By Irikidzai
Recent stories appearing in the Zimbabwe state media about South Africa and Nelson Mandela have been offensive to say the least. Why is the state media attempting to portray Mandela as a failed leader and as a leader who betrayed his people?
Whatever the politics that maybe behind those stories it is not in the spirit of brotherhood with our neighbours down south. I believe Mandela played his part and that it’s now up to those in power now to take South Africa to the next higher level.
I think those gloating over Mandela are quickly forgetting how the Lancaster House document was a huge compromise that was signed with agreements to keep land in the hands of the settlers for many years and how the settlers had reserved seats in parliament.
Are we then to say that those who signed at Lancaster House betrayed us? Surely, we cannot say that. Just like Mandela and his South African compatriots, the Zimbabwean Patriotic Front achieved the best under very difficult circumstances.
Even here in Zimbabwe we have colonial relics that still stand strong.
(1). Cecil John Rhodes’ grave is still an important tourist attraction that people marvel at and most will not skip when they visit Matopos.
(2). Victoria Falls kept its colonial name despite the fact that Mosi-oa-Tunya is a perfect name that is very acceptable both in Zimbabwe and Zambia. To not change the name of those falls to Mosi-oa-Tunya is just an excuse. International tourists will still love the falls even under a local name.
(3). Schools like Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth, Churchill, Roosevelt continue to celebrate colonial figures – do we not have our own Zimbabwean names to give or those of our own heroes and famous people?
(4) The names of a lot of schools and high density suburbs are suffixed with numbers like Glen View 1, Glen View 2 etc. It appears as if we ran out of names.
(5) Most of our liberation war heroes have no written biography to their name. Again most of us find it easy to recite European history and the achievements of war heroes from that continent and not our African history and the achievements of our own.
(6) For the longest time before promotion of local content our radio and TV was full of western music, even western version of news items. Down south, South Africans celebrated their own music, language and culture much more than we did in Zimbabwe and to an extent they still are good at it right now.
(7) Our judges continue to wear colonial attire in the form of their head gear and robes.
(8) Our Chiefs too continue to wear funny over-sized colonial-looking hats and those red robes whose colour does not reflect our national identity.
(9) Our provinces have Anglicized names that denote tribes and directions as if we could not be more creative with purely vernacular names. At least South Africa has a lot more vernacular names for its provinces.
(10) A lot of surburbs and our roads still bear colonial names which some among us will put up a very strong fight to keep them from being replaced with vernacular. The list could go on.
What I am saying is, let’s not try to look good by putting down the South Africans. I think as Zimbabweans we must now focus on developing our own country and leave the South Africans be who they will be.
We must appreciate how South Africa is playing host to more than a million Zimbabweans and how our economy continues to depend heavily on South Africa. If we did not import from South Africa the shelves in our supermarkets would be close to empty.
The South Africans are our brothers, Bantu just like us. Our languages are that close because we are one, we came from a common place and share a common heritage. Ko tinodirei kutsvaga ruvengo, kuwongorora zvaana nhingi?
