Of The Unchanging Change

The unchanged changing world
Or is it the changing unchanged world?

Nothing stays the same, everything changes but it’s somehow weird how the more things change the more they stay the same.

We fight the same wars over and over again, the battles change names, but the war is still the same.

We want freedom, our rights to have rights, to liberate ourselves, we want equality, to learn from our past, to move on from our past, we want our land back, our votes to count, our elected leaders to deliver the promises they made during campaigns but most of all what we want is peace of mind……

My parents and their parents before them grew up in a world where settlers took our land and they become second class citizens in their own countries. You invite someone to your table, to share a meal and they help themselves to the biggest piece of meat, you tell them to feel at home anyway and they kick you out of your own home.

The war of liberation came, lives were lost, blood was shed and on 18 April 1980 Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.

Reconciliations were made we moved from the past we faced the future. It would have been perfect had the victory been more than in name, yes we got independence but we did not get our land back nor the means of production, and twenty years down the line we still had not. The imperial government that once colonised us refused to honour its promise to help finance the land reforms.

When the 2000 Elections were coming up, the ruling party was losing the support of its war veteran base and the opposition party was gaining ground and asking why almost 20 years later we still did not have control of our means of production. We did not have our land, yet primarily an agro-based economy.

The government started a new land reform and land redistribution act, a new war dubbed “Third Chimurenga: Hondo Yeminda” (war for farms) farms belonging to white farmers were invaded. Settler farmers were forcibly removed, it was a messy business, it was something that needed doing but it could have been handled better but hey we got our land back, right? Maybe………

A government official once made the comment that when we got our land no one ever taught us what to do with it. I guess a country does not come with an instruction manual on how to run it. Our last president had to rest after the coup that was not a coup he probably didn’t pass on his handbook either.

40+ years later, we have our land, we have our independence but it feels like the same battles over and over not all citizens are equal and people’s rights get violated, a cloud of oppression hangs about and we blame sanctions, sanctions are easy to blame, sanctions are enforced by countries that seat on boards of organisations who probably don’t like us much, who grant us our independence with one hand and steal our economic freedom with the other.

….we give them loans they cant afford to pay back, to develop industry they are not skilled to run, and when they cant back, we own them

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) February 9, 2016

• excerpt from Confessions Of An Economic Hitman by John Perkins

Sanctions are convenient to blame because Sanctions will not come and knock at your door in the middle of the night and arrest you for inciting civil disobedience or causing unnecessary alarm and despondency.

Elections are coming up next year and the dream of a Great Zimbabwe once again blossoms as it did in the last elections and the elections before that.

The world changes and everything stays the same…….

~B

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Week 2 Stories of Africa WinterABC