President Mugabe defines the national Question

By Tichaona Zindoga

Lately, academic and commentator Dr Tafataona Mahoso has been decrying the fact that Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular were increasingly and tragically relying on benchmarks set in America and Europe in the fields of judiciary, politics, media, economy, among others.

The sad thing about borrowing these robes, he argued, was that they were unsustainable and had failed in their home countries with tragic consequences such as the recent global financial crisis or tsunami, which proclaimed to be the worst in around a century.

He cites the phone hacking scandal involving media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World publication as the latest crisis born of the unsustainable Western standards and benchmarks.

Even sadder, he noted, was that Western countries were trying to foist these same failed policies in developing countries like Zimbabwe through the media and the western sponsored NGOs.

However, save for proffering the concept of ubuntu as the basis and linchpin of home-made benchmarks, the academic is yet to pronounce the benchmarks that Zimbabwe and Africa have to adopt and what ideals should constitute the same.

Yet something happened during the just-ended Heroes holiday that no doubt tallies with what Dr Mahoso probably had in mind.

Before President Mugabe made his keynote address to mark this year’s Heroes Day at the National Heroes Acre monument, a minister of religion, Roman Catholic priest Fidelis Mukonori read a passage from the Bible in which Moses was being promised plenitude for him and future generations.

But there was one condition: that Moses stuck with the Law and Truth.

Presumably, many people were left groping for the significance of this passage, which the priest read at length and could only cap with the Lord’s Prayer.

But President Mugabe, alluding to the reading, gave a meaning to this passage and defined Zimbabwe’s own Ideal and Truth, which explains why he has been and is the revolutionary that he is and one that the West hates with a passion.

He said Zimbabwe would have the plenitude that Moses was promised by God if there was the recognition of “our principles and forthright ideals that the country ours”.

He said: “You heard from the Bible that Moses was promised by God that if you are upright and in Truth even the enemy will be defeated because you will be in Truth.

“As for you,” he told the thousands gathered, “even there is suffering and death, the enemy (meaning the West) will not take the country back. But you should stand by the Truth and not be misled by the enemy, his words or money.

“Remain by the Truth; and the Truth. The Truth is what we fought in this country. The Truth of this country is that the country is ours. The Truth is that the fruits of this country are ours. The truth that the soil that gives the fruits is ours; the soil that gives us wealth is ours.

“This is the Truth that we fight for: the Reality, the Truth of the issue.

“That is the National Question that we fought for and it is that what is continuously being fought for with you as one and united. There should be no disunity and if you break away you go away you would have deserted the Truth and go to the Lie. Remain on the Truth that the country is yours...”

It is no doubt that by explicitly pointing out the National Question, President Mugabe put into proper context the history, the present and the future of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is defined by its people and God-given resources and the people as relating, indeed owning, the God-given resources.

The liberation war, dating back to the 1893 Umvukela, was over land and Zimbabwean people’s sovereignty as exercised over that land.

It is the Truth and the benchmark that the people of Zimbabwe have set for themselves.

Suffice to say, since at least 1890, the West has been at war with the people of Zimbabwe, as with the rest of the Afrian continent, over because the British wanted to negate the Truth of the people’s ownership of their God-given resources.

This war with Zimbabwe subsists to this day.

Need it be pointed out that it has been established that the reason for the current standoff between Zimbabwe and Britain, along with its allies and kith and kin in the West has been over the issue of land?

And has the world not seen Britain employing all kind of tactics to defeat Zimbabwe and steal her land?

This is where the issue of benchmarks comes into play.

Against a background of the well grounded Truth that Zimbabweans should be in control of their destiny by owning their resources, the West has employed various players and instituted to have the world and Zimbabwe believe that the fundamental question in Zimbabwe is about democracy.

Ironically, the same forces that preach democracy today are the ones that fought against democracy yesterday with the colonial master Britain fighting tooth and nail to deny Zimbabweans majority rule, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, universal suffrage, among other benchmarks.

The West is sponsoring all manner of activities and personalities to undo the gains of the liberation struggle, chiefly the land.

This is done in the name of demoracy promotion with the aptly-named Movement for Democratic Change parties being the chief agency for the envisaged new benchmarks.

In contempt of the values ande benchmarks wrought in the continuum of fighting against an interfering West, some of the “democracy fighters” have deserated national institutions and personalities like the National Heroes Acre and heros.

The so-called security sector reform, for example, which dovetails into the broader institutional reform that the West envisages in Zimbabwe, seeks to purge the country’s eurity setor of “hardliners” who have stood steadfast against the machinations of the West.

Some have gone public with their pro-Zimbabwe stance against hostile interference from the West saying they won’t salute anybody who does not have liberation was credentials.

The meaning of this is that the liberation war is a benchmark of national interest.

Anyone who did not fight the war, just 31 years on, where it was possible to, could well serve to defeat the national interest.

As indeed does MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai through his embracing, and benefit from, Western agenda to undo the gains of the liberation struggle.

The “independent” media in Zimbabwe is all but undoing the gains of the liberation struggle by seeking to defeat not only the revolutionary Zanu-PF and President Mugabe but also such programmes as the land reform and the current indigenisation and economic empowerment drive.

And by the standards that the West sets by founding these media and or oiling them with what Professor Jonathan Moyo calls dirty brown envelopes they should.

The same for the judiciary: a judiciary that seeks to consolidate the gains of the liberation struggle is considered bad by the West while that which seeks to defeat the same, like the ill-fated Sadc Tribunal, is hailed.

Unfortunately, the West seeks to disenfranchise and disempower the majority as only a few individuals and companies they own benefit and this usually backfires spectacularly like the global financial tsunami that was triggered by few individuals fiddling with markets in America.

This calls for the upholding of Zimbabwe’s own benchmarks that benefit the majority of the people of this country.

This is the fundamental Truth and the National Question that President Mugabe defined.