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Just last week, the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, a little woman called Catriona Laing, tried to convince us that Zimbabwe was better off as a British vassal under the aegis of the so-called Commonwealth. At a discussion forum in Harare on the topic of Zimbabwe’s future, she even predicated the legitimacy of a government that will emerge from the 2018 elections on Zimbabwe’s acceptance of the British, as masters of the Commonwealth, monitoring elections in the country.

The reader may know that Britain and its Commonwealth puppies are not allowed anywhere near observing and monitoring elections here. Not that we miss them. Actually it lessens Zimbabwe’s headaches in having less to do with hostile outside forces that are meant to use proximity to our processes to subvert or contaminate the same.

Britain and the west and their kith and kin have been pursuing regime change in Zimbabwe since the turn of the century and have found expression in the opposition parties that they sponsor in an effort to reverse the gains of anti-colonial struggles by freeing the land and the economy from settler minorities of western imperialist extraction.

The rationale for not inviting the Commonwealth and other western nations is simple enough. Being players themselves, they cannot be trusted to add any more value than they already have through the opposition they sponsor. Besides, with the opposition always on the receiving side because of its rejection by the electorate, the West has a preconceived mission to dismiss the results.

Inviting these hostile western missions means providing them with a legitimate physical ground, a locus standi, to pronounce and read out reports they would have cooked back home even before setting foot on the plane to Harare.

It doesn’t make sense at all does it?
That is why everyone must be saved the pains.
But we may have run ahead of ourselves.

For those of us who may have missed it, at Sapes Trust in Harare, Ms Laing urged Zimbabwe to invite Commonwealth countries “in efforts to ensure more transparency in the conduct of local elections”. As one report stated, she urged Zimbabwe “not to squander the opportunity availed by the 2018 polls to demonstrate change of attitude in the handling of elections”.

“Ultimately, the 2018 election is going to be an absolutely critical moment for Zimbabwe,” she said. “If Zimbabwe wants to return not just economically to the international fold and also politically, it will need those elections to be endorsed by international observers of some kind.

“. . . the Commonwealth could be invited into observing these elections. It’s really up to Zimbabwe to decide; does it want these elections endorsed internationally as a key benchmark in terms of returning into the international community?” It is clear that Ms Laing is suffering from what is referred to as “grandiose delusions”.

We simply know this condition as delusions of grandeur whereby someone suffers “fixed, false belief that one possesses superior qualities such as genius, fame, omnipotence, or wealth”.

In people, we are told, “the individual may have the delusion of having a special relationship with a prominent person . . . Or the person may believe that actually they are a very prominent and important person, in which case the actual person may be regarded as an imposter.”

What is more, grandiose delusions may have the effect of making a person think that “he or she has received a special message from God or another deity”. That is our Catriona Laing, who thinks she has a special message for us from the deity called Great Britain!

My foot!
The British Empire is long gone.
When it was in currency it didn’t have to beg people to belong to it: it forced itself on us, raped, pillaged and subdued us.

Zimbabwe liberated itself from the clutches of British colonialism in 1980.
In reclaiming its land in 2000, Zimbabwe made a further statement.
Yet, one day during this month of December in 2003, Zimbabwe still made an emphatic statement by pulling out of the Commonwealth when this club of Britain and its puppies wanted to stop Zimbabwe from its revolutionary pursuits.

Britain used South Africa, Nigeria and Australia to seek to punish it unduly and unprocedurally.
We remember vividly what President Mugabe said at the time.

“This is it — it’s quits and quits it will be,” he declared.
That was it.
We have never looked back with any nostalgia or hankering after this club.
Many people have actually forgotten about the Commonwealth and in rare occasions they are reminded of its existence by some games which are not anything significant on the world sports calendar, anyway.

The Commonwealth is nothing in terms of great political and economic questions of the day. It is a commonwealth without any wealth, joining or rejoining which does not make much common sense.

It is like it does not exist.
It can only come to the reckoning when it has members that are as notable as Zimbabwe.
That is why the British try to have Zimbabwe back — only employing subterfuge to do so.

It is also critical to point out, dear reader, at this point, that Zimbabwe will gain close to nothing in this wealth-less Commonwealth. At the time of writing, the Chinese President Xi Jingping is in the country doing business with Zimbabwe. China is the second largest economy, globally.

Interestingly, it is a former colony of Britain which ironically the latter now seeks to be close to so that it traps crumbs falling from the great Chinese table. In fact, so desperate is Britain to be on good terms with this Asian giant that one newspaper accused it of “bending over backward to prove its friendship to China”.

The Washington Post in October, when President Xi visited Britain, explained: “The effort is led by Chancellor of the Exchequer — or finance minister — George Osborne, who visited China last month and also envisions a ‘golden relationship’ between the two countries that ‘fosters a golden decade’ for Britain. China will become the economic centre of the globe, and Britain should not just embrace its rise, but become its best partner in the West, he says.

“The gold, of course, is all coming from China, in the form of hoped-for investment in British infrastructure, while London is cast in the role of humble, uncritical supplicant, with talk of human rights expressly banished from the room.”

You have just heard right: all the gold is coming from China! Now given a choice between China and Britain, Zimbabwe would rather go for China, which holds much promise and actually has gold — in the figurative sense. By the way, we have gold, literally, and other precious minerals and other resources that Britain does not have.

In real terms, it is Britain that needs us more than we do. In that vein, Ms Laing should be advised to stop lying to the world that Zimbabwe needs membership to some expired club of former colonies presided over by an expired former imperialist power.