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(AFRICAN ARISTOCRAT BLOG) White Zimbabweans, are they truly repentant?

White Zimbabweans, are they truly repentant?
By The African Aristocrat on September 24, 2010

Truth is not in itself virtue. At times to lie is both convenient and kind, a generosity of sorts. Speaking unbridled truth without regard for consequence will earn one few friends. But yet will I speak it the more. I am The African Aristocrat.
There is a memory that refuses to leave my consciousness. White abuse that happened not before our independence but after, at a time when Zimbabwe was now ‘free’ and blacks and whites were said to have reconciled. We were now one people. In theory.

It was 1996. An uncle from my mothers side, who had taken a liking to me, made it a habit to always pick me up after school on Fridays. For the entire weekend, I ate what he ate and went wherever he went. He was a man of means and as such what he ate was good and where we went was equally good. As such I had good weekends.

1996. Sunday evening, the time is perhaps 1735hrs. We’re travelling from Mutare at a tiring 60km/hr, our pace hindered by the heavy rains that make the hazardously narrow roads even more dangerous. My memory is hazy but the essential specifics remain clear. I’m eating a delicious something that does not form part of my regular diet. All this goodness courtesy of uncle. I’m also talking, endlessly. He seems not to mind, smiling dismissively head gently titled when I venture into topics my young mind is too weak to realise I actually do not understand as well as I think I do.

An ISUZU double cab truck speeds up behind us, I can see it through the mirror. In another another quick moment the driver indicates right and gracefully overtakes us. Happens all the time on the highway. Drivers overtake. Non-event. Best carry on chewing on your delicious something.

It was thus all the more puzzling when good uncle sped up immediately after being overtaken and, in a clear sign of pursuit, began repeatedly blaring his horn and flashing his hazards. The ISUZU pulls forward. We too pull forward with equally determined torque. The horn is still blaring and a sizeable chunk of food remains half-chewed in my mouth. To ask what he is doing would be foolish. Even as a child this much is clear.

It’s about two minutes before the ISUZU starts to indicate left, a sign it is about to stop at a convenient stop ahead. I imagine two minutes has been enough for the ISUZU drive to process the situation in his mind and conclude that whatever we want it is unlikely he is going to robbed by a Pajero-driving spectacled man aided by a barely teenage boy. He’s probably dropped something or something is wrong with his car and we are likely good Samaritans wishing to give him kind warning. He must be thinking. Wrong. How so wrong he is.

It later became clear that uncle had stopped him simply because he had taken exception to the fact that a black farm worker was in the uncovered back pan of the truck bearing the elements whilst the white farmer and his two Alsatian dogs enjoyed the comfort of the cabin. There was space for five inside but the black farm worker was in the back pan. Trying, unsuccessfully, to cover himself from the rain using a sack. I could see why uncle was angry.

The farmer at first stood his ground and attempted to get back in his car and drive off. Uncle would have none of it and took the keys out of his ignition insisting the farmer was going nowhere unless the black farm worker got inside the cabin. It is then that I learnt what the story books meant when they spoke of turning red in the face. The farmer was furious, face turned red.

After a bit persuasion he relented and the farm worker was asked to sit in the cabin. This was another task. The farmer had a bit convincing to do. Whilst the altercation had endured the farm worker had pleaded that we let him and his boss be. He feared for his job. Being the very cause of his bosses humiliation he was sure to be fired. After a bit of prodding he got into the car and sat nervously whilst my uncle, calm under pressure as he was, negotiated the final part of the settlement.

He had now revealed to the farmer that he was Central Intelligence operative. A lie that was easily believable given the confidence with which he had stopped him. The farmer was now listening, on his best behaviour. Even then Zanu PF, though less openly hostile, made white Zimbabweans stand at attention.

The agreement was simply enough. The farmer would drive to his destination, which he had now disclosed was in Avondale, Harare. He was to drive at no faster than 60km/hr or 80km/hr if it stopped raining. We were going to follow him and see where he lived. At any time in the future uncle could arrive at his home and demand to know the status of the worker. If he was fired there would be trouble.

We followed him. He did live in Avondale. After he got in his gate we drove off, uncle satisfied in the knowledge that he had just secured a young man a job for life.

Lessons learnt


Whites were whites, blacks were blacks
In the UK you would face certain prosecution is you made you dog ride in the back of an open truck in heavy rains. Cruelty to animals, they call it. Cruelty indeed. Yet this was was commonplace in Zimbabwe. Most whites behaved in this way. Way after independence into the late 90′s.

I do not think they were malicious but they simply felt that it was wrong for a dirty farm worker to ride inside their clean car. It was a manifestation of post-independence white attitude to the Black African.

The same could be said in work places. The white man never promoted the black man to managerial roles if it could be avoided. My own father worked in the accounting department of a large manufacturing plant. He trained 23 year olds white kids who had no formal qualifications. In a few months they were his supervisors earning 3times his salary but without a family to feed.

This was Zimbabwe. The whites were white and the blacks were black. You could not fool yourself, we were not equals.

I could talk of the private sports clubs and bars that were exclusively white, perhaps not by design but you can be sure that no invitations to blacks were extended.

I do not begrudge white Zimbabweans for doing this. It is all in the way they were socialised.

I was brought up to believe that what man was superior and great. I believed it and indeed felt inferior to whites and their ways. Even till this day I make a conscious effort to deal with whites as I do blacks because in my subconcious the white man is still white. I have to make a deliberate effort.

In the same way, whites too were brought up to believe that blacks were scum. Incompetent half-wits who were good labourers but nothing more. They, whites, were superior. This is how they were brought up.

We would be naive to think that blacks could feel inferior but whites not feel superior. It would be the height of credulity if we bought into the idea that though the black man still has feelings of inferiority that the white man has done away with his of superiority. We deceive ourselves and what was happening in the 90′s is evidence of white attitudes towards blacks.

After Mugabe took over white owned farms and made the habit of bashing the group whenever he got the chance, the tables began to turn. White Zimbabweans had been compromised.

Fast forward 2010

Now we have facebook and more interaction between white and black Zimbabweans. There is a danger though. That these oppressors of yesterday are now masquerading as friends simply for convenience sake. You cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Shiri ine muririro wayo haiuregedzi.

Mduduzi Mathuthu wrote a beautiful article yesterday, it can be read here. Only by reading it can you understand why I treat many white Zimbabweans with suspicion.

At the face of it you would think we are one in the same people. But notice the subtleties. When we black Zimbabweans are celebrating economic recovering many of them are unhappy. When we discover diamonds they lobby for them to be banned on international markets. When our cricket team is frustrated out of international tournaments they celebrate.

They care little for Zimbabwe. They want revenge and the best revenge is for Zimbabwe to burn. If Zimbabwe burns then they can gloat and say, “you see what happens to you when you get rid of the white man.” This is why they celebrate bad news and are dismayed by stories of progress.

There are men like Conor Walsh who masquerade on facebook as lovers of all things black. Day in day out they stir up tribal tensions between Ndebele’s and Shona’s and then sit back and enjoy some popcorn watching us fight amongst ourselves. Where were they in the 1990′s? Did they not know about Gukurahundi then? Not a single article from them then. Why, did they not care then? If so, why do they care now?

My questions. Have white attitudes to blacks really changed in these past 10 years? Are we suddenly friends because we are on facebook? Are we suddenly intellectual equals when just a decade ago the thought of promoting us was abhorrent.

When we point out contradictions in Western foreign policy on Zimbabwe they are silent. They defend the West. The defend their kith and kin. We are impartial, they are not. We want progress, they want Mugabe to go.

Be watchful, be vigilant, your adversary is crafty and seeks whom he may devour.

I am The African Aristocrat.

Labels: RACISM, RHODESIANS

posted by MrK @ 2:22 PM