OLDER Zimbabweans who have experienced life under both the colonial and Zanu PF governments must, quite seriously, be wondering what it is the people of this country have done to deserve being brutalised by one government after another almost without a break.
During the era of white rule, farm workers used to be treated like slaves.
They were kicked about like rags by their white employers for very minor offences, especially on tobacco farms.
The treatment of domestic “servants” – comprising what were called “nannies” and “garden boys” by their “masters” – was only slightly better.
They could be slapped on the face or literally kicked in the butt by the smallest child in the household, glorified as “piccanin baas” (small boss) and were not expected to protest because, in short, Africans had no rights whatsoever, including political rights.
They had no right to protest either, no matter how cruelly they were treated.
Which is why when they became politically conscious and started organising themselves to reclaim their right to self-determination, the full force of police brutality was unleashed on them.
Every time they tried to gather peacefully to plan how to free themselves from that bondage, ferocious dogs were set upon them, reinforced by strongly built officers, the majority of them fellow blacks, swinging their sjamboks like men possessed and raining one merciless stroke after another while using their heavy boots to viciously kick those that would have tripped and fallen.
police brutality during the colonial era was aimed at blacks who attempted to become politically active because the white government had decreed that blacks had no political rights.
The same goes for land. Blacks had no legal rights, land was taken from them for no compansation. Yes, we need famers but they don't have to be white, just farmers is what Zimbabwe needs.
Mugabe and the whites of colonial era in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia are the same.
Hopefyll post Mugabe Zimbabweans will be able to live a life free of whites superiority and Mugabe ways.
where Africa comes to you..
