The Sunday Mail
I would have written about the goings on in Zanu-PF but chose instead to write about France for two simple reasons.
Firstly, in spite of the opening of political space, the opposition in Zimbabwe and its opposition mouthpieces have sufficiently failed to organise themselves to take on Zanu-PF and that is why the revolutionary party is enjoying all the political attention that it is getting right now no matter how trivial some of the “successionist” issues are nor how frivolous and petty the coverage is.
Secondly, because France has no moral-high ground to lecture us on human rights while supporting EU sanctions against Zimbabwe, particularly against President Mugabe, Amai Mugabe and Zimbabwe Defence Industries.
Americans commemorate the 52nd assassination anniversary of John F Kennedy December 1 but for some of us it is a time to remember the wisdom of the Nation of Islam leader Malcom X who said of the death of JFK exactly what we would want to say to the French government: “President Kennedy never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon … Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they always made me glad.”
Malcom X simply meant that Kennedy’s death was the result of a long line of violent acts, the culmination of hate and suspicion and doubt in that country.
You see, France killed and brutalised those it didn’t like. The Kennedy assassination and the bombings and terrorist attacks on France were a result of that way of life and thinking.
The chickens came home to roost; that’s all there is to it. America, by the death of their president, and France, by the bombings on Friday the 13th, just reaped what they had been sowing.
Let me explain.
Since the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, France has had an atrocious history of violence, massacres and atrocities on civilians of countries they hate.
On March 3, 1799 the French army arrived before the walls of Jaffa in what was then known as Syria (now just outside Tel Aviv) and started to lay siege to the town.
When the town fell, the troops gave themselves up to pillage, rape and murder for two whole days. They killed indiscriminately, with no regard to gender or age, stopping only when the besiegers were weary of killing and exhausted by the debauchery.
Etienne-Louis Malus, a doctor who had accompanied the army, recalled what he saw: “The soldiers cut the throats of men and women, the old and the young, Christians and Turks … father and son one on top of the other (on the same pile of bodies), a daughter being raped on the cadaver of her mother, the smoke from the burnt clothes of the dead, the smell of blood, the groans of the wounded, the shouts of the victors who were quarrelling about the loot taken from a dying victim.”
Today, 216 years later, France is still in Syria.
It launched air-strikes in Syria on September 28, 2015. What is it doing in Syria? Who do the French think they are?
Libya, now Syria!
Who gives them the powers to carry out an interventionist foreign policy which we all know they are trying to use to reinforce a false self-perception that they are a great power?
France’s steadfast opposition to Syrian leader Assad which they erroneously saw as an opportunity for cooperation with anti-Assad countries in the Middle East which also share France’s deep distrust of Iran backfired with the advent of the Paris attacks.
After the attacks in Paris, two sides that don’t usually agree on anything found common ground on one issue: Both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State said the attacks were retaliation for France’s own foreign policy.
“Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet, (Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him), and are proud of fighting Islam in France and striking the Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their planes, which did not help them at all in the streets of Paris and its rotten alleys,” Isis said in a statement.
Why does France think it can play big-brother and think it can poke its long and dirty nose in the affairs of Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran — everywhere — and think there will not be any retaliation?
Who wants a French invasion in this 21st century?
Look at what they did to African countries they colonised.
They used a scorched-earth policy in Africa that has resulted in its former colonies still battling to this day to find their feet and their space in the global village with dire lack of basic and modern infrastructure.
By whatever means necessary the French must be stopped in their tracks so that they learn to respect the sovereignty of other countries.
They keep trying to take off from where Napoleon left; they keep trying to conquer the world and now that they have been attacked, why feel pity for them?
Facebook profile pictures where awash with ignorant sympathisers to the tragedy in France and yet this is a simple case of the chickens coming home to roost.
Indeed, sometimes I really feel like Frantz Fanon who said “there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it”.
The European Union in February this year renewed for another year its sanctions against Zimbabwe, including a travel ban and asset freeze on President Robert Mugabe and his wife, according to a notice in the EU’s Official Journal.
“The restrictive measures should be renewed until February 20, 2016,” the notice read. “The application of the travel ban and asset freeze should be maintained for two persons.”
So France must do more than just invite President Mugabe for the United Nations international climate talks (Cop21) in Paris at the end of this month.
It must be nice.
It must reform from its militant attitude and take this Paris attack as an opportunity to embrace the humanity and sovereignty of other nations – especially the unconditional lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Dubulaizitha!
