Tajudeen reflects on the the life of the late former prime minister of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the injustices he committed against the people of Zimbabwe.

We shall not mourn this racist, and nobody should make us feel guilty for our freedom!

Ian Smith died in a South African hospital on Wednesday 21 November. He died a cantankerous old man, incorrigible racist with no redeeming features and no remorse for his atrocities against the Black people of Zimbabwe whom he ruled without their consent for 2 decades until popular resistance and liberation war defeated him. He was defeated in spite of the active support of the military machine of apartheid South Africa and the not so indirect collaboration of his British first cousins and his second cousins, many times removed, in Washington and other Western powers.

These facts are worth restating here because the World has changed so much in the past 2 decades that I would not be surprised even if many Zimbabwean Young People (not to talk of other Youth in Africa) do not have a memory of Ian Smith and what he stood for. For many Young people in Zimbabwe government means Mugabe/ZANU-PF. For those of us shaped by the struggles against apartheid and racist settler regimes in Southern Africa we know about Ian Smith and Rhodesia. It is only in Africa that such evil people benefit from lopsided National reconciliation and live till their old age with impunity. One day One day we will be strong enough and stable politically to demand accountability of all our leaders past and present as it is happening in Latin America and beginning to happen in Cambodia. Let all our oppressors live till old age (at the scene of their crimes) so that justice can catch up with them.

Whatever one thinks about the current situation in Zimbabwe we should not be fooled by the western Media into believing that Ian Smith was some kind of benevolent dictator under whom Southern Rhodesia (as it was then called) prospered. The BBC has been doing its usual best in balancing this evil racism represented by Smith with their opposition to Mugabe.
They are simulating nostalgia for this vile white supremacist. If there is a hell I hope Smith is roasting in it, in the most hellish section of it!

Africans are so alienated from our political leaders that many of us find it very hard to acknowledge any good in them. Even when they are doing the right things we often suspect them of doing them for the wrong reasons. And we are reluctant to praise them because of the many false prophets that we have suffered in the past. These erring on the side of caution make us even look at our many victories with cynicism post facto.

That’s why you will hear many Africans, not necessarily apologists of colonialism or imperialism, declaring that ‘things were better under colonialism’.
It is not that they want colonialism to return (with the exception of Some Sierra Leoneans!) but they are disheartened by the inability of the post colonial government and elite to sustain the initial popular legitimacy and live up to the expectations of Uhuru in a sustainable way.

Colonial apologists in the west interpret this disenchantment to mean Africans would be better served by a return to colonial rule. This way they wash their hands off their shame and guilt of their fore fathers.

Whatever Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF and President Mugabe may have turned into it will be most erroneous and deeply offensive to celebrate Ian Smith and White Minority rule. No mater how well a master treats his Slaves on his plantation they remain slaves with little or no dignity. That was why Sekou Toure made that famous nationalist declaration against colonialism when the French offered all their colonies a choice between freedom and remaining under French tutelage in the name of French Federation. He said:
‘We prefer Independence with dangers to prosperity on our Knees’. It is the same spirit of freedom that made that foremost Kenyan Nationalist, Dedan Kimathi at the height of Mau

The likes of Ian Smith preferred that we live on our knees. Even if some of the actions of our leaders like Mugabe may tempt us to draw the unpleasant parallels we should avoid this throwing away the baby with the birth water. We can resist them the way they resisted racist oppressors but lets us not be blinkered by racist propaganda that sees only perpetual conflict and collapse in Africa since we gained our freedom from them Without the enormous opportunities for public education, building of social infrastructure and expansion of the economy and its benefits brought about by independence I for one (the son of a Tailor and a petty trader) would never have had the chance to go to school and be able to write this article.

Just ask yourself how many Black Zimbabweans were graduates, medical Doctors, Lawyers, school teachers, academicians, civil servants, even bankers, business people , investors , diplomats and even farmers before independence in 1980. As a student in England in the
80s I recall how Zimbabwean Students were an elite group to themselves, with more allowances than Nigerians and their Oil bonanza.

It is in the nature of things that the middle class that is Mugabe regime’s creation that have now become his biggest critics and opponents. They have a right to take freedom as a starting point and to desire more their fathers’ generation. However they will be committing political suicide if opportunistic alliance with the West makes them throw away their rightful inheritance by saying that Mugabe is not better than or is even worse than Ian Smith and the Rhodesians.
That way they are giving all the credits for National liberation to Mugabe and denying the contribution of their own parents and the many generations of Zimbabweans who struggled, paid with their lives and suffer many degradations so that they can be free.
Memory is very important. Even if former enemies have become our new friends we should not forget the scars.

Ian smith was bad news all his life and even in death he remains that. I cannot in all honesty say May his soul rest in peace (in PIECES, yes, please God!). It will be hypocritical. May the spirit of those Zimbabweans murdered by his regime and its criminal killer squads, the Rhodesian army and allied fascist groups, be waiting to haunt him and hold him accountable for his crimes against their humanity.

* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is the deputy director of the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in his personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

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