No liberation without land January 6, 2014 <http://www.herald.co.zw/author/silence/> silence muchemwa <http://www.herald.co.zw/category/articles/opinion-a-analysis/> Opinion & Analysis
<http://www.herald.co.zw/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/land.jpg> Description: landThere can be no true nationhood and national sovereignty without land. There can be no national identity without land. Land is life. Without land there is no food, water, houses, farming and plants with medicinal value, minerals and all kinds of raw materials. Animals cannot live without pastures. Pastures are on land not in the clouds. When people are deprived of their land they suffer humiliation, servitude, poverty, ignorance and disease. Their life expectancy becomes shorter and their child mortality rates higher. Colonial dispossession of land was genocide and continues to be genocide inflicted on the people of Africa and other peoples of the world. Where are the aborigines of Australia? Where are the Khoisan in South Africa? The Khoi people fed Jan van Riebeeck and his people in the Western Cape when they arrived from Europe. King Moshoeshoe and Chief Moroka fed the Voortrekkers when they arrived in what is today called Free State, for many years until their guests turned against them. Loss of land is loss of nationhood and economic power. In South Africa, it has been taboo to talk about land dispossession and land repossession. The critics ask, Why do you always talk about the past? Lets move on! Apartheid is dead. There was no colonialism in South Africa. This country became independent in 1910 and was granted dominion status through the British Westminster Statute of 1931. South Africa also became a member of the League of Nations. Moreover, this country was empty land when Europeans arrived here. If this country was empty land, why did Africans have to fight against colonial invasion of their country in 1510 and in 1657 soon after Jan van Riebeeck arrived in 1652 up to 1905 in wars of national resistance against colonialism led by African Kings in battles such as Keiskamahoek, Qoboqobo, Amalinde, Sandileskop, the War of Mlanjeni, Thababosiu, Kolonyane, Seqiti, Qalabane, Labu Mountain, Blood River, Ulundi Isandlwana, etc? These wars were not fought by roaming animals. They were fought by human beings who understood what it would mean for their children to be dispossessed of their land. Dispossession of Africans began with the European Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Africans were sent all over the world to go and build the economies of poor Western countries. Writing about the barbaric slave trade, the Rev J H Soga stated; Murder was the order of the day. Men, women and children were massacred, and the captives sold without regard to the ties of fatherhood or offspring . . . family on family, tribe on tribe was often completely swept away not even an infant being sped. The Industrial Revolution would never have advanced in England without African slavery and colonialism. The prime minister of England, Sir Winston Churchill, acknowledged this fact. Our possession of West Indies gave us the strength, the support, especially the capital, the wealth . . . which enabled us to come through the great struggles of the Napoleonic Wars. When the slave trade became discredited in the consciences of civilised people, another vile system of dispossessing Africa came into play. Its European architects under their chairman Otto von Bismarck met at the Berlin Conference from November 1884 to February 1885, to slice this magnificent cake, as Bismarck put it. Through the Berlin Act February 26, 1885, imperialist Western countries partitioned Africa into British Africa, French Africa, Portuguese Africa, Belgian Africa, German Africa, Spanish Africa, and Italian Africa. There was no Africa left for Africans, except modern Ethiopia. A tiny country like Somalia had the triple misfortune of becoming British Somaliland, French Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. This laid the foundation for the present political chaos in Somalia. Through colonialism the riches of Africa fuelled the economies of Europe. When colonialism was fearlessly challenged by Africas people, the European colonisers retreated and in many cases granted independence, without economic ownership and control by Africans. Africans merely owned the flag and parliament. There were no reparations for the many years that the riches of Africa had enriched and developed Europe. Instead, African countries were strangled with what was termed foreign debts initially called foreign aid. African economies are still owned and controlled by their former colonisers that neglected the economic development of Africa and suppressed her technological advancement by making sure Africans remained backward educationally and, therefore, easily cheatable. Economically, European colonisers never meant Africans to fully repossess their continent and own its riches. For instance, over 50 percent of arable land in Namibia is owned by less than 4 000 Europeans. In Kenya, many former Mau Mau fighters who fought their war of liberation against colonial dispossession recently won a case in a High Court in London for atrocities that British colonial government inflicted on them. Kenya still has a problem of land dispossession 50 years after their fight for the liberation of the country. In Rhodesia, through the Land Appropriation Act 1930, the Zimbabweans were dispossessed of their land. There has been a great deal of ballyhoo about Zanu-PF depriving white farmers of their land. There was no such noise when Cecil Rhodes, that arch-agent of British imperialism, dispossessed Africans of their land and dished it out to British colonial settlers. Nobody raised any alarm when Cecil Rhodes proclaimed: The clearing of the land of savages could be achieved in two to three years with the aid of a certain number of machine guns. I contend that we are the first race in the world. That the more world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre of territory provides the birth of the English race and a greater portion of the world under our rule. King Moshoeshoe, after studying this brutal thinking of European colonialists, said: The white men seem to be bent on proving that in politics Christianity plays no part . . . It may be you white people do not steal cattle, but you steal whole countries; and if you had your wish you would send us to pasture our cattle in the clouds Whites are stealing blackmans land in the Cape to here (Free State which was part of Lesotho) and call it theirs. When Jan van Riebeeck told the Khoi Africans that they must reduce their cattle because there were not enough pastures for the cattle of the colonial settlers and those of the indigenous Africans, the leader of the Khoi, Doman asked, Who then, with the greatest degree of justice, should give way to land, the natural owner, or the foreign invader? Pope Benedict XVI has boldly said: Our Western way of life has stripped Africas people of their riches and continue to strip them. South Africa was built on crude colonial injustice and criminal disregard for the indigenous African majority. The Union of South Africa Act 1909, a British Statute handed the African country it had colonised to 349 837 colonial settlers against the then population of five million Africans. It is important to point out that the colonisation of Africans was not only of their land. It was also of their knowledge and minds. Everything African was destroyed especially indigenous knowledge. Southern Times This paper was delivered by Dr Motsoko Pheko at the Africa Century International African Writers Conference, Johannesburg, on November 8, 2013. Thé Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy" Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi "Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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