Poor Mugabe is now the villain

2008-04-14 08:44

Jon Qwelane

Poor President Robert Mugabe, he's having a very rough time at the hands of western and South African racists, who are being aided and abetted by their loyal puppy, Morgan Tsvangirai.

(I can now hear the unmistakable grumbles and groans of the racists: "My magtig! Why is News24 still allowing this black racist column space? Oh my sour dugs, he sounds like a record stuck in the bush! Let us boycott him!")

As I say, Mugabe is having a terrible time with the rejoicing racists and their loyal lackey.

I will be the first to concede that things have not been right in Zimbabwe since 2002, when Mugabe first decided to call Britain's bluff and took back from the "colonialists and settlers" the land and gave it back to black people.

What actually happened was that Mugabe, being the true revolutionary that he is, decided to follow the actual spirit of the liberation struggle to the letter by repossessing every inch of Zimbabwean soil from the marauding invaders and, in most cases, refused to pay them for the land because, quite logically, "the white people did not pay a cent for the land which they now claim is theirs in a country which they do not recognise, and to which many refuse to owe loyalty".

And because Mugabe's nationalist spirit could not be cowed, the western countries decided to teach the uppity native boy a lesson: because he had had the temerity to take land from the master race and had refused to pay for it, they would hit him with sanctions.

It was an undisguised warning to the ANC and black South Africans not to try something similar, and the Mbeki government, obviously intent on pleasing the west and their local white surrogates in South Africa, made all kinds of meaningless assurances that "such a thing would not happen here".

There is an article which former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda wrote in the New African magazine a couple of years ago, stating that he was invited as an interested party and member of the frontline states to the Lancaster House talks in London by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher's assurances

Dr Kaunda notes that he and other observers at the meeting were very surprised by the ease with which Mugabe and his liberation colleague, Joshua Nkomo, readily accepted Thatcher's assurances and terms not to do anything about taking back the land, because Britain would see to that sort of settlement in a matter of years.

But Thatcher was kicked out, and John Major succeeded her, and seemed willing to honour the Lancaster House agreement.

Matters came to a sorry pass when Tony Blair took over, reneging as he did on everything. That is why I am sorry for Mugabe, because it is now played as though he is the villain of the entire piece.

I am loath to think of the status quo ante which will come to pass in the scary event that Tsvangirai comes to State House as president: Zimbabwe will be recolonised all over again, and Tsvangirai will be a latter-day Abel Muzorewa - a bantustan puppet "leader", with the real puppet masters in Britain and South Africa (read DA, chiefly).

But it will also happen here in South Africa, there can be no doubt about it. The only question left to ask is how, not if, it will happen.

Now the racists are at this stage mumbling: "News24, fire this black racist bugger! He is threatening to take our land! That is hate speech! Ban him" and nywereh nywereh, etc.

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

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