By Phil Matibe
In 1789 in Haiti, nearly 800,000 African slaves were ruled by a white population that numbered only 32,000. The Haitian Revolution of 1791 is the only successful slave revolution in history.
Haiti’s self-determination began with an insurgency by slaves, not entirely black-opposed-to-white, and rebellion. Haiti is the world’s oldest black republic and the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. Polar opposites, the US has the highest per capita income and Haiti has the lowest.
Zimbabwe’s war of liberation was not a black-versus-white affair either. It was about the elimination of a white tyrannical government, the abolition of racial discrimination, and the establishment of a multi-ethnic and democratic society.
Prior to Independence in 1980, two hundred thousand whites ruled over seven million blacks. Zimbabweans gained their political and economic independence from colonisation and attained black majority rule by successfully waging a war of liberation against a white minority.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the former slave to a brutal white master, became Haiti’s first self-imposed emperor. The viciousness of his enslavement fuelled his own hatred for white people (French slave owners had burned alive, hanged, drowned, and tortured slaves, reviving such practises as burying blacks in piles of insects and boiling them in cauldrons of molasses.)
In 1803, Dessalines allegedly tore the white strip from the French tri-colour flag, insisting that Haiti’s flag have two stripes—blue and red—symbolising that the white had been ripped out of Haiti. Close to 20,000 French whites were butchered in 1804 and the rest were expelled from Haiti.
Dessalines attempted to reinstate the French plantation system in an effort to maintain the lucrative sugar trade; however, freed ex-slaves refused to carry out the strenuous tasks necessary. Dessalines became a brutal dictator and ruled Haiti no less harshly than his predecessors, the French slave owners.
As a Black-only republic, Haiti found it difficult to trade with other nations. Haiti became a polarised nation (pitting dark skinned blacks against light skinned blacks) their march toward meaningful development as a sovereign Black republic was disrupted and derailed along with any hope of global commerce.
After Independence, Robert Mugabe said, “If ever we look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequities that must never again find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that because whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power.”
ZANU (PF) political manifesto has painted a picture which accuses white farmers in Zimbabwe after Independence of mistreating their workers, paying them slave wages, and not providing social amenities, schools and clinics on their vast land holdings.
Ten years after the fast track land grab, the ruling elite own those said farms, receive state funding through the RBZ, pay their workers less than US$1 per day, and provide no social amenities. Those farms are now the preserve of the ruling class and farm worker welfare has deteriorated to pre-Independence levels.
Farm workers are poorer not because the farms were taken over by a black person but because the farms are being run by incompetent “farmers”. They are not bad farmers because they happen to black, but the lack of rudimentary husbandry skills, the deficiency of essential agrarian experience and the absence of agro-business acumen.
Zimbabwe’s wealth lies in its human resources and its unique ability to feed itself and export surplus agricultural produce; minerals such as gold, platinum and diamonds are a bonus. The social and economic stratification of Zimbabwe’s peoples into povos and chefs—haves and have-nots—is creating a permanent divide based on affiliation to a political party, which claims to have “liberated” all Zimbabweans from colonial bondage.
This divide grows wider when those same “liberators” embark on a vengeful retribution of white Zimbabweans whose crime is having the same skin colour of that of the colonisers.
ZANU (PF) has crafted an investment undermining legislation, which it is about to enforce. The “Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act” passed in 2007 is a constitutional veil designed to legally enable the misappropriation of private property, enrich the ruling political elite, and to further disenfranchise fellow Zimbabweans who do not fall into the retrogressive definition and classification of “indigenous”.
This proposed law goes against the aspirations of the majority who yearn for Zimbabwe to become a productive member of the G20, and a progressive global citizen. This proposed law, in effect, begets the same downward spiral journey that our fellow Haitians began over two hundred years ago and have not been able to reverse since.
As per the act, “indigenous Zimbabwean” means any person who, before the 18th April, 1980, was disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the grounds of his or her race, and any descendant of such person, and includes any company, association, syndicate or partnership of which indigenous Zimbabweans form the majority of the members or hold the controlling interest.
With corporate taxation at 49%, the ZANU (PF) government only leaves 51% after tax profits for the company’s shareholders. So if 51% of a company’s equity is forced to go to an “indigenous” person that leaves 0% profits for the foreign investor. Which investor in their right mind would invest in a country where one is guaranteed of zero profit?
When will this vortex of vindictive ethnic reprisals and avaricious racist vengeances end?
Phil Matibe – www.madhingabucketboy.com
