By Jonathan maphenduka
THE government and the opposition have in their unholy coalition failed to pass the acid test of injustice to the African people without subjecting the executive decision to parliamentary debate to establish the case for compensation.
The opposition stance to join the government in this regard must be condemned in the strongest possible terms because it leaves the African people in the lurch without anyone to defend them in this injustice.
The decision to compensate is like rule by decree without declaring an emergency, when in fact the emergency is the dire situation in which the people of this country find themselves, which situation has crippled medical services and when poor working conditions have forced the cream of this country’s teachers to emigrate to every corner of the world in droves.
This smacks of the worst freedoms of a dictatorship.
Where has government found the money to prioritise compensation of former farmers when it can’t find the money to pay doctors instead of threatening them when they call for understanding their dire situation?
Condemnation must also apply to the white farming community whose avarice seeks to squeeze the very life blood out of poor Africans in a year when government can ill-afford the cost of compensating the farmers.
The move to compensate them cannot be justified in a season where 10 million African people are starving and government is handicapped to find the money to feed what in fact are orphans of colonialism.
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No responsible government can rush to paying its questionable debts and leave its citizens starving to death. The move to compensate is not merited at all, but both government and the opposition see it as a means to make political capital at the expense of a helpless population.
This can only be done by a government that lacks working knowledge of the history of colonialism at home and elsewhere in Africa. In Namibia, the Germans compensated Namibians for what Germany did to the people of that country and so did the British compensate the people of Kenya for atrocities they committed during the Mau Mau uprising.
Needless, of course, to remind the reader that the persecuted Jews were compensated by the Germans for the Holocaust crimes. The Jewish people were victims of Germany atrocities.
Why are the rules of international justice being turned against the people of this country for the sins of British colonial rule? Perhaps the British would care to explain. The ordinary people of this country must be told why double standards are being applied in their case.
The people’s government has failed to justify this back-to-front puzzle. The world-famous peculiar British justice and right must explain. The African people of this country, when all is said and done, have become orphans of the British colonial system after all, because the Lancaster House Constitution has colonial strings attached.
This remains a fact even after expiry of provision of the 10-year moratorium for white farmers’ protection. The colonial strings in our life are being used as an instrument of blackmail. The people’s government has shamefully sucked up to the fraud of compensation.
l Jonathan Maphenduka is an author and political analyst. Email: [email protected] Phone +263 772 332 404
