The Sunday Mail
IN more ways than one, courting love is similar to stalking prey.
Although motivated by different designs, courting and stalking essentially entail stealthily winning an advantage in order to either capture a love interest or prey.
Aargh!!! The things people do for love.
Bishop Lazi still remembers how, in the old days, hot-blooded village boys could go to extraordinary lengths to win over a love interest.
Even smitten folks who ordinarily had an aversion to bathwater — irrespective of whether it was summer or winter — would take countless trips to the river to look spick and span, as they knew this would naturally put them in good stead to worm their way into the heart of the targeted damsel.
The love bug would also often force these helplessly infatuated young men to retrieve their long-forgotten rumpled clothing items and give them a generous kiss with those cast iron, coal-heated irons — yes, those ones which had the serrated and gaped opening lids — so that they could look the part.
Most often than not, this radical cosmetic transition was a signal to village elders that someone had begun dating.
It is the same with hunting down prey.
A successful hunt depends on either outrunning the targeted meal, which is often difficult in most cases, or sneakily tiptoeing close enough for a kill shot.
Either way, both courting and stalking rely on that inherently survivalist instinct that drives both human beings and animals.
Quite clearly, animals — big and small, including those that roar and crawl — are endowed with unique and peculiar natural attributes that make them adapt to the rigours and vicissitudes of a dog-eat-dog life.
This explains why the cheetah, which is the fastest animal on the planet, can go for days on end without a meal, while the tottering chameleon, which is known for moving painfully slow, is always assured of a daily, healthy snack.
A King’s wisdom
It is a lesson that was known all too well by King Lobengula and famously recounted to Reverend Charles Helm — himself a human chameleon that had studied the Ndebele language and culture, and had managed to be in the King’s good graces before misleading him — after being bribed by Cecil John Rhodes to do his bidding — into signing the Rudd Concession, which is where all of our problems began.
He told the two-faced man of the cloth: “Did you ever see a chameleon catch a fly? The chameleon gets behind the fly and remains motionless for some time, then he advances very slowly and gently, first putting one leg forward and then the other. Finally, when well within reach he darts out his tongue and the fly disappears. Well, England is the chameleon and I am the fly.”
This is as wise as counsel and vision can get.
King Lobengula had already seen through the evil designs of the British South African Company (BSAC)’s men who sought to patronise him.
If only he could not have been hoodwinked by someone who he, or anyone for that matter, could have least expected — a Christian and reverend of all people — maybe our history would have been different.
The Holy Book always cautions us to be wary of such pitfalls.
2 Corinthians 11:13-15 advises that: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”
George Floyd
The killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, by a white police officer on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, might have happened more than 14 000 kilometres from Harare, but its resultant consequences and upheavals, which have lifted the pretentious veil on racism in the modern age, are much more relevant to the United States and America (USA) and the rest of the world as they are to Zimbabwe.
You see, the Bishop always tells folks that racism, like colonialism and imperialism, never died.
It has simply evolved.
And like a chameleon, it only mutated and changed both style and form, but never its substance.
Where it used to manifest itself as police officers in billy clubs or Ku Klux Klan members lynching black men and women in neighbourhoods in the 1960s, it now presents as police officers in tasers, pepper spray and guns.
Most relevantly, where it used to present itself as supposed businessmen waving concessions and treaties to our pre-colonial rulers and monarchs, it now manifests as multinational conglomerates and investors.
The same system that enslaved blacks before the abolition of slavery is the same system that still enslaves blacks in the new sweat shops that the world has become.
The same system that pillaged Africa for more than 500 years — from slavery since the 15th century to 1994 when the last African country became free from colonialism — is the same system that continues to plunder the continent through its economic hegemony driven by neo-colonialism.
It is the same frog that has now put on lipstick. Kikikiki.
For those who might not quite understand the Queen’s language or etymology, neo simply means new or revived form.
The clues
There is a 2016 report called “The New Colonialism” compiled by the 53-year-old British journalist and historian Mark Curtis, which largely went unremarked, and this is unsurprising because most of the information that we consume today is gathered, processed, packaged and retailed by major media conglomerates and outlets of the same hegemonic powers that are hell-bent on promoting their worldview, ideals, philosophy and interests to some gullible and unthinking audiences.
Well, investigations by this chap concluded that at least 101 UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) control key resources such as gold, platinum, diamonds, copper, oil and gas worth more than US$1 trillion in 37 Sub-Saharan countries.
And yet Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stands at a mere US$3 trillion.
“Under the guise of the UK helping Africa in its economic development (a mere continuation of the colonial paternal narrative), US$134 billion has flowed into the continent each year in the form of loans, foreign investment and aid. However, the British government has aided and abetted the extraction of US$192 billion from Africa mainly in profits by foreign companies, tax dodging and the cost of adapting to climate change,” he noted.
Well, you might ask: What does this got to do with anything?
Well, everything!
Not many know that the BSAC — the chameleon which colonised Zimbabwe — was a company listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).
Colonialism was largely a political phenomenon that was meant to clear the way for a greedy and avaricious economic system.
This was why the colonial project was largely tied to the Rhodesian Stock Exchange (RSE), which was first established in 1894 and closely linked to the LSE and Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
Shares that were listed on the exchange were companies such as the BSAC itself, Frank Johnson and Co, and Matabeleland Loot Rights (how absurd), which fronted the inter-generational dispossession of the local population.
A study that was later done by University of Zimbabwe scholar George Karekwaivenani concluded that “the fact that foreign companies came and listed on the exchange meant that locally generated savings were used to invest in expatriate firms and no new capital was brought into the country . . . instead of bringing in new capital to the country, (they) used savings generated within the country.”
He added: “Thus, the RSE’s establishment did not mean lessening of Southern Rhodesia’s financial dependence. If anything, it placed the colony firmly in the financial orbit of London.”
It is the same system, as indicated by Mark Curtis, that we are still struggling with today.
We have all suffered economic dispossession for too long.
It is the economy, stupid!
Disrupting this system or challenging it comes with unimaginable social, economic and political upheaval.
At the turn of the millennium, Zimbabwe boldly tried to reverse this ingrained systematic dispossession through the land reform programme and has not known any peace since then.
It has come under unprecedented attack meant to ensure that it becomes a failed State and a symbol of the supposed futility of taking back the land.
Instead, we are told that hardships spawned by these attacks can only be blamed squarely on our leaders, who are egregiously corrupt, barbaric, heartless and soulless, in the same way blacks in the US and elsewhere are told the reason why they are poor is because they are drug addicts, lazy and inherently criminal.
These are all stereotypes that are generated by the same system.
But Zimbabwe is now awake, and has been woke, for the past 22 years; more so under the current political administration, which has since realised that the system breathes, lives and exploits through the economic system.
This is why the Financial Intelligent Unit (FIU) and other key organs have been resurrected from the dead.
The light will progressively be shone in all nooks and crannies, including the darkest recesses of the financial system, where the beast resides.
Zvichanakidza hazvo. Kikikiki.
And to those who worry that the current volatility of the Zimbabwe dollar, which has overshadowed the good work on roads and many other critical investments and reforms in the economy, will lead Zimbabwe’s economy to capsize, the Bishop would like to assure them that will not happen.
The currency is just a transactional tool.
It can simply be anchored on production, hence the reason why the big chunk of the coronavirus response kitty — $6,1 billion of the $18 billion — is being channelled to agriculture.
It is, however, a process, and not an event.
Roles have been changed: We are no longer the fly, but the chameleon moving in for the kill.
If a day is a long time in politics, imagine 2023 from now.
Itai steady!
Bishop out!
