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Craving for Smith, a Second Rhodesia

THOSE who have read big book know what Spinoza saw clearly as the problem which political philosophy could not crack , a problem which Wilhelm Reich rhetorically restated in the following question: “Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?” For several days now, we have been subjected to some sterile online debate which, except for what it reveals of part of the national psyche, would not have merited anyone’s attention at all, least of all mine.

Led by well-known vocal but never-voting Triple C teaser activists, we have been subjected to some inane but aggressive messaging seeking to convince us that our Independence is no good, in fact shouldn’t have supplanted white settler Rhodesia.

God grant us a Second Smith and UDI!

Those behind this treacherous Twitter campaign have been out to convince us Ian Smith and his racist settler Rhodesian regime were so superlatively good that all we should do is decapitate all veterans of the Struggle, all post-colonial Independence leadership, President Mnangagwa especially, and liquidate the current political order from our Liberation Struggle for happy Rhodesia and good old Smithie.

They went further to urge us to pray and plead with a mistaken Almighty so he grants Ian Douglas Smith a second life to declare and run a second Unilateral Declaration of Independence, UDI! Ian Smith, we are told, was a better nationalist and better leader who knew how to develop the country; white settler Rhodesia was a happy haven where all ate well, with no one slaughtered or sent into exile! Besides, he ran a growing economy under sanctions!

 So many unanswered questions

Then you ask: so which nationalism was Ian Smith better at which discriminated blacks found worth admiring? You again ask: so who slaughtered thousands at Chimoio, Mkushi, Nyadzonia, Freedom Camp and many other external bases, not to mention the over 100 000 blacks killed inside the country?

You draw their attention in vain to the countless bottlenecks placed in the way of blacks to smother their life chances and opportunities. You ask: what infrastructure was put to service the African underdog stuck in infertile and overcrowded Lupane, Gokwe, Beitbridge or Buhera, to mention but a few places?

You ask, whose but for a small, select white, privileged community did Ian Smith build a strong Economy? Above all, you ask which sanctions did America slap white Rhodesia with, but to buy its chrome and fortify its racist defences through covert money and murderous mercenaries? Whose infrastructure and economy did he build so well, and for which catchment caste of beneficiaries?

The response takes the form of a brag that the Rhodesian dollar was one-on-one with the US dollar whose economy Rhodesia traded with, all against UN sanctions. Or takes the form of thousands of brickbats spiced with biting expletives.

 Triple C’s ideological teaser cows and bulls

Tellingly, all these Triple C ideological teaser bulls and cows — there are two particularly super-aggressive cows in the herd – were born after Independence. They never saw Ian Smith in real life, or tasted his wrathful and devilish racial reign. All they know and see are lovely Smith’s Kodak moments, which look blindingly handsome to their eyes.

They even recite when Smith’s wife was born; when she conceived; what day she delivered; when she got cancer and, mournfully, when she died. In the case of Ian, they, in their wish and desire, get him to die here at his Gwenoro Farm in Shurugwi! That’s how better informed they are on this their hero-couple!

When swines trample on national heritage

Tellingly, too, these Smith punters all got educated to levels which their little, warped brains could go, in Independent Zimbabwe they now so love to deride.

The few times they are home, they ply beautiful roads done after Independence, visit parents on newly resettled lands, admire good water bodies built after Independence, and join their families in once whites-only suburbs their fathers would never have dreamt of going to except as nannies and garden-boys!

They forget under Ian Smith, they would have been trapped in rural idiocy, or rarely when lucky enough to get passes, holed up in filthy, overcrowded Rhodesian hostels which their Triple C neither repairs nor maintains in spite of collecting millions by way of rates.

Above all, they were able to strike it out in foreign lands, including in advanced white societies, on the strength of skills Independent Zimbabwe afforded them. One can’t say with certainty if their anti-nation, anti-Independence and racial self-hate has anything to do with their current placement, whether in time, circumstance or geography. But the fact is, they are a solid, vocal but cankered part of the national psyche we can neither ignore, disown or wish away.

Too little, too weak, too late

Sensing this was public political communication gone disastrously bad, Triple C’s Secretary General, Chalton Hwende — himself another post-Independence kid — was forced to intervene in the hope of distancing Triple C from its confirmed Rhodesian pedigree.

But that was too little too late.

The debate had run for several days and to utter, quiescent silence from all in Triple C, including its heavies.

Who would be blamed for believing those vocal propaganda teasers were on Party ideological and communication assignment?

That they spoke and expressed Triple C’s ideological sub-conscious?

And so it was. For a while, most of us who knew and survived under Ian Smith and his atrociously genocidal system, for a while kept quiet hoping the Triple C leadership would call their waywardly a-historical goons to order, so this appalling anti-nation, anti-black, anti-Independence diatribe and abomination would be stopped. Didn’t we wait forever?

 Angry darts from East Africa

But Professor Jonathan Moyo could not repress his horror, preferring to verbalise it viciously.

“Ian Douglas Smith’s apologists and supporters are barbarians!” he despatched a searing dart of unmitigated anger loaded from East Africa. Nor was he done. He added: “It’s one thing to condemn Zanu-PF’s leadership for its failures and atrocities; and another thing to gratuitously glorify Ian Smith, UDI and colonialism….”

It was only then that Hwende was drawn out, and lamely sought to distance Triple C from this spited encomium and pean to Ian Smith and his UDI Rhodesia.

 One hell of Triple C’s Freudian slip

What are we to make of all this? Well, clearly that this was one hell of a political Freudian slip by a party which, for purposes of electability, fawned proximity to the Liberation ethos.

Now we know and are both a lot wiser and decidedly alarmed. Both by history and succession, Triple C is an efflux of resurgent UDI Rhodesia angry at losing its coveted status as a landed gentry, both in situ and absentee.

Tsvangirai could not hide this from public view, especially after that iconic image of him receiving endorsement and funding from rich farmers in Mutorashanga. That connection between Rhodesia’s white landed gentry obtruded even in the aforementioned tweet-driven beatification of Ian Smith and Rhodesia: the post-colonial Independence ethos had ruined the lovely Rhodesian pound/dollar because of its disastrous Land Reform Programme, the teasing tweets would not hesitate to say it, right in our face!

Resurgent Rhodesia through our own children

Second, the movement-in-exile of Rhodesians Worldwide who have been selling their genocidal war through several interviews on YouTube with Rhodesian ex-servicemen, have a hand in shaping this whole communication for and through Triple C’s diaspora constituency of which they are an integral part.

That movement continues to fund Chamisa and Biti’s jaunts, as well as all programmes for Triple C abroad.

They are also behind the diaspora vote debate which Triple C has been pushing for ahead of 2023, and which our Speaker of Parliament fatally endorsed for reasons best known to him.

What we saw by way of this false debate was but the tip of an huge white iceberg controlled remotely by resurgent UDI.

The goal was to fly the kite or, in ordinary motor mechanic parlance, to dip the stick in order to see if there is enough traction for back-to-Rhodesia politics ahead of 2023. The best actors for such probing attacks are mavericks to allow for maximum deniability in the event the experiment backfires. This it did, and hence Hwende’s belated, perfunctory denial.

When we all pay for national ideological poverty

Thirdly and fatally, Zimbabwe is paying dearly for the opposition’s ideological poverty we have always raised. Unable to gather enough thoughts to provide an alternative vision to Zanu-PF rule, all the opposition can do is to hanker after white Rhodesia which founded them and which parents of its leadership served variously.

In any case they stand beholden to their paymaster, namely the embittered Rhodesian landed gentry who, at critical times and against desperate anger, divest themselves of all pretences.

Zimbabwe, too, is paying dearly for Zanu-PF’s limited success in reproducing itself in every successive generation after 1980 or soon before.

As a ruling class, its ideas are failing to be the ruling ideas in the Marxian sense.

Spinoza’s unanswered question

Fourth and lastly, having failed to raise a leader of stature, the opposition has resorted to scavenging for and rifling graves for symbolic cadavers for meaning. Ian Smith is one such.

It is normal for a movement bereft of any edifiable vision or figure behind whom to rally, to trawl into a dead past, and among the long dead and departed for vision, inspiration and leadership. What Triple C supporters did and said was compensatory. It suggests some kind of stasis and atrophy in a part of our National Political Society.

That condemns all of us, across the political divide. The heritage being trashed is ours, and relates to a vital founding process of our Nation.

The persons trashing it are our children we raised poorly politically speaking. Which begs lots of questions, among them Spinoza’s: Why do men and women crave for their servitude as stubbornly and as doggedly as if it were their salvation? Food for human thought; mine is animal kingdom where answers comes from braying and mating.

Hark, the mare brays for attention. Adieu.