Page 15 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 16

Re-Education

ery (colonial law) and the African re-instituting black Zimbabwean
colonial dispossession that followed property rights as close as was prac-
this law. Through this custom, the tical to the pre-colonial order.
western world treats non-Europe- Over night, this man who had been
ans as chattel that is not entitled to knighted by the queen to appease
property rights. him not to take land, became colo-
nial capitalism’s worst boogeyman
Mugabe delegitimized this racist and for emancipating ‘savages’ by rein-
immoral order, as a result, today stating precolonial land tenure and
South Africans and Namibians are not serving the imperial queen.
discussing land expropriation with-
out compensation. 4. Education
Tanzania’s Magufuli was raising tax- To advance his vision of emancipat-
es on mining companies and Zam- ing his people, Mugabe and Zanu
bia is reviewing its decision to give PF put education as the foundation
Rutendo Bereza Matinyarare:
white settlers land at the expense of of delivering total liberation. They
Born in Zimbabwe but he lives in their citizens’ right to land. understood from the experiences
South Africa. of the first African countries to be
3. Mugabe Rejected Discrimina- liberated, that African countries did
He studied marketing and project tion not have colonies and they wouldn’t
management, but now works as a From the onset, Mugabe refused to receive a Martial Plan or colonial
full time Afrikan social engineer. His recognize European title to stolen reparations to lift themselves up. So,
life’s creed is captured in his words: property or human chattel, hence he the black mind was the only means
“As a man I seek to die having ful- served ten years in prison for sedi-
filled my destiny to humanity, by which the final leg of mental,
not having consumed much.” tion between 1964 and 1974. economic and spiritual liberation
He can be reached at iamrutendo@ would be achieved.
gmail.com On release from prison, he immedi-
ately proceeded to direct the libera- • Taking over a country with a
tion struggle from Mozambique. literacy rate well below 30%, barely
At the Lancaster House Conference, 177 secondary schools of which
inheritance and property rights of he took up an obdurate position to 60% were white-only, five of them
internally displaced and dispossessed make land restitution and “one man preparing non-white students (black,
Zimbabweans. one vote” prerequisites for ending colored and Indian) for university-
the war. and less than 1000 black graduates
2. Reinstating Black Rights To in 1980. Robert Mugabe and his
Property After independence, as a gesture of team embarked on the miracle of
Through these policies, he set a reconciliation, he honored paying building the best black education
precedence that humanity starts for the return of stolen land in for- system the world had ever seen, on
with people (including previously eign currency on a 50/50 split com- a shoestring budget. In the process,
oppressed peoples) assuming their mitment with Britain. And when the lifting Zimbabwe’s literacy from
social, cultural and economic rights Blair government abrogated Britain’s below 30% at independence to 89%
to sovereignty, property, control of international obligations emanat- in just 20yrs.
their national resources, self deter- ing from this agreement, with the
mination and not just the right to complicity of other western govern- To put the magnitude of his grand
vote. ments, he didn’t hesitate to set aside achievement into perspective: the
the breached agreement, sequestrate literacy rate of African Americans
Rights previously denied black the stolen land from white settlers after 240 years of emancipation, in
peoples by slavery, colonialism and without compensation, to return it the biggest economy on earth, cur-
neo-colonialism, to the extent that to the landless peasants who had rently stands at 68%. A far cry from
prevailing international legal cus- suffered colonial displacement and the 91% that Mugabe delivered in a
toms, adjudicate property rights dispossession for generations. ‘third world’ Zimbabwe.
based only on the prescriptions With this, he fulfilled the aims of
of the 1453 Doctrine Of Discov- the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, • Underpinning this phenomenal

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