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known as imperial capitalism.
Liberalism is only meaningful if what you are being liberal about belongs to you, otherwise one can only be liberal about their misery, as do most post-colonial African countries that pretend to be liberal democracies.

Without full control of our economy, our land and resources, there is nothing meaningful to be democratic or liberal about.
There is no such thing as democracy without ownership. If you do not own and control your country, you cannot be democratic about it.
After the fall of colonial empires Africa needed to consolidate its control over its economic affairs and resources before the continent could start adopting any liberal policies meant to accommodate foreign investment. This hardly ever happened, and what we have seen are African governments wielding political power that is subservient to global economic power and to foreign owned corporate power within the African individual countries.

We must remember that the colony of Rhodesia was essentially a by-product of the South African mining industry, and it must be noted that this commercial umbilical cord has not entirely faced its death even 32 years after the fall of the colony.

Rhodesia was Cecil John Rhodes’ personal project,  a direct result of his adventurism as part of his contribution to his generation of Randlords, a group that believed the interests of mining capitalism in South Africa were intimately connected with British colonial expansionism.

To date the interests of British capitalism in the affairs of our country remain brazenly and blatantly naked to an extent that such interests openly make up the core of Britain’s foreign policy on Zimbabwe, not least the illegal imposition of economic sanctions that has seen the Southern African country isolated from Western markets for at least a decade — all because Britain fails to stomach the reality that white colonial settler famers have been eventually kicked out of the stolen lands they unjustly occupied.

In 1895 Cecil John Rhodes explained in detail the capitalist interest of Britain in the colony of Rhodesia,  our beloved Zimbabwe.
He said the following to journalist W.T. Stead:

“I was employed in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism . . . My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, ie, in order to save the 40 million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and the mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialist.”
We have here a very nationalistic approach preferred brazenly at the expense of weaker peoples — all in order to meet the interests of the inhabitants of Britain. Our country subsequently became the “acquire(d) new lands,” for the settlement of Britain’s “surplus population,” and it provided “new markets” for the goods produced in Britain’s factories, of course using our raw materials.

Like Cecil John Rhodes, President Mugabe today has a “cherished idea” which provides “a solution for the social problem” of Zimbabwe.
In order to save the 13 million inhabitants of Zimbabwe from a bloody civil war President Mugabe, as a nationalist statesman, has had to reclaim colonially stolen land so as to redistribute it to a colonially displaced people.

This he did in 2000 and the land reclamation has resettled over 300 000 families across the country.
As we did not like colonialism, colonial beneficiaries do not like our land reclamation. Western bitterness over our land reforms is mutually acceptable to us, and we fully appreciate its irrelevance.

In the nationalist spirit of avoiding a bloody civil war, President Mugabe’s party has gone a step further to address the contentious issue of ownership of the means production in the country, declaring an equity policy that makes it compulsory for foreign owners of businesses in Zimbabwe to cede 51 percent shares to locals. The policy covers existing foreign owned corporations, especially those in mining, and it also covers new investments.

Rhodes faced resistance from the Afrikaner republics which were later reduced to British colonies after the 1899 Boer War. He also faced a second obstacle in the form of the rivalry from other imperialist forces like the Germans and the Portuguese.

Rhodes overcame both obstacles and later went on to trick King Lobengula into “signing”a mineral concession over the British South Africa Company (BSAC), which led to the occupation of Zimbabwe by a Pioneer Column of white settlers and police in 1890 — in the process mowing down our warriors by machine guns — leading to King Lobengula reportedly dying in hiding.

We rose as an entire country against these ruthless forces in 1896 and this was our First Chimurenga.
We were met with the most ruthless ferocity even from the clergy among the settlers.
A Catholic priest wrote: “It seems to me that the only way of doing anything at all with these natives is to starve them, destroy their lands and kill all that can be killed.”

Of course missionaries were more efficient in subjugating our people than the settlers’ armed forces, and they were cheaper too. Sure to the advice of the priest, our 1896 heroic resistance was gradually crushed — our crops were destroyed, and we were besieged tribe by tribe.
Those of our ancestors who took refuge in the caves had dynamite thrown in after them.

The leaders of this heroic uprising were executed, topping the list being Nehanda Nyakasikana (Ambuya Nehanda)and Sekuru Kaguvi.
The colony of Southern Rhodesia was founded on the blood of our ancestors, and between 1900 and 1933 thirty thousand black mine workers died in colonial mines as they succumbed to brute force that was used against them. The Rhodesian Native Labour Bureau was virtually the enslavement arm of the colonialists, as it was responsible for the forceful recruitment of young black males to work in mines and other sectors of the emerging settler economy.

The settler mining economy was gradually diversified as settler agriculture intensified.
By 1902 three quarters of Zimbabwe’s land had been forcefully taken from the indigenous Zimbabweans.
By 1970, 98 percent of the land suitable for afforestation, fruit growing and intensive beef production was in the hands of white colonial settlers, as did 82 percent of the land suitable for intensive farming.

At least 100 percent of the land unsuitable for any agricultural purpose lay in the hands of the indigenous people, and this egregious injustice was perpetuated up to 20 years after Zimbabwe’s independence.

The basis of the setter economy was mining and agriculture; and this is precisely why the land reclamation policy and the indigenisation of the mining sector must form the basis of what we are voting for in 2013. We need a nationalistic solution that is centred entirely on the interests of Zimbabwean people — not those of inhabitants of other countries.

Simons writing in 1969 had this to say about how land was stolen from indigenous people:
“The moment a man had pegged his farm, he regarded the African villagers on it as his serfs, who would have to work for him. The chief means of mobilising this pool of labour in the first years was the sjambok (the hippo-hide whip), and after 1908 labour agreements which committed tenants to work several months, usually three, for the privilege of remaining on their ancestral land.”

By 1945 Zimbabwe’s manufacturing output was valued at GDP14.1 million, way above the entire European agricultural output which was valued at GDP9.8 million. Zimbabwe’s manufacturing also surpassed Europe’s mining output which was valued at GDP8.1 million.

It is these good old memories that make Britain a very much interested player in Election 2013, hoping against hope that the British-sponsored MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai can smuggle its way into governing Zimbabwe. The idea is to install a puppet regime which can revive the good old days where Britain will once again hold the levers of economic powers in the extensively resourced Zimbabwe. Armed resistance to such a development is a guaranteed outcome.

While blatant colonialism is now unthinkable, clientism is quite contemporary – and through an MDC government Zimbabwe can easily be turned into a client state for imperial Britain.

The only workable road map to a truly democratic Zimbabwe is first and foremost the democratisation of the country’s economic institutions. The nationalistic approach is not only unavoidable but also desirable in this case. We need to reclaim control of the country’s resources before we can start talking of how to liberalise the exploitation of those resources.

Liberalising what is not in one’s control is an act of illusion and we are not about to be illusionary over the national affairs of Zimbabwe.
MDC-T’s Juice policy document is basically a poorly drafted package of illusionary imagination — an indisputable manifestation of hopeless intellectualism that dismally fails to outgrow lecture room fantasies.

Senator Obert Gutu can be easily dismissed as a man chronically failing to outgrow boyhood fantasies of both teenage music and the misleading velvety appeals of liberalism. Sometimes the Senator writes like a perfect clown.

We cannot possibly sacrifice the economic potential of Zimbabwe at the altar of globalisation or the overly emphasised phenomenon of democratisation.

When Britain had 40 million inhabitants facing unemployment and starvation the Queen did not liberalise the economy and neither did she pursue the nobilities of democratisation.

Britain went for imperial expansionism purely based on selfish nationalism. Why should we abandon our own nationalism to please among others the same Britain that dispossessed us of our land in order to acquire land for its own excess inhabitants?

Zimbabwe has had enough of employment created for its people under the colonial legacy that treated us as mere labour inputs in an economy entirely owned and run by Europeans.

MDC-T might have a million reasons for justifying this humiliating economic logic of relying on foreign investment, but Zimbabwe cannot afford a day longer of Britain’s supremacy over the affairs of our nation, and each time Britain postures as the EU’s responsible authority over the affairs of Zimbabwe, every single Zimbabwean national worthy the name must tremble with indignation.

William Hague must not behave like the Minister of Colonial Affairs at the EU, and he clearly does so each time the EU has Zimbabwe on its agenda — much to the cheering from the misguided leadership in the treacherous and quisling MDC.

Obert Gutu thinks our land reclamation policy is “discredited” and he writes that the country’s economic empowerment policy is “mad delirium,” and that the empowering of indigenous Zimbabweans is “misguided” and “doomed to fail”.

The man is a cheap political charlatan that sees nothing beyond his sorry nose — and he believes his hatred for his political rivals in Zanu-PF must always be elevated to a matter of pure logic.

It is incumbent upon every Zimbabwean to use the 2013 election to make sure that the land reform program has its final seal of success, and that the economic empowerment policy is consolidated into the success story it has to be.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.