Your Excellency, The Head of State and Government, Commander In Chief of the Defence Forces, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, I respectfully beg to differ reported assertion that whites should not own land in Zimbabwe.
Denying rights to whites, is not what you spend eleven years in detention for. I have always believed that the suffering you, and thousands of others, went through was so that each and every Zimbabwean would enjoy equal rights. That was a noble fight.
Your Excellency the last time I checked Zimbabwe's constitution did not classify citizens' rights by race, religion or ideology. That is to say the nation you fought for, and helped build to where it is, is not a segregated apartheid state like South Africa and Rhodesia were. It is not a nation that denies property rights to certain races like those evil racists used to.
I hope Your Excellency, you then understand that I was terribly confused when I read in the press that you had declared that whites should not be allowed to own land in Zimbabwe.
Are they any less Zimbabwean than you and me?
Your Excellency may I also draw you attention to the fact that our history as a proud Bantu people, has never been one of discrimination. You are my elder, and I am sure you know these tenets far much better than I do.
For example I am sure you know that descendants of the Portugueese, vana Sinyoro Vazungu vemachira machena, assimilated into our culture without any problem and were given chieftaincy and noble-ship by our forefathers. You probably know the history of the Chitsunge chieftaincy far much better than small boys born yesterday like me do.
I am sure you are also aware that the first European to see the great ancient city that gives our country its name was Adam Renders, not Karl Mauch as Eurocentric history narrates. The main reason European historians ignored Adam Renders was that had been taken in by our African community. Our community accepted him so much that he married the daughter of a chief (mwana waMambo) and lived among us as an equal.
He looked after Karl Mauch for the nine months he was exploring the Great Zimbabwe. Our culture has always accepted and accommodated others, not rejected them.
As you can see, it is not only from the viewpoint of modern day rights conscious humanism that it is wrong to say whites can't own land in Zimbabwe, but from the rich depth of our own culture.
Our culture values Hunhu (humane-ness) above everything else. Yes the forefathers of whites may have come with race based discrimination that makes us bitter. Let us not allow bitterness to diminish our own Hunhu.
Your Excellency, please do not misunderstand my position. I fully support land redistribution to CORRECT past racist, segregationist and idiotic policies that landed us in a lot of trouble. However there is no way I will support reverse racism.
To me a 'no land for whites' policy is as a bad as the 'no land for blacks' policy of old. I hope our country will never go that route.
No comments:
Post a Comment