If there is a singular example of why Africa seems to have been orphaned by God, luck or fate, it is the conversation that is taking place in the country of Zimbabwe. The premier of the former country/Colony of Rhodesia has died this week, sparking the most depressing conversation people could have. Be a part of a society that actively seeks to keep you from taking part in the economic gains of the “bread basket of Africa”, or be the elite power bloc in a country that has become a joke to the international community.
These are the choices that the native Africans had under the white rule of Rhodesia. A system of Aparthied that made the Jim Crow laws of the American South look like kindergarden. There were jobs to be had, menial low paying ones, combined with laws that actively mad sure that you would not be able to climb the social ladder by education, nor economical prosperity. Surely one would not wish to have anything to do with such a system, for even if you are the elite, it creates a disdain for ones fellow man that fosters a depraved system.
What makes one pause to be so against this system is the one that has followed. To exact revenge against the people who had kept you down is a human emotion, but if your revolution was to have justice and based on human rights, then the Land Carving excercise that is the root of the problems Zimbabwe faces today. The average life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 35. With a president who will be 82, that is unconscionable.
In my brief time on this earth I have been the subject of discrimination, both because of my religion and the color of my skin, yet I can hardly fathom the lengths of discrimination that the Black Africans had to endure, both in Rhodesia and South Africa. Yet, there is the difference between having competant morally centered leadership, instead of Mugabe. For South Africa has the ability, if not the desire, to be a Hegemonic Power within Africa.
For the leadership of South Africa held true to the democratic principles of minority rights, and while there was new legislation that passed with the intention of creating a even playing field, and wealth distribution that was fair, nothing reached the lengths and depravity that we saw in Zimbabwe.
It is now that we see mouthpieces of the Mugabe regime, that say while things are tough now, they were so much worse under the rule of the Ian Smith regime. “Even though we had food we were not treated as men” is the mantra I have read over and over. “Mugabe is not to blame, the inability to change by Ian Smith and other whites are” is a self absolving arguement. People had choices: moral, political, economic choices that they made to do cruel and unspeakable acts in order to seek vengence, and then seek hollow legitimacy and say, “it was the will of the people”.
While Zimbabwe’s social reformation seems to sadly be the norm in cases where large segments of the population are discriminated against, there is the question of, “what if” when we look to places like South Africa and the United States who suffered the same injustices, yet did not tear itself apart. Each person must make their own choice of serving in Heaven, or to rule in hell. The Africans in Zimbabwe have decided it is Better to Rule in Hell I Guess.
