Who of the two, Zimbabwe and South Africa needs another liberation?
Michael Dingake | Tuesday May 26, 2015 17:30
President Ian Khama, according to media reports, was alleged to have stormed out of the SADC meeting chaired by his boss His Excellency President Robert Mugabe, chairman of SADC, after giving a dressing down to fellow heads of state for trying to make South Africa the employment bureau for Africa. This arose when xenophobia, the spectre haunting South Africa recently cam up for discussion. The Botswana Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation indeed had already cleared the air on that one; but since we are doubting Thomases, we tend to believe unconfirmed juicy bits doing the rounds. The SADC chiefs’ fallout made sensational news waves we were eager to hear the story from the horses mouth.
Uncle Bob dismissed the rumours of friction between him and his deputy with the eloquence only he can master: “Botswana is the headquarters of SADC and we can come here in order to know what is going on or just to visit and acquaint ourselves with the processes. Do we have to mount a labyrinth of splendour in the environment of a state visit? No! My counterpart President Khama was kind enough to provide us with a sumptuous lunch.
“I don’t want to tell you how sumptuous it was, but the fact that our stomachs are full is evidence enough that we were well treated.Khama told me in Harare that he had to leave at 1400 hours. He had told me, but I don’t know where this nonsense of saying he walked out came from. We don’t push each other out at SADC, it is the journalists who push us out,”Uncle Bob thus put rumour to bed.
Having dismissed the petty gossips of the media, Uncle Bob addressed the issue in the minds of the SADC population; the xenophobic attacks in SA, which claimed seven lives recently. It was not the first time xenophobia had raised its ugly head in SA, having broken out there in 2008; its recurrence was a cause for alarm, particularly when there were royal voices sounding like inciters in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province. As xenophobia spread through South Africa the region became tense and government was prompted to mobilise SANDF troops to monitor the situation on the background of shrill noises .
Opinion remains divided on its cause. Unemployed blacks allege foreigners steal their jobs and push them out of business opportunities particularly that some of them trade without licenses. President Zuma on the other hand tends to blame counterparts in the region for not catering for their peopleís employment demands.
Granted that that may be true; should it lead to Africans killing Africans in Africa? During the liberation struggle SA freedom fighters were welcomed with open arms in all African countries where they tarried. Moreover, didn’t Kwame Nkrumah declare that we were all Africans and as long as any part of Africa was not free, Ghana was not free! At his Gaborone press conference, President Robert Mugabe identified another angle in the xenophobia puzzle.
As far as he was concerned, xenophobia experienced in SA recently tells a story of a country that needs another liberation effort. Nelson Mandela, according to uncle Bob, failed to liberate South Africa completely. This can be gleaned from the fact that the land still belongs to the whites, job opportunities also belong to white South Africans and nothing much has changed in South Africa in spite of the 1994 event. Uncle Bob was never a fan of Nelson Mandela, as much as Madiba never thought much of him from the tiffs they had in SADC . Gukuruhandi of course never enamoured uncle Bob to Madiba in as much as it didn’t show him in good light to anybody! Yet Mandela copied uncle Bob in his reconciliation stance! It was Mugabe who preached reconciliation in 1980 long before Mandela in 1994, when Zimbabwe won her independence!
Again, wasn’t it Kwame Nkrumah who said given political power, the rest shall be added? How has Bob’s political power advanced the interests of Zimbabweans since 1980? The two countries acquired the tools (democracy) for forging ahead, improving peoples lives. None of the two countries could attain what they fought and died for a day after independence or a day after their freedom.
By achieving democracy, both countries laid a foundation for their people to move ahead. Of the two, SA seems to be doing better in spite of public protests against public services. SA programme of social grants is the envy of many outsiders. SA has had four presidents in a short space of 20 years; Zimbabwe one, in 35 years ! Can you expect change in the circumstances? In SA, remember Madiba exhorted South Africans to do to the ANC what you did to the Nats (apartheid government)if the ANC does what the Nats did to you! South Africans appear ready to do that. In Zimbabwe? Zimbabwe is Mugabe and Mugabe is Zimbabwe!
At the twilight of his life, what message of hope is Uncle Bob leaving for Zimbabweans? Yes, he used violence to reclaim land from whites. How many benefitted from the act? ZANU top brass and a few other party members. That’s why Zimbabweans are fleeing, swimming across crocodile infested rivers to the unwelcome reception of neighbouring SA. Quite obviously Zimbabwe needs a second liberation not SA. Uncle Bob is nothing but a windbag ,without courage to confess his failure!