"Blacks are incapable of self rule" white supremacists said: that is set to change!

“Blacks are incapable of governing themselves!” said George. That hurt so bad, I felt like he had stubbed me. And for years I felt like I was bleeding all over again each time I remember George’s words. His words have haunted me all these last 35 years; until a week ago, I rationalised to myself what he meant.

George and me were in a group of eight students on a week long camping trip in Chimanimani Mountains in Eastern Zimbabwe, Rhodesia then, just before the country’s independence in 1980. This was a mixed race trip, a novelty given that whites hardly interacted with blacks at any level other than the master – servant.

George was one of the white students and I was one of the black students. In racially divided Rhodesia the whites were the privileged class, they had everything. Blacks were more like third class citizens, exploited and denied any say in the governance of the country. The race issue was bound to come up during the camping trip for two reasons. Firstly, the chasm difference between the two races came to the fore each time the two races were brought together. And the second reason was the whites were losing the civil war and therefore everyone was talking of the changes round the corner.

The white supremacists had always demonised blacks to justify their continued repression and abuse since the slave days. No white person had ever said these things to my face but aware these things were being said. I was hurt by what George said because I liked him and he had dared said it to my face; I reasoned. The truth is; George’s words touched a raw nerve – deep down I feared that he might be right.

By the late 1970s many African countries had gained their independence only for chaos to reign supreme. Our camp was a few kilometres from the Mozambique boarder; a country that went straight from a war to end colonial rule into an equally bloody civil war pitting blacks against their fellow blacks with the defenceless civilians caught in the middle.

In Rhodesia the blacks looked forward to the end of white colonial oppression and at the same they were fearful of the country going down the same ruinous path taken by so many other independent African countries.

It did not take long for Mugabe to prove George right and confirm our worst fears. Today, after thirty years of Mugabe dictatorial rule with the national economy in total melt down, with tens of thousands murdered by the regime to establish and maintain its de facto one-party dictatorship and the rest routinely denied their basic human rights and freedoms there can be no doubt that self-governing under Mugabe was a total failure.

The white supremacists would have us believe that blacks have a low IQ and thus are incapable of self government. Nonsense!

People like Mugabe understood well enough the injustice of white colonial oppression. They are rightly regarded as liberation heroes because they fought for liberty and human dignity. It is nonsense therefore to suggest that they did not understand what justice and liberty meant before independence. These are simple concepts that do not rocket-science IQ level intellect to appreciate.

The challenge leaders like Mugabe faced was equally simple; fight white colonial oppress to restore the rule of law or to replace white colonial oppression with black oppression. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you!” we learnt from the Bible. How readily we remember this when we are the down trodden and boot is on our neck. I believe when Jesus Christ said this he was addressing those in a position to give and wearing the boot! After all laws are there to protect the weak and powerless from the strong, powerful and the lawless. The challenge then is to the strong to do to the weak what they would have the strong do to them if they were the weak.

Doing unto others as we would have them do to ourselves is not easy. It is walking the straight and narrow path.

"Having joined government and tasted the warm sweetness of power, the MDC formations no longer want elections. They want elections suspended indefinitely and their governorship extended to infinite." Mugabe said recently of his political opponents. The same of course can be said about him. Having tasted the warm sweetness of power the talk of restoring the rule of law was quickly forgotten and to extend his own and Zanu PF’s rule to infinite and those fighting to help him retain power were above the law!

What made it that much easier for a tyrant like Mugabe to establish a ruthless dictatorship is that he was surrounded by like minded individuals with no vision nor moral compass and easily enticed by promises of “the warm sweetness of power” to forget the common cause they foreswore to stand for all their lives.

To people like Mugabe and the ruling elite, the warm sweetness of power certainly turned the straight and narrow path to freedom, liberty and prosperity for all into a razor thin and impossible to travel on.

The country’s intelligentsia should have known better and thus resist the undermining of democratic institutions and rule of law by Mugabe. They did not content to go along to get along. Their lives may be better than that of the peasants and urban poor, still their lost the most economically from the economic melt down. And, certainly, the denial of freedom of expression is felt more by those who can express themselves than those who can not.

So to the down trodden masses independence has been nothing more than the replacement of one oppressive regime with another; the colour of the oppressors it is a matter of indifference to them and their suffering. Betrayed by those they are considered their liberators and abandoned by those who should have known better the masses had no choice but to resign themselves to their totalitarian rule and all that was to follow.

Decades of mismanagement, corruption and brutal repression have left many African countries with a mountain to climb economically and political to get back into the light of prosperity and liberty. When a nation elects Tsvangirai, a flawed and indecisive character, leader when a Hercules is called for; one despairs.

Tsvangirai and his MDC party are supposed to be spearheading the nation’s fight for democratic change and yet they went on to sign an agreement that effectively condoned the intimidation, rape and murders by Mugabe in the sham June 2008 presidential run-off. The agreement gave the tyrant all his dictatorial powers and in the coming elections he is set to use the same brutal trickery to deny the nation their most basic and fundamental right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country!

Mugabe’s head was on the block after the international community refused to accept him as the legitimate head of state. Mugabe’s reign of terror was finished if only Tsvangirai did not allow him to have the Lazarus moment!

The agreement between Mugabe and Tsvangirai was so base it can be compared to Oliver Cromwell granting King Charles 1 a last minute reprieve and grant him all his dictatorial powers to boot! Where would England be today?!

MDC members had the chance to redeem their past mistake of electing such incompetent leadership. What they did instead is re-elect Tsvangirai and his entire kitchen cabinet. The Zimbabwe electorate seems have blindly accepted MDC commiting the nation to God only knows what more blunders.

Still, "'Tis not too late to seek a newer world," as Lord Alfred Tennyson rightly advised.“. . . We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.“

As a black person I have to acknowledge that the white supremacists had a point; as a people we blacks have a propensity to pick the easy broad ways of the lawless tempted by the empty promises of “the warm sweetness of power” here and now. We avoid like a plague the straight and narrow path of just and humble. My contention with you George, 35 years after the camping trip, and all the other white supremacists is that blacks have certainly made a very disappointing start to self-government not because there are stupid to understand the intricacies of government but because they have sort the easy route when the only path was the straight and narrow.

Africa has had the great misfortune of having more than its fair share of tyrants like Mugabe whose love of power blinded them to the suffering of their own people. There have been visionary leaders like Nelson Mandela whose have shown that blacks can rule themselves well. The tragic suffering from years of dictatorial rule has opened the eyes of many in Africa to resist tyranny in future. Someday soon, competent, democratic and accountable governments will become the norm and not the rare exception in Africa; mark my word!