(HERALD) Zim: Dr Livingstone, I presume?

Zim: Dr Livingstone, I presume?
By Navaya ole Ndaskoi in Arusha, Tanzania

DR. DAVID Livingstone, that icon of capitalism, Christianity and British Empire, pillaged his way to Africa without any visa. He contributed to the ordeal ‘Scramble for Africa.’ He had the stomach to name the falls at River Zambezi after the English Queen, Victoria.

In his Missionary travels and researches in South Africa published in 1857 he wrote a weird story of ‘savages [stupid!] capering around boiling pots of human flesh.' Exactly 150 years down the time road, Philip Parham, British High Commissioner to Tanzania, writes as if to excel the 19th Century Bible caveman.

"If we are to help the people of Zimbabwe, we must diagnose their country’s problems accurately and honestly," he starts off in Business Times of September 21, 2007 page 11. Surely, when I saw the putrid piece I did not believe my eyes.

The very High Commissioner goes on, "The UK has provided more that 500m in bilateral support for development in Zimbabwe since independence."

What? If he cannot type £ or even ask the PR Officer or a Secretary at the High Commission to help him type can this man really lecture us on Zimbabwe?

And this is the best man the Browns of this world sent to represent Brits in Tanzania and, by extension, Zimbabwe! "The UK itself contributed 3 million pound of this had been spent by 1988. The Zimbabwean government did not use the remaining 3 million pounds," Philip pressed on.

Dear reader, did you understand what he said? Well, I do not know about you just now, but I am doing my best to calm down! We are dealing with a confused High Commissioner here.

Since not even the Zimbabwean High Commission in Dar es Salaam responded, perhaps Philip must have been thinking Christmas has come his way two months earlier. Poor Philip Parham.

He must blame his parents. If he had been born in 1813 and died in 1873 like David Livingstone, he would have received a knighthood. Arise Sir Philip. This is 2007! Neither Philip nor the West can help Zimbabwe anything with this unbelievable display of arrogance and paternalism. He cannot even lecture on democracy. There is no democracy in Britain, the very country Philip represents.

Undemocratic Kings and Queens of the dark ages still head the British State in the twenty first century.

And as if that is not undemocratic enough, unelected Prime Ministers heads the British Government! You simply need to be lucky as a leader of the majority party to become British Prime Minister. Brits have no right to directly vote for their Prime Minister. Two, Zimbabweans can survive without help from the Parhams. Millions of years before the poverty driven Rhodesians shot their way into Zimbabwe, Africans were living.

If the "wider donor community" would do Zimbabweans a favor and drop their percentage, Zimbabwe would be fine. Absolutely fine! This should not be hard to comprehend. William Blum, author of Rogue State, will help me take you to the UN during the days when Margaret Thatcher, nicknamed ‘Iron Lady’ by the Soviet Defence Ministry’s newspaper (the Red Star), became Prime Minister.

We know that Africans in South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe survive without Brits and the West generally.

Do you want evidence? Blum is your tour guide to the corridors of the United Nations. He recalls, "January 24 1979, Resolution 33/183M. To end all military and nuclear collaboration with apartheid South Africa. Voting: 114 to 3 (US, France and UK voted against).

December 12, 1979: Resolution 34/93D. Strengthening arms embargo against apartheid South Africa. Voting: 132 to 3 (US, France and UK voted against).

"Blum will tell you also that on December 12, 1979 Resolution 34/931 was put on the table. Assistance to the oppressed people like Nelson Mandela and others of South Africa and their liberation movement. Voting 134 to 3 (US, France and UK voted against). On December 11, 1980 Resolution 35/119.

Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples [Zimbabwe got independence in 1980]. Voting: 134 to 3 (US, France and UK voted against). The UN once again wanted to assist South Africans. Britain and its allies refused, according to Blum. On December 16, 1980 Resolution 25/206J.

Assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement. Voting 137 to 3 (US, France and UK voted against). December 5, 1984, Resolution 34/42. Condemns support of South Africa in its Namibian and other policies. Voting: 121 to 2 (US and UK voted against). As the voting went on at the UN, the ‘pink’ minority was killing Africans.

Honestly, when I read the piece, I got the impression that Philip was a picnic school boy before Zimbabwean independence in 1980, Namibian independence in 1990 and the defeat of apartheid in South Africa in 1994.

Just imagine the UK and the West speaking for Zimbabweans now. It is like an axe-murderer who suddenly gets the compassion of St. Francis and the mercy of Mother Teresa and become an arrowhead of the firestorm set 'to help the people of Zimbabwe.’

It simply shows the capacity for hypocrisy. Zimbabweans can ‘diagnose their country’s problems accurately.’ They fairly know their central problem, landlessness. That is why they had to fight to iron out the ‘pink’ minority Government headed by Dictator Ian Smith, supported and armed to the teeth by the UK, the US and the West. Zimbabweans refused to be tenants in their country.

They do not sit idle and wait for the Parhams, the Bushes, the Blairs and all the Browns of this world to preach human rights and democracy to them. When the predatory thieves from the United Kingdom invaded Zimbabwe in the 1890s and grabbed the best land, the Chauke, the Mahenye, the Chitsa, the Shona, the Ndebele, the Tsvovani and other Zimbabweans did not wait for Philip Parham to lecture them on land as a human right.

They fought manly against this criminal occupation. The British cannibals won only because of the superior gun.

The unfortunate leaders of the Zimbabwean forces of 1890s were hanged from treetops, just like the unarmed old man, Saddam Hussein of Iraq in 2006. The settlers of British ancestry hanged Zimbabweans for resisting the seizure of their land.

That was how the British took land and ‘undermined the rule of law.’ In Roman-Dutch Law, from which English Law springs, if you inherit a stolen property you belong to the gallows!

I mean you are also a thief. Rhodesians of the 1890s launched an armed robbery of land in Zimbabwe and passed it down to the current ‘pink’ settler generation. Zimbabweans know this.

They do not need the Human Rights Watches, the Red Crosses, the BBCs, the VOAs, the CNNs, the all the Economists for this. According to Philip Parham, ‘The Lancaster House agreement contained no financial commitment on land reform.’

It contained pal, even if that was not written down! Kelebert Nkomani, Zimbabwe High Commissioner to Kenya, argues: ‘The UK’s commitment to funding the transfer of land from the minority white commercial farmers to landless black majority was part and parcel of the Lancaster House agreement.’ Philip is not finished.

He blames some commentators, who cite a letter written by Clair Short, then UK Secretary of State for International Development to the Zimbabwean Government on November 5, 2005. He argued, ‘With selective quotes, they claim in correctly that Clair Short was ruling out further UK assistance for land reform.’ For readers to see and judge that poisonous letter for themselves, I challenge the British High Commission to publish the letter in full. Is space a problem? Her Majesty Kingdom can at least afford a page after centuries of plundering. That is for sure.

In the meantime, New African, the best selling pan-African magazine, which I am proud to contribute articles to, has been publishing from time to time that rancid letter. Readers can trace it on page 52 of the February 2003 issue.

The short sighted Ms Short wrote myopically, ‘I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests.’

If that is not ‘ruling out further UK assistance for land reform’ in Zimbabwe, I am sorry Philip. I cannot help you! David Hasluck, a man who does not count Robert Mugabe among his friends, was director of Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers Union for 18 long years.

He might help. He knows fairly that that letter ignited the current crisis. In an interview with Baffour Ankomah, New African editor, who have immeasurably influenced my world view, Hasluck said that ‘Clair Short knows that there was a land issue at Lancaster House, how can she write a letter like that and expect to go forward?' Come on Philip Parham. Does Zimbabweans really need your crocodile tears? — race and history.com.

About the writer — Navaya Ndaskoi was born on April 14 1974 on the foothills of mount Munduli, Tanzania. As a Maasai boy, he spent his childhood grassing the family livestock. At the age of ten he joined primary school. He gained admission to the seminary aspiring to become a priest but eventually changed. In 2001 he entered the University of Dar Es Salaam where he is currently reading Economics and Geography. He is the Co-ordinator of an informal group called Indigenous Rights for Survival International (IRSI). The group is a loose network of young people with an interest in public policy issues.