via Time for Zimbabweans to reflect by InsiderZim.com
Black American comedian Chris Rock says: “When it comes to acquiring a fortune, when it comes to acquiring wealth in the United States of America, different people have gone about it in different ways.
“There is a saying about wealth. There is saying about fortune. And the saying is that behind every great fortune there is a great crime. And there is some truth to that. Some of the richest people, some of the most powerful people in the United States are descendants of drug dealers.
“They call it bootlegging but that’s just the white man’s way of saying drug dealing. They didn’t sell boots. They sold the crack of their day. They killed cops and kids.
“When it’s time for other people to come up and acquire wealth, the rules change. One of the number one rules about acquiring wealth in America is that only the white man can profit from pain.
“If you are black or brown, you can make money in America. You can prosper in America but whatever you decide to do it must be positive because if one person is harmed you will be destroyed….White man makes guns, no problem. Black rapper sings guns, congressional hearing.”
One could be saying the same thing about Zimbabwe. The only difference is that there is no black and white. It is black and black. One is talking the language whites understand and the other, the language some blacks understand- that you took our land, we are taking it back. This is our country. We must own the majority shareholding in every enterprise.
Robert Mugabe won last month’s elections because of his promise to empower the people through indigenisation. People can shout rigging, theft and so on. The truth is that Zimbabweans want to create wealth.
Investors had banked on a Morgan Tsvangirai victory. Tsvangirai was going to open up the economy. Reverse indigenisation. But the people spoke. They want to create their own wealth, rather than to be employed.
Again back to Rock: “Wealth will set us free because it is empowering. It will set us free from poverty because wealth is passed on from generation to generation.”
This is what every Zimbabwean wants, especially the rural Zimbabwean who has never worked for anyone but for himself. Is there anything wrong with that?
Yes. The message that has been drilled into the people for over a century and the one being drilled into people today is that black Zimbabweans cannot create wealth without the help of foreign- read white- investors. The black man needs a white man to prosper, to feed himself, even to free himself.
If that were true, why did the blacks have to fight for freedom while the whites were creating wealth for everyone? And they ruled the country for 100 years?
That kind of reasoning sets us back. We can’t talk about the old days. We can’t even talk about the liberation struggle. That’s history. But we can talk about Mugabe’s 33-years of misrule. We can talk about how Mugabe has destroyed the country in 33 years. We can even lie that Mugabe is Zimbabwe’s first president. We can talk about Gukurahundi. But when it comes to the economy and the true history of Zimbabwe, it starts in 1999.
The very whites who want to invest in Zimbabwe can talk about the Second World War and Adolf Hitler. They can even talk about the First World War. They can even talk about their founding fathers. But Zimbabweans should not talk about the liberation struggle. It’s all in the past.
This is rewriting history to suit someone- a history that does not have white oppressors but just black dictators; a history that does not have black achievers but white rescuers; a history that does not have blacks feeding themselves and even exporting food before the arrival of the white man, but a history that had blacks destroying the country’s economy after getting back their land; a history where the country has been ruled by one man with an iron fist for 33 years; a history where, despite having the highest literacy rate on the continent people cannot even recognise that they have been rigged out of an election; a history where the votes of more than two million people do not reflect the will of the people but someone in Washington, someone in London, someone in Brussels, someone in Canberra, knows their wishes better than the two million.
Former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi said the West was fond of humiliating Africans. And this is exactly what the West is doing now “The Jews are the most persecuted people on earth while the Africans are the most humiliated,” Moi said.
Sadly, to some Africans, it is OK to be humiliated by a white man but not by another black man. If not, why would someone be interested in an investor who is scared of indigenisation when indigenisation is a way to empower the majority? And why would someone think that the country would collapse if the majority are united in one common goal to get the wealth of their country back and use that wealth to empower future generations?
Zimbabwe lost $11.8 billion through illicit financial transfers between 1980 and 2009. This could have paid off the country’s debt, yet someone still has the guts to say foreign investors will rescue the country! Investors are there to make money. They are not interested in the welfare of locals.
Indigenisation is the only way to go.
“Think! It ain’t illegal yet. But they are working on it,” says another black American comedian Eddie Griffin.
COMMENTS
People like this seem to conveniently forget the reality that ordinary Zimbabweans face on a day to day basis directly because of the failure of Zanu PF to bring prosperity to the majority over the years they were in power.Even before the MDC era,they had more than 20 years to deliver,but they didn’t.What is going to change now?Over 90% unemployment,derilict,defunct schools and hospitals(I wonder if the president gets his medical treatment at Parirenyatwa since he loves Zimbabwe so much) ,lengthy periods of no electricity,derelict towns and cities,portholes everywhere,no public transport system to talk about(They ran ZUPCCO into the ground).They seem to concentrate all their energies on castigating Tsvangirai and MDC instead of addressing these very real issues.I’m afraid I’m not convinced that this time around things are going to be any different-People have heard all these empty promises over the years again and again but nothing has changed for the better in Zimbabwe for the ordinary man on the street.Life is hard and about to get harder.And don’t blame the West for it.I think people get a bit carried away by this idea of black empowerment and over-romanticise it,losing sight of the real issues.I salute the ordinary people of Zimbabwe for their resilience in surviving ever harder conditions of life under Zanupf.
CHOKWADI NDECHEKUTI WHAT MR MUGABE stands for is OK with me, its just that they is a lot of corruption within his own people which makes it difficult for me to believe his intentions.
The writer of this article conveniently forgets that black Zimbabweans have suffered worse humiliation at the hands of Mugabe than they ever did under Smith. He is not ashamed to buy maize from the same white farmers thrown off the land. Look at theway evevery state owned company collapsed under incompetent management because Mugabe values party loyalists over technocrats – Air Zim, NRZ, ZUPCO, to name but a few.
Now urban residents practice the bucket system where they relieve themselves in buckets snd dump human worst in mukuvisi river. That is humiliation.
It is humiliating for fathers to fail to feed, clothes and educate their off spring. Indigenisation whose script zeros in on taking over existing companies will not solve the unemployment problem.
The zimbabwean issue is not for comedians, it is for serious people. Politicians are allowed to differ on what they are selling to their voters. I have been trying to figure out what exactly MDC is offering to zimbabweans besides “Mugabe must Go”. Yes indeed MDC is speaking the language of the West but unfortunately in the wrong environment. I will never forgive MDC for inviting sanctions to my poor Zimbabwe. “Murikuti murikushaya hupfu?” says Morgan. “Ehe” says the povo. “Muchashaisisa”, and the same povo ululated. I also remember very well Morgan saying he wanted SA to switch off poor suply to poor Zimbabwe. whose interest is that? The west or Africa?
Munyori please give us a break. 1. People did not vote for Mugabe. 2. Only a few will benefit from that indegenization nonsense policy. 3. the majority of Zimbabweans will continue suffering because of Mugabe’s evil.
Ideally, people would want to create their own wealth and be entrepreneurs. The problem is that NOTHING is being done to date to teach people how to add value to their produce, build their own infrastructure, or even find alternatives to existing methods. This is despite a wealth of information available through libraries, educational facilities, and recently, the Internet. Even in 1980, there were opportunities to teach people these skills. Unfortunately, Zimbabweans, as a people, chose to ignore those as they glossed over their new-found freedom. In their euphoria, they chose to seek their answers from politicians, whom were already busy with pursuing personal interests (and still are).
Now here we are, 30 years down the road. What little agricultural production we have is mostly being exported in raw form for cents (seriously, the Chinese are ripping us off blind with our tobacco), instead of being processed into value-added products that can then be exported for dollars. The lack of critical thinking skills (a product of our so-called brilliant education) reveals itself in the lack of innovation or amongst our people. Whilst the indigenisation campaign and land reform could have been planned with better emphasis on uplifting the people, it has to be noted that people need to be properly trained to utilise the resources. Without the training, farmers are going to continue being ripped off by $5/kg tobacco sales whilst not knowing what to do about the heap of harvested sweet potatoes which will rot shortly due to lack of sales.
Fun fact: Sweet potatoes are a highly underutilised crop which can be used to create a staggering amount of food products.
Hmmm….come to think about it, what is the purpose of having entire ministries in science, technology, education and agriculture, if I can learn more from Googling up simple things from my zhing-zhong phone, and do more to uplift my community than all these ministries combined? If the ministers actually did their jobs, I wouldn’t be mentioning this.
This is absurd. Yes it is a good thing to empower ordinary citizens,but in this case only zanupf big whips are being empowered. On top of that they are not qualified to run whatever businesses they have taken. You can’t run a bank if you know nothing about banking. It need skills. For instance the Chinese will never dare sell Zimbabwe cigarette making machines let alone buy tobbacco so that they make cigarettes themselves and sell them back to Zimbabwe at a higher price.
So please guys give us a break. The people don’t need the government to dictate to them who should we do business with.stop the looting please and work for the people through the people.
Rudadiso, its clear you were not yet born before 1980. If you were born you would never compare Mugabe’s rule to the white oppression. Nzou ye Zimbabwe, dont say people did not vote for Mugabe. Myself my wife my three children my 10 farm workers all voted for Mugabe and the reason is that Morgan was threatening our very livelihood on farming opportunities. The other farmers, their children and their farm workers voted for Mugabe. Add the 600000 farm beneficiaries and their wives, their children and farm workers who voted for Mugabe you start getting the sense.
I did not vote because i was not in Zimbabwe but my wife and daughter voted for ZANU. All the way. Reason being that i was scared that one day we will lose our farm that we have. the farm that we took back from a white man who had stolen it from us (Zimbabweans). Hapana kupusa kungapfuura kufurirwa kuti rambai kutora mafarm… hanzi ndeeZanu. Manje furiranai kudaro. Ini na chiyangwa, W Ncube. Takafiller maforms tikatora ma farms. Uchafa usina chinhu uchingoti MDC.