personally steals taxpayers' money for himself, his many children and
his girlfriends and wife. Smith never stole a single cent from the
fiscus. Prove us wrong on this.
Smith
made Rhodesia a bread basket and in Rhodesia black people were able to
send their children to schools that as black people we can't afford to
send our kids to today under ZANU? Given the dip tanks, agricultural
extension workers (madhumeni), master farmers and other things that
Smith had that disappeared under ZANU, are black people today not being
forced to work more for nothing under harsh conditions than they were in
Smith's time? Smith was better by far.
So,
introducing this debate was a masterstroke because these are the
arguments we shouldn't be afraid to make. Why allow ourselves kubatwa
kumeso?
The second
result of the debate is that it outed some people that were pretending
to be who they are not. Jonathan Moyo crept out of the closet to
blatantly twerk for Mnangagwa, selling his academic skills as he cooks
up new ways to stop Chamisa and CCC. Jonathan is saying to Mnangagwa,
pick me, pick me, and I will come and deal with the typhoon that is CCC
by crafting a law and come up with and promote a narrative that says
without structures they cannot participate in elections. Without
denouncing Lisah Ncube by name they cannot be registered as a political
party. Without standing at the corner of Samora and Julius Nyerere
streets and shouting that Mnangagwa is far better than Smith they cannot
be allowed to contest elections in Zimbabwe.
While
Jonathan himself is hiding in Kenya because he knows Mnangagwa and
Chiwenga kill, having experienced Mnangagwa's vindictive hand that
brought tears to all right-thinking Zimbabweans when that hand stretched
as far as Cape Town, today the same Jonathan desperately tried to spin
the Smith debate: invents 'glorification of Smith" when no one except
Jonathan himself has glorified Smith (we have said Smith was better than
Mnangagwa and we will say so muchida musingadi). And he has desperately
tried to spin Rhodes into the picture. Let him glorify Rhodes. Tina we
are talking specifically about Smith and Mnangagwa and we are saying
overwhelmingly that Smith was better than Mnangagwa. Period.
The
third result is that the debate has exposed the lack of ideological
clarity in people like Hwende, who is increasingly a liability to the
charismatic and capable Nelson Chamisa. When CCC supporters are killed
at 45 degrees, and they see and hear Hwende saying that's all okay
because brutality by a black leader on black people is better than if it
was by a white leader, it does not encourage young people to sacrifice
for a free Zimbabwe.
Indeed
it has been weird. I have wondered whether Hwende's misunderstanding
of the two simple arguments being made in the Smith-Mnangagwa debate,
that Smith managed the economy better than Mnangagwa and that he never
killed his own people, are difficult for Hwende to comprehend. Is this a
real misunderstanding, like, does he actually not get it, or is it a
reflection of his intellectual level, or is it a reflection of the level
of ideological and analytical clarity or lack of it in CCC?
Thank
you Lisah Ncube for coming up with this simple master stroke that has
clarified so many things about the political consciousness of our
country. We move a simple motion in this debate: Smith, born in Shurugwi
and living a simple life and rising to become Prime Minister of his
country of birth, was way better than Mnangagwa, by any measure. Dear
Mnangagwa and your varakashi: prove otherwise.
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Source - Simon Peter Chamisa
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