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Obi Egbuna Jnr Simunye
While our beautiful planet routinely pays homage to women of the world every March, mainly by highlighting their ingenuity, achievements and challenges, our people by circumstance have been provided a golden opportunity to remind the world that the matrilineal approach to life is inherently African.

What this atmosphere also does is serve as the ultimate reminder that if the rest of planet Earth’s inhabitants decide that ritualistically putting women on a pedestal one month out of an entire year, Africans are historically obligated to put the world on notice that the struggle to stop the dehumanisation of our women and liberating Africa -the Mother of Civiliaation – go hand-in-hand.

Because of a rising tide in the imperialist world aimed at exposing how rape and other forms sexual assault, truly are part of US-EU imperialism’s cultural fabric, all colonised and enslaved people who still are devoutly patriotic to their lands of origin are well within their right to point either to the soil itself or a nearby map and globe and scream the word rape at the top of their lungs.

The great pan-Africanist thinker and frontline warrior, Dr Walter Rodney, tells us in the revolutionary masterpiece “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”: “Many guilty consciences have been created by the slave trade.”

Europeans know that they carried on the slave trade, and Africans are aware that the slave trade would have been impossible if certain Africans did not cooperate with slave ships.

To ease their guilty consciences, Europeans try to throw the major responsibility for the slave trade on to the Africans. One major author on the slave trade (appropriately titled “Sins of Our Fathers”) explained how many white people urged him to state that the trade was the responsibility of African chiefs, and that Europeans merely turned up to buy captives – as though without European demand there would have been captives sitting on the beach by the millions!

From the days of Harriet Ann Jacobs, the author of “Incidents of a Slave Girl”, that was published in 1861, 30 years after the groundbreaking slave rebellion led by a true Christian preacher by the name Nat Turner, to a daughter of Africa born in New York City named Tarana Burke through tireless and selfless labour to the groundswell for what is now recognised as the #Me- TooMovement, African women have always been at the forefront of exposing the fact that rape and sexual abuse are pillars of US-EU imperialist culture.

Our former colonisers and enslavers whose inhumane obsession with the wealth of the world and objectification of females has left behind an endless trail of raped, assaulted and battered women, standing on top of soil that has been raped and plundered to no ends.

Based on this approach, Harvey Firestone, the founder of the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company, whose adventurist exploits eventually led them to Liberia as early as 1926 (12 years before Mr Firestone passed on) is just as much of a rapist as the Hollywood film mogul, Harvey Weinstein.

If land could talk and scream like women while being physically raped, and could survive the experience and be given audience Sister Burke in her office where she serves as the senior director at Girls for Gender Equity.

What if Sister Burke and the #MeTooMovement could go to the African continent, put their ears to the ground and listen to the Congo tell them that due to rape and plunder of that land, gave birth to the cellphones, iPads, iPods and laptops currently in their position?

Are we finally willing to confront the second richest man on Earth, Bill Gates, principal founder of Microsoft, and tell him that all the benevolence and philanthropy in the world does not negate the fact that your fortune comes from the raping and plundering of Mother Africa?

Mother Africa would perhaps continue by reminding Sister Burke that in 1888, two years before the war criminal Cecil John Rhodes and the British South Africa Company colonised Zimbabwe, that white supremacist rapist and plunderer founded De Beers Jewellers whose headquarters are in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Since their slogan is “De Beers the Home of Diamonds”, can it not be said that this is a deliberate mockery and glorification of the outright raping of land?

Mother Africa would go on to tell not only Sister Burke but her high profile counterpart Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano who has used her celebrity status to promote the MeToo concept and movement, that the real life exploits of British rapist and plunderer Frederick Courteney Selous were the inspiration behind Sir H. Rider Hagard creating the fictional character Allan Quatermain.

In 1986, six years after Zimbabwe’s independence, Hollywood debuted a movie titled “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold”.

This shows Ms Milano and her female colleagues in Hollywood that the whole time they were being raped and sexually assaulted behind the scenes by men like Mr Weinstein, Mother Africa’s rape and plunder was being glorified on the big screen.

Back in 1936 the Vienna-born filmmaker, Berthold Viertel, and his British counterpart, Geoffrey Barkas, directed a film still shown on Turmer Classic Movies today titled “Rhodes of Africa”.

Mr Viertel came of age in what is considered the golden era of German film and Mr Barkas was born in 1896, the same year Mbuya Nehanda led a revolt to stop the raping and plundering of Zimbabwe.

It is said Mr Viertel avoided returning to Germany after the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, unfortunately he made a distinction between Mr Hitler and Mr Rhodes.

As Sister Burke learned many years ago when she founded Just Be Inc, rape and sexual abuse cause major trauma that leaves many of its innocent victims permanently debilitated. Since Johannesburg at night is one of the gun violence capitals of the world, it can be argued this is a by-product of the geo-political aftershock of endless years of rape and plunder.

On a human level, gang rape is considered the most brutal and sadistic forms of this barbaric behaviour. Based on those sentiments, US-EU imperialism and the fortune five companies who are given political refuge as group members of the Council of Foreign Relations, are guilty of pouncing on Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America similar to how defenceless women are attacked by cowardly men in parks.

Mother Africa will then sing the praises of the pan-Africanist revolutionary giant and first president of Guinee, Ahmed Seku Ture, to Sister Burke, by informing her that our great brother would not allow the people of Guinee to dig into the ground for the world’s finest bauxite or gold and diamonds of the highest quality, until they had proper ideological training.

This example was followed next door by another one of Mother Africa’s most loyal and obedient sons, Amilcar Cabral, who told his comrades in training until they learnt to cultivate the soil of Guinee Bissau, the land could not to be liberated.

Another crucial aspect of Mother Africa’s fighting spirit is her solidarity and goodwill shown towards others with a similar path and history. We come to tears every time our native American sisters inform us that they see Mother Earth as God, since Earth in their culture is God’s finest creation.

It would be heartwarming to see Sister Burke and her troops travel to Bolivia and listen to their President Evo Morales share the story of how the people Cocalero, farmers of Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, are waging genuine resistance against US-EU imperialism, who under the guise and auspices of the war on drugs plan to contaminate their sacred land.

If Sister Burke and her troops are willing to come to Zimbabwe they can see first-hand that nearly 70 percent of the farming on indigenous soil during the historic land reclamation programme, which after all the rape and plunder Zimbabwe has endured, is truly poetic justice.

This explains why one of the chapters in the 1946 classic written by Dr W. E. B. DuBois was called the “Rape of Africa”, many of our greatest warriors from Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Modibo Keita, Ahmed Ben Bella, Maurice Bishop, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara, were removed from office via bullet or coup.

We know Sister Burke and her troops heard the screaming of Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad, where the soil screamed to the colonisers and enslavers, you are raping me for greed and profit. Hands off African women’s bodies, hands off Mother Africa.

Obi Egbuna Jnr is the US correspondent to The Herald and the External Relations Officer of the Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association (ZICUFA). His email is [email protected]