|
Dear Friends,
Twenty years ago Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The South African President de Klerk had already laid the groundwork in his landmark speech a week earlier for the unbanning of the ANC and the release of all political prisoners. The free and fair elections that followed four years later were remarkable for the absence of violence and the spirit of genuine co-operation between the races. It was a truly historic moment when Nelson Mandela was installed as South Africa’s first black President of a free South Africa. Apartheid was dead or that’s what South Africa and the world thought.
Thirty years ago, after a long and bitter war of liberation from colonial rule, Robert Gabriel Mugabe became the first black Prime Minister of the independent Republic of Zimbabwe. It was also a joyous and historic moment. The future was bright; a ‘rainbow nation’ had been born. The politics of race were over, or so we hoped. It was not until Mugabe and Zanu PF’s own power base began to fail that we started to hear the ugly doctrine of racism again. Whites, we were told, were the enemy within – and white landowners were the obvious first target of the attack. In the name of ‘righting colonial injustices’- but in reality in a desperate attempt to distribute patronage to his own supporters - Robert Mugabe began the violent land seizures. Aided and abetted by war veterans in return for the huge payouts they had received and with the help of the notorious Youth Militia, Mugabe’s ‘new War veterans’ as he named them, the Third Chimurenga began. The hate speech and vitriol against whites was stepped up on every possible occasion, from national events to village funerals. Whites, said Robert Mugabe, were not Zimbabweans, they were no better than settlers. So much for the reconciliation he had preached at Independence: “If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you are my friend.”
Some two years ago, while Zanu PF still had a majority in Parliament, the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill was passed. Last week, without consulting its MDC partners, Zanu PF quietly sneaked the law into action. ‘Indigenous’ is defined as “any person who prior to 1980 was disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the grounds of race” Clearly, by that definition, only black Zimbabweans could be counted as ‘indigenous’ – nothing about Asians or bi-racial Zimbabweans who are also an integral part of the population. Under this patently discriminatory legislation any business worth $500.000 or more must declare the racial origins of its directors. Failure to do so will result in a penalty of two years in prison.
Seventy years ago, the Jews in Nazi Germany and across Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear a yellow star, the Star of David, as proof of identity. Jewish businesses were daubed with the yellow star and Jews were herded into ghettos for ultimate transportation to the death camps. Robert Mugabe has no death camps that we know of - unless you count the stinking prison cells in his gaols - but his clear intention is to get rid of the whites. He is too politically astute to expel them outright as Idi Amin did with the Asians in Uganda, but there is no doubt that Mugabe’s intention is to make life as unbearable as possible for the remaining 20.000 whites. Unwelcome in the land of their birth, that 20.000 will diminish even further as whites depart, leaving behind the graves of their ancestors over three generations. Then perhaps Mugabe will be satisfied, when there are no white faces to be seen in ‘his’ country. With nearly all the farms taken, Mugabe is in desperate need of more spoils to use for purposes of patronage. Now it is the turn of the businesses.
What is most revealing in the response to this Indigenisation law by the business community is the total lack of moral indignation. Perhaps they are leaving that to the churches in their Sunday sermons? Businessmen and economists have commented angrily about how damaging this law will be for investment opportunities in Zimbabwe but they say nothing about the injustice against the white minority. From all the comments I have read, even from the MDC, I find not one word of condemnation for the sheer immorality of this law. Does the silence indicate that black Zimbabweans believe whites deserve to be punished in this way for their colour – or is it revenge for the sins of the past? And what of the whites themselves, are they so brow-beaten by the farm invasions that they say nothing in the face of yet another depredation of their property rights?
Having to declare the racial origins of the directors of companies is tantamount to making people wear a yellow star, but as I wrote ten years ago when the land invasions began: “White Africans don’t need a yellow star/ for you to know just who they are/ They don’t need that badge of shame/ for you to know just who to blame/ for what they did one hundred years ago and more…But that was then – this is now. Shall we live forever in the shadow of the past?”
Apartheid did not die with the release of Nelson Mandela, it is alive and well in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH. aka Pauline Henson author of Case Closed published in Zimbabwe by Mambo Press, Going Home and Countdown, political detective stories set in Zimbabwe and available from lulu.com
|