Sanctions of Our Lifetime

For many years the people of Africa have tried to fight and rebel against the system up until the fear conquered, we had been taught of sanctions. Our political leaders have trusted and dependent on the west believing that our prosperity and freedom comes from that direction. Since the system of slavery, colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, the African has never been in peace but pretences of being peaceful. Our freedom is limited to certain structures that oppresses and depress the natural growth of the human mind. How does a land suffer with such wealth, such might and such magnitude?

Robert Mugabe has been said to be worst leader, a dictator killing his own people, grown old in government without understanding. Yet when I listen to him, he talks of total independence but the people of Zimbabwe are crossing the border coming to South Africa. Total independence from who? The west… America and Britain hence there are sanctions on the people of Zimbabwe. Sanctions have been put to the people of Zimbabwe by the west and the corporate world but not on the leader whom these sanctions are suppose to punish. I question myself…does he feel these sanctions. The people of Africa have survived for a thousand and a hundred thousands of years, migrating the continent before the system of dependence and independence came into picture. The land has always provided for its own people as the birds found shelter on its trees, the lion and the elephant feeds on it freely, the land has always provided for its own people. The introduction of the system of ownership and capitalism brought much strive and poverty as it eliminates humanity in its practice and laws. It only benefited those who created it, they had created a working class who serves and depend on their pockets, somehow this was called making a living which is the way of survival nowadays. These are the people who control the money flow, making sure who gets what, how much, where in the world, for what. It is important to them that the money does not go to the wrong hands. But has it ever occurred to you that you ask yourself if the world has not enough money to feed everyone in the world, where does the outdated food goes to from shelves in that supermarket? What happens to the bread when it is not bought, do they throw it away or they give it to the poor?

The people of Africa have been made slaves beyond their understanding and we have been driven to understand that which is an illusion. The masses depend on the jobs created by this system, without these jobs children suffer in their homes, there is no food in their homes, but remember the land had always provided for its people. The idea of a land and its people springs up many questions…how can you separate men from the land, what is men without the land. Where the sun rises and days animated by the beauty of the life force that connects him to the soil, his motherland. History told about his roots and the path that his forefathers trod. Who is she without him? Sanctions, it is what we have been living with for many years after the arrival of the colonial master. I am not different from a Zimbabwean person because in South Africa I also sleep without a plate of food in my stomach, in South Africa I am also harassed by the police, sprayed with the pepper spray, them looking for my papers, my African identity. My sustainability is limited to a certain position thus putting me into a class where I have to conform, sometimes labeled working class or the newly created poor of the poorest which is at the bottom of the pyramid. Therefore these are sanctions sanctioning the soul from its natural freedom and life under the sun. They destroy our ability to think and being productive in our habitat, sanctioning us so that we never stop working for them. Producing for the super rich, Africa’s wealth, the first fruits of our first borns. Sanctions of our lifetime that keeps us rotating around poverty depicted as disadvantaged nations living in the third world. If Mugabe is fighting for total independence we are also with him but we must first be independent from him then the people of Africa shall fight for total independence as one unit. Total independence, total freedom for the African people, where a man is not made to depend on the mine owners or factory bosses to secure the future of his children. Independence from the struggle of superiority, inferiority syndrome that destroys us, makes us fight amongst ourselves. Hence Afro-phobia the so called xenophobia which clearly explains self hate amongst the African people and their identity, a product of our colonial history and all injustices of the past.

This is what we Africans and this generation of leaders have not come to understand yet. It will still take sometime before our eyes are opened, before the mist evaporates. We are now living under these sanctions because fear of the other sanctions has been installed in our thoughts and dwellings. Fear of rebelling against the master, now he says there is a global economic crisis but we still believe him. We have been living faced with the culture crisis, lost of morals in our society, lost of land and loved ones through poverty and from many operations of the Western system. What must we believe, from which lips? This has driven the people to loose hope on the recovery of the land and they have forgotten its ability to feed all that dwelleth on it. Forgotten the strength within us as the people of Africa hence these sanctions in our lifetime… Menzi Mbonambi