It was the enthusiasm with which the Big Brother Amplified (BBA) winner showed when he almost dived to administer the hug which must have confounded viewers; it almost seemed he wanted to give the old man a peck on the cheek.
Here was a new amazing episode in the documentary Mugabe and the White African.
If anyone had any doubt about Mugabe’s political intelligence, here it was in full display. In the past decade Mugabe has often come out as a racist. This image was entrenched in the minds of all those who watched how the land reform programme was executed. The most quotable quote during that time was when Mugabe said: “Let’s strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy; let the white man tremble.”
Indeed the way the land reform programme was made to play out was profoundly racist; and the Southern African Development Community’s Tribunal confirmed this. Land was grabbed from white people only because they happened to be white; it did not matter that they had been born in Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia) and for all intents and purposes were indigenous. It also didn’t matter whether they had bought their farms or inherited them. Many had bought their land after getting “letters of no interest” from Mugabe’s government.
The internationally well-received documentary Mugabe and the White African explores this theme. Here is a white man, Michael Campbell, who grows mangoes on a farm he bought after Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. He has got the letter of no interest. He provides work and home to 500 black people but his farm has got to be expropriated and given to a young black man who happens to be related to a high-ranking government official.White Zimbabweans are not indigenous according to some laws in our statutes, particularly the Zimbabwe Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act of March 2010. Indigenous people are defined as “previously disadvantaged people” meaning blacks who were denied certain privileges by the white colonial regime until it was deposed in 1980.
So who was this non-indigenous young man hugging and nearly kissing our president and getting away with a whopping US$50 000 for it? It was a great publicity coup for Mugabe. In the past he has tried to sanitise his blooded image by rewarding another white African, swimming sensation Kirsty Coventry for hauling in Olympic medals; she even got away with a diplomatic passport.
But besides Mugabe’s publicity coup, what are the real lessons coming out of Wendall’s victory and Vimbai Mutinhiri, the other BBA contestant’s commendable showing? Our country’s scars are still threatening to burst and ooze pus. Indeed, even while BBA was still running, we were reminded of this by the invasion of Vimbai’s mother’s farm in Marondera. Not that the world cared much about it seeing she herself had acquired it in the racist frenzy that accompanied land reform. But that invasion reminded us of the excesses that Zanu PF is capable of and it vindicated those who have always argued that the land redistribution programme was never meant to empower previously disadvantaged masses but was used to promote the politics of patronage.
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The irony of the invasion was on display when Mugabe welcomed Vimbai and her parents to State House. His message was Vimbai had done the country proud by staying so long in the BB House. But while she was representing the country, her home was being invaded by sponsored thugs who got away without censure from the head of state!
Reality television is now the fad the world over. It hasn’t really taken root in the hearts of most Zimbabweans. Indeed, mainly teenagers and housewives watch it in this country. Menfolk wouldn’t care less about it, watching football instead. But because there wasn’t much football on TV while BBA was running, many men watched it out of curiosity when they heard that our two representatives were doing well. In the end we all derived some lessons from it. The greatest lesson was that life is very competitive; it’s about outdoing one another using guile and even chicanery.
The good old lesson of team building, although helpful, should only be used for one’s personal end. But in the end, the real lesson is that one has to earn his or her wealth. This is a salutary lesson especially for us in Zimbabwe who in the past decade have been taught to believe that wealth is gained through expropriation and corruption; or patronage as happened with our representative last year, Munyaradzi Chidzonga, who lost on the big stage but was rewarded back home for some sick reason.
But could Wendall’s victory be a real unifying factor? The answer should be a big YES. A lot of work went into the victory; there were people back home that mobilised votes for him. A huge campaign was launched around town to conscientise people on the importance of voting if Zimbabwe was to stand a fighting chance against competitors from bigger countries such as Nigeria, with a population of 150 million compared to our 14 million. Wendall’s family, especially his mother, was at the heart of the campaign. The campaign for Vimbai was not as vigorous, which would explain the fact that she didn’t go all the way.
Zimbabweans looked beyond race and recognised ability as the single most important game changer. If they had been racist, then Vimbai would have emerged the winner because blacks outnumber whites more than a thousand to one in this country.
The generality of Zimbabweans are willing to live and work together in harmony across the racial and political divide. It would seem now that there is a lot that unites us; much more than that divides us. Our politics is divisive; it has as its firm base, violence and coercion. It is based on personality cults, when we all know cultism is never based on rational thinking but on fanaticism. It is this fanaticism that breeds and justifies violence.
Our national culture is a unifying force; we are unified by those whose achievements, whether in sport or in the arts, we admire. Our culture recognises hard work and prowess in the face of hardship. Politicians take advantage of this for their own personal ends but recent events show that the people’s spirit will triumph, eventually.
