Maravi

(NEWZIMBABWE BLOGS) Why I want to be a white man

Why I want to be a white man
Posted By Joram Nyathi on
18 Jun, 2009 at 3:36 pm

IT is people like Cremer who give President Mugabe a cult status if what he allegedly said is true. It is also people like Sekai Holland who undermine the MDC’s credibility. For, as the Frenchman said, with friends like Holland, who needs an enemy! The MDC simply has too many mouths.

First things first. ML Cremer, it is alleged, is a farmer in Chegutu, some 110km west of Harare. He has lost a lot of his De Rus Farm to the land reform programme launched in 2000. The last thing he wanted to see, it is suspected, was someone waving a piece paper called an “offer letter” claiming for somebody ownership of his remaining 60 hectares. No matter how well-connected such a personage was.

As it turned out, the bearer of the bad omen was a sister of American Dr Arikana Chihombori, said to be a relative of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai or his late wife, Susan. The good lady, a pastor, asked a lands officer to accompany her to claim possession of Cremer’s farm.

Cremer, like any law-abiding citizen, exploded into a white hurricane. He allegedly called her “a cold stupid kaffir”. Cremer is said to have also told her he didn’t “take instructions from a kaffir” to vacate his farm. He employs 300 blacks to whom he gives instructions everyday.

My vocabulary in both Shona and Ndebele is very shallow. I can’t find the equivalent adjective for kaffir to refer to a white man in our vernacular languages. Ibhunu is a corruption of boer or “farmer”. He was always fearsome.

We probably didn’t need any such words. I grew up knowing only words of endearment for the white man — ikhiwa. We say ikhiwa to refer to someone who is very light in complexion. Ikhiwa can also mean beautiful. It can refer to a man who exhibits financial independence, or someone who doesn’t bother others, a gentleman who minds his own business.

The word kaffir was especially rare for some of us who didn’t live on farms. When it was used, even in colonial times, it was a sign that the white man was very angry. It is a very derogatory term for a black African. With independence, and now with the land reform, ikhiwa or murungu, refers to anybody with money and political power. It means even a potential employer or anyone from whom you need favour.

Mugabe has tried to demystify the white man through land reform regardless of his other human foibles. Blacks should control their natural resources. They should be employers: that’s the way to be a white man. That’s at the core of European and US economic sanctions.

The policy of reconciliation in 1980 was meant to appease the white man, for it would have been awkward for Mugabe to call for reconciliation with Joshua Nkomo or between Zanu and Zapu when the two were fighting a common enemy — the white man or the Rhodesian system.

The independence Lancaster House Constitution also gave the white man 20 “reserved seats” while blacks went onto the “common roll”. The white man was given a moratorium on the land while freedom fighters received “demobilisation” money. That was in 1980.

But the white man never reciprocated our adoration which didn’t diminish with self-rule. A straight dealer is still “a white man”. If you want a second-hand item, be it a vehicle or fridge or television set, a white man is your best bet. Any deal with a white man is value for money. Yet after more than a century, few whites deign to speak local languages while we are told English is your passport to life.

While this might be true for the educated elite who can land good jobs in Europe and beyond, it has not yielded as much bounty as the gun did the semi-literate horse riders who invaded Zimbabwe at the end of the 19th century and continued to grab land from Africans until as late as the 1970s.

Is it then possible that after 30 years of “reconciliation”, and 10 years of land reform, a black man is still a kaffir – a low caste citizen?

My worry is that this mental attitude about kaffirs could in fact be more pervasive than is acknowledged. The meaning of reconciliation was never fully articulated.

We were a slave race. If we could now walk along First Street Mall, even if our pockets were empty, we had “arrived”. Apart from the political leadership, nothing had changed. The white man remained a god perched up there, followed by the Indian, then the Coloured while the kaffir bore the burden of all productive labour from the farm to the factory floor.

To the extent that the policy of reconciliation legitimised property relations which obtained prior to 1979, it emptied the liberation war of all content beyond political power, and was a negation of the spirit of the revolution. It once again weakened the kaffir who had been empowered through war and revolutionary consciousness.

The land reform has only helped to underline this. The racial undertones in the fight to defend Zimbabwe’s “international citizens” from their uncivilised government is self-evident, yet the moral weight implied in these property rights is absent in a generalised human rights discourse anchored on the munificence of an employer race.

It hawks itself as the donor race. It is the same race which maintains sanctions on Zimbabwe which have become as indefensible as rape whatever the perpetrator’s defence.

Labels: JORAM NYATHI, LAND REFORM, NEOCOLONIALISM, RACISM

posted by MrK @ 7:28 PM