Now that the elections in Zimbabwe are over, we must pay attention to problems of betrayal that have kept our continent from catching up with the rest of the world.
I will start on a light note and progress into heavier issues.
I, together with my fellow students, laughed at Mahatma Gandhi’s attack on western clothes. It took Mahatma five years to persuade Jawaharlal Nehru, Kripalani, and Patel (all these had been to Cambridge University) that dressing up like Englishmen is an admission of their native inferiority and an acceptance of English as a measure of what is beautiful, right, and proper.
Imagine what native beauticians could have gained if Gucci Grace did not spend US$1 000 on foreign hair weaves.
The Mahatma was right, and we can start by adopting African styles in our parliament.
But in Zimbabwe, we can go further than that. The perspective I have described above has led men in the Golden Mafia to steal gold and other valuables from Africa and squirrel these treasures in Dubai.
The cavalier attitude by government towards these malefactors, and the daring attitude of the She-Mafioso, who, when she entered a restaurant in Harare, cursed out all those who dared to look at her with surprise that she can still show her face in the street and act out.
With this background in mind, one begins to understand the lamentations of former South Africa president Thabo Mbeki.
We are being betrayed both by our brothers and by the Great Satan outside us.
Before Tim Moyane was sent to head the Sars (like Zimra), a company called Bain Auditors had taken him under their wing and given him opportunities to understand the revenue collection system in South Africa. During the interregnum, South Africa’s Sunday Times published articles that destroyed the characters and fitness of the top black management team at Sars.
Six of them resigned. When Moyane took over, it was easy to eviscerate the organisation. Sars began to underperform after several years of over-performing their targets.
Of the Sars commissioners whose character was eviscerated by the Sunday Times was Ivan Pillay, who took early retirement under a cloud.
Now, listen to this.
The Sunday Times later recanted and said that they had misspoken.
Mbeki says that the narrative that the Electricity Commission asked Nelson Mandela in 1998 to prepare for new investment in Eskom is false.
Brian Molefe served as chief operating officer 2009-2013 and there were no blackouts. Molefe’s secret was timely maintenance of Eskom power stations.
An Indian Group was well on its way to building Kusile Power Station (2009-2014) and had completed Unit No 1 when its contract came for renewal in 2014.
Whereas the Indian were prepared to take on 150 black engineers in training, some shadowy authority asked them to take on Black Empowerment ghost workers.
When the Indian refused, they were terminated. In 2023, Kusile Power Station is not working.
We are being betrayed.
A report by an auditing company KGMP said that Finance minister Pravin Gordham (2009-2014) should have known about a “rogue unit” at Sars.
When, however, you take into account the three streams coming together, Moyane having been “pre-trained” before getting the job, the Sunday Times doing a hatchet job on senior Sars officers and Pravin Gordham, coming in as a globalist, with every intention to prove that blacks are no good, and that state parastatals must be sold to private enterprises for a song, you have Mbeki’s theory that everything was pre-orchestrated.
This pattern was repeated at the University of Cape Town where the black vice chancellor Mamo Phakeng 2019-2023 was forced into pre-mature retirement by orchestrated newspaper stories of incompetence.
Gordham became minister for parastatals and found every one of them, including Transnet (Railways) and Telecoms unmanageable.
These parastatals were designed by the Boers to provide a good life for their kind when they were excluded from the financial and industrial world by English speaking moguls.
Those opportunities which were once open to Boers are open to blacks. The doors are closing everywhere.
Zimbabwe case
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has described the issues at hand brilliantly. In 1986, a team from Harvard University came to Nigeria under World Bank auspices and recommended the depreciation of the naira from US$1 to 400 naira.
The stupidity of their recommendations is that they were made by freshmen Harvard students who had never run any businesses in their lives.
No European country rushes to depreciate their currencies. A depreciated currency destroys life savings and retirement accounts.
Our own professor Mthuli Ncube is a globalist. While he depreciates my money, he and his family hide their money in Switzerland, where he has permanent residence.
Tinubu realised a certain truth about inferiority complex. Nigerians consume more champaigne than France and they spend US$17 million on American ketchup.
Therefore, we must regard all input by imperialists in our affairs, as injurious to our cause.
We, therefore, ask the question. Why do our brothers acquiesce to European shenanigans when there is not a single example where World Bank polices have worked?
Black philosopher W.E.B. DuBois opined that the great wish of the Negro is to be accepted as a brother by the white man.
Prophet Elijah Muhammad realized that such a wish is futile.
The last example is that of present-day Niger. This desert country is endowed with gold, iron ore, tin, phosphates petroleum, salt, molybdenum, and gypsum. The US and France have gold reserves and power their electricity stations with uranium from Niger. Niger is the second poorest country in the world.
When told to leave, the US and France insist that they have “interests” in Niger whether the Nigerians like it or not. The mistake Africans have made, which amounts to betrayal, is to believe that one day they will fellowship at the table of brotherhood with the imperialists.
It is a futile wish. Imperialists have laid down their sumptuous table in another man’s home.
*Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwe patriot. He writes from the US. He can be reached at mufukaken@gmail.com.