Opinion / Columnist
Innocent Mpoki, Zimbabweans do not deserve academic insults
2 hrs ago | Views
Whoever read your today's article on Bulawayo24 is wondering on what planet you live on. I realized you live in USA: The hardships Zimbabwean are going through in that hellhole in Zimbabwe, you have no idea. You have fixed narratives about an independent Zimbabwe. Your rhetoric is immersed in a Zimbabwe that is liberated and is free: we must be eternally grateful and at best shup up. According to you, we must submit to the liberators who have plundered the nation, destroyed everything that was structured and well maintained during the colonial times. That is a fact. Do you know how Zimbabweans were taken for a dummy by liberation leaders, only to discover that freedom and independence in Zimbabwe belong to 1% of the whole population?
I was in the struggle in Zambia with my mother: we lived rough, bombings were like rain in Zapu camps: we were consoled, were told it was part of the struggle: we were given the hope that when we gain freedom, we shall live in a country better than the colonial Smith regime in all aspects of our lives for us and our children and their children's children. What mess are we in today because of our liberators? Your article is an academic consumption: the reality on the ground is silent in your article. As a doctorate student in America, you are living large and able to research a topic that will incite academic discourse. However, when you look at the lives of Zimbabweans in a free country endowed with every mineral resource you can think of in the periodic system of chemistry, their lives are hell on earth. Have you ever been home to Zimbabwe of late, Innocent Mpoki?
Your article or your academic research about Zimbabwe is removed from the reality on the ground. You quote the academic professor Mamdani who made extensive research on Zimbabwe. In the same vein please go home and see for yourself if you can be proud of independent Zimbabwe. People yearn for the past "glory" because it gave us a modicum of decent infrastructures: hunger was absent. The basic development that took place during the colonial times was developed using African labour and the nation's resources financed it. There is no money that came from England to develop Rhodesia, and the entire manpower was black workforce. You missed it in your article that the entire development in Rhodesia was possible because of cheap black labour. We are able to demarcate in our discussions what blacks did efficiently and if blacks they fail, we must say they are failing and making comparisons.
The legacy of colonialism remains a stain in our societies you say: what about the legacy of Robert Mugabe who slaughtered 20,000 innocent Matabele people. Can you make a slender equation between Mugabe regime and that of Douglas Smith? The ghost of Mugabe regime haunts us equally, four decades long. We live in the now, in the present, Innocent Mpoki, languishing in foreign lands as if we do not have a home called Zimbabwe. Living in the now, marred by mismanagement about everything you can think of that could make life livable is a horror in the making. It is normal and human to say Ian Smith was better than our black government: a regime without any clue about good functional governance. Should we hallucinate "Amen", it's better to be misgoverned by blacks than to be governed by colonial masters. That is empty rhetoric devoid of any decency and it stinks to high heavens. Your academic input makes even decent people vomit with disgust.
"The colonial nostalgia and amnesia that has seized the minds of some Zimbabweans is not only a damning indictment on our country's education system". Here I quoted you verbatim. Education system you are talking about is now unreachable by the poor in Zimbabwe. This country has regressed to all time low in terms of education you are talking about. There are schools that report 100% failure results not in one school but dozens, countrywide. Zanu PF government misdemeanors will be excused by pushing everything on colonialism. This to me sounds academic than the reality on the ground. No trivialization in our political discourses regarding colonialism or coloniality. We discuss political economics mindful of the situation on the ground, and not on research in a posh American library. When you think inability to deliver good governance to slender 16 million citizens after independence can be the result of vestiges of past colonial regimes, you fail us; it's not so.
"It reflects the unresolved challenges of the Zimbabwean post-colonial state: how to find its place, define its destiny, and articulate its vision". close quote. My reply to this statement is that there was no time to unpack immediately after independence. From day one Mugabe put the nation in a state of war. Mashonaland – Matabeleland war, Gukurahundi. How I wish your article should have been about lack of good leadership the early days of Zimbabwe independence. Even the education you are talking about was a prerogative of the people of Mashonaland and never about the people in Matabeleland and Midlands. Your article is removed of these painful facts but seeks to dwell on academic romance – colonial vestiges. Such academic discourses make good read at evaluation sessions at universities in USA.
I quote your jargon once more: "The question now is how as a country; did we reach a point where some people find it a noble and justifiable cause to glorify colonialism without compunction? I argue that this is a product of Stockholm syndrome and an inferiority complex born out of frustration and delusion". This is pure jargon in the sense of the word. I shudder to think where exactly is this statement is relevant to Zimbabwe. This argument is an insult to the nation of Zimbabwe. I still recall how all peoples were united in the fight for independence in the seventies and finally it was negotiated successfully. Mashonaland jubilated at independence. Very late in the historicity of free Zimbabwe, people realized that as a matter of fact, independence meant removing white colonial rule, replaced black colonial rule: Zanu PF. The much-heated political discourse nationwide today is that nothing has changed significantly in the lives of the general people. Replacing an oppressive white regime with another repressive black government cannot constitute independence for the many but for the ruling elite. Where does Stockholm syndrome come in if we are able to acknowledge this in discussions? What Zanu PF government is doing to us is not different from what Smith regime ruled this country. Ian Smith regime murdered opposition leaders, incarcerated dissenting voices. Zanu Pf mastered Ian Smith's script of murdering and incarcerating even innocent people. Where is my son Itai Dzamara? I want to know what happened to him: dead or alive. It is a black Zanu PF government that devoured him.
In most cases we believe Zanu PF, be it Mugabe or Mnangagwa are worse than what the white regime did to the populations of Zimbabwe. The Gukurahundi, the farm invasions, the Murambatsvina, the election period of 2008 were our darkest historicity in living memory. Some citizens still live with those scars of the past. In your article, these events are silent, but you academically highlight our submission to the hidden glory of colonialism. You quote Mamdani in your article: "Mahmood Mamdani, describes the colonial state in Africa as a "Bifurcated State." It was a state with two orders: one for the white settlers and the other for the African natives". Close the quote. My reply to this statement is: the independent state of Zimbabwe is a state of two orders: one for the thin number of black ruling elite and the other for the majority poor and destitute citizens of all tribal ethnic groups the entire nation. Without inferiority complex, we can articulate this fact.
I will not quote your article further: it is all retch no vomit. The people of Zimbabwe deserve honor and dignity. To insult them at the corridors of higher institutions of learning is wholly uncalled for. I lived the Smith's regime period. I had to leave Rhodesia and continued my secondary education in Zambia; I was never to return home even on holidays because of the bush war. My mother was incarcerated at Chikurubi Prison. Painful facts. To read your article that insults people who suffered during Smith's government and again during the black rule; to say it is insulting, is an underestimate. We write how it was during colonial regime of Ian Smith and how it is today, and we make informed comparisons: this kind of political discourse is normal and healthy. How can such discourses constitute an inferiority complex in us? Academic scholars and researchers can be insensitive in their analysis sometimes. Citizens' daily life is of struggles of putting bread (no butter) on their tables are painful enough.
Ethnic tensions in this region predate colonialism. To push everything to colonialism era as the cause of tribal differences is dishonest. The colonialists used ethnic tensions that already existed, to their advantage. Hence, they managed to colonize us effectively. Dividing and controlling African populations on ethnic grounds was everywhere in Africa, an established fact in the history of colonialization of Africa.
I was in the struggle in Zambia with my mother: we lived rough, bombings were like rain in Zapu camps: we were consoled, were told it was part of the struggle: we were given the hope that when we gain freedom, we shall live in a country better than the colonial Smith regime in all aspects of our lives for us and our children and their children's children. What mess are we in today because of our liberators? Your article is an academic consumption: the reality on the ground is silent in your article. As a doctorate student in America, you are living large and able to research a topic that will incite academic discourse. However, when you look at the lives of Zimbabweans in a free country endowed with every mineral resource you can think of in the periodic system of chemistry, their lives are hell on earth. Have you ever been home to Zimbabwe of late, Innocent Mpoki?
Your article or your academic research about Zimbabwe is removed from the reality on the ground. You quote the academic professor Mamdani who made extensive research on Zimbabwe. In the same vein please go home and see for yourself if you can be proud of independent Zimbabwe. People yearn for the past "glory" because it gave us a modicum of decent infrastructures: hunger was absent. The basic development that took place during the colonial times was developed using African labour and the nation's resources financed it. There is no money that came from England to develop Rhodesia, and the entire manpower was black workforce. You missed it in your article that the entire development in Rhodesia was possible because of cheap black labour. We are able to demarcate in our discussions what blacks did efficiently and if blacks they fail, we must say they are failing and making comparisons.
The legacy of colonialism remains a stain in our societies you say: what about the legacy of Robert Mugabe who slaughtered 20,000 innocent Matabele people. Can you make a slender equation between Mugabe regime and that of Douglas Smith? The ghost of Mugabe regime haunts us equally, four decades long. We live in the now, in the present, Innocent Mpoki, languishing in foreign lands as if we do not have a home called Zimbabwe. Living in the now, marred by mismanagement about everything you can think of that could make life livable is a horror in the making. It is normal and human to say Ian Smith was better than our black government: a regime without any clue about good functional governance. Should we hallucinate "Amen", it's better to be misgoverned by blacks than to be governed by colonial masters. That is empty rhetoric devoid of any decency and it stinks to high heavens. Your academic input makes even decent people vomit with disgust.
"The colonial nostalgia and amnesia that has seized the minds of some Zimbabweans is not only a damning indictment on our country's education system". Here I quoted you verbatim. Education system you are talking about is now unreachable by the poor in Zimbabwe. This country has regressed to all time low in terms of education you are talking about. There are schools that report 100% failure results not in one school but dozens, countrywide. Zanu PF government misdemeanors will be excused by pushing everything on colonialism. This to me sounds academic than the reality on the ground. No trivialization in our political discourses regarding colonialism or coloniality. We discuss political economics mindful of the situation on the ground, and not on research in a posh American library. When you think inability to deliver good governance to slender 16 million citizens after independence can be the result of vestiges of past colonial regimes, you fail us; it's not so.
I quote your jargon once more: "The question now is how as a country; did we reach a point where some people find it a noble and justifiable cause to glorify colonialism without compunction? I argue that this is a product of Stockholm syndrome and an inferiority complex born out of frustration and delusion". This is pure jargon in the sense of the word. I shudder to think where exactly is this statement is relevant to Zimbabwe. This argument is an insult to the nation of Zimbabwe. I still recall how all peoples were united in the fight for independence in the seventies and finally it was negotiated successfully. Mashonaland jubilated at independence. Very late in the historicity of free Zimbabwe, people realized that as a matter of fact, independence meant removing white colonial rule, replaced black colonial rule: Zanu PF. The much-heated political discourse nationwide today is that nothing has changed significantly in the lives of the general people. Replacing an oppressive white regime with another repressive black government cannot constitute independence for the many but for the ruling elite. Where does Stockholm syndrome come in if we are able to acknowledge this in discussions? What Zanu PF government is doing to us is not different from what Smith regime ruled this country. Ian Smith regime murdered opposition leaders, incarcerated dissenting voices. Zanu Pf mastered Ian Smith's script of murdering and incarcerating even innocent people. Where is my son Itai Dzamara? I want to know what happened to him: dead or alive. It is a black Zanu PF government that devoured him.
In most cases we believe Zanu PF, be it Mugabe or Mnangagwa are worse than what the white regime did to the populations of Zimbabwe. The Gukurahundi, the farm invasions, the Murambatsvina, the election period of 2008 were our darkest historicity in living memory. Some citizens still live with those scars of the past. In your article, these events are silent, but you academically highlight our submission to the hidden glory of colonialism. You quote Mamdani in your article: "Mahmood Mamdani, describes the colonial state in Africa as a "Bifurcated State." It was a state with two orders: one for the white settlers and the other for the African natives". Close the quote. My reply to this statement is: the independent state of Zimbabwe is a state of two orders: one for the thin number of black ruling elite and the other for the majority poor and destitute citizens of all tribal ethnic groups the entire nation. Without inferiority complex, we can articulate this fact.
I will not quote your article further: it is all retch no vomit. The people of Zimbabwe deserve honor and dignity. To insult them at the corridors of higher institutions of learning is wholly uncalled for. I lived the Smith's regime period. I had to leave Rhodesia and continued my secondary education in Zambia; I was never to return home even on holidays because of the bush war. My mother was incarcerated at Chikurubi Prison. Painful facts. To read your article that insults people who suffered during Smith's government and again during the black rule; to say it is insulting, is an underestimate. We write how it was during colonial regime of Ian Smith and how it is today, and we make informed comparisons: this kind of political discourse is normal and healthy. How can such discourses constitute an inferiority complex in us? Academic scholars and researchers can be insensitive in their analysis sometimes. Citizens' daily life is of struggles of putting bread (no butter) on their tables are painful enough.
Ethnic tensions in this region predate colonialism. To push everything to colonialism era as the cause of tribal differences is dishonest. The colonialists used ethnic tensions that already existed, to their advantage. Hence, they managed to colonize us effectively. Dividing and controlling African populations on ethnic grounds was everywhere in Africa, an established fact in the history of colonialization of Africa.
Source - Nomazulu Thata
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