Sunday 13 July 2014

Yes, cheap beer and women - why we miss Rhodesia at the mines



 
 The problem with admiring Rhodesia is many-fold but I will single out two major ones.

One, that many people think the Rhodesian regime was defeated by President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF alone, which is wrong because it was a collective. It's only that Mugabe and Zanu-PF have usurped the role of the liberator ahead of other individuals and parties who also played vital roles in defeating the Rhodesian regime.

It is true that Zanu-PF has destroyed the country because of various reasons and especially because they have claimed the liberation struggle as theirs. It is the liberators' card which they raise every time things go wrong.

The country does not need going back by means of admiring Rhodesia. The past does not change the present neither does it make the future any brighter.

In short, a man who cannot find solutions to problems but wishes for the past, thinks like an old woman. (sorry to the feminists).

In which case, Morgan Tsvangirai's 'Rhodesia was better' talk is the worst a man who was enjoying at the mine while others were dying can say.

The year Tsvangirai talks about – 1975 – was the year when Herbert Chitepo lost his life for the struggle in Zambia. Maybe, on the morning Chitepo was assassinated, Tsvangirai was waking up in some single-mother's bed, his throat dry with hangover from some cheap beer.

It was also at the time when most of the cadres were in detention across the country. Some were at Khami prison while others were at Gonakudzingwa at the middle of nowhere in the game reserve. They had left their families for the struggle while Tsvangirai had nothing to do but drink and lose himself in the good that was Rhodesia.

That Zanu-PF has failed does not make the liberation struggle a non-event. It also does not make Rhodesia a paradise.

And for a man who is dying to be the president of a country that won independence through the blood of genuine cadres most of whom did not have the opportunity to enjoy the freedom to admire a system that cared for a few is not only unfortunate but childish.

While the majority of the cadres still alive and in government today have messed up, the like of Dzinashe Machingura (Wilfred Mhanda) did not waver from the policies and principles of the struggle.

Two, admiring Rhodesia now would imply that all the genuine cadres – dead and alive – did not know what they were doing by giving up themselves to liberate the country. That they had no idea of how 'better' life at the mines was when some people would drink and get drunk cheaply.

Although I was a small boy in 1975 when Morgan Tsvangirai was enjoying life at the mines, I was aware of the war because in my area – Chiweshe – we were in protected areas or keeps. The grinding mills, the stores and the clinics were closed. There was also a time when schools were closed.

Even before that in 1973, I recall very well how the district commissioner from Concession sent lorries and soldiers into the area to take away cattle because they argued that the grazing was not enough.

They came early one morning and selected the fattest oxen and cows. These were loaded and then taken away. I have no doubt that at that time too, Tsvangirai was also enjoying himself in the good of Rhodesia.

Later, as small boys we were forced to view the bodies of dead guerrillas who were killed one morning during an ambush. Their bodies were tied to land rovers and then dragged along on the ground.

That's how Rhodesia was like but of course as a mine worker, Tsvangirai does not know all this because he was busy enjoying the good that was Rhodesia – cheap beer and women.




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