By Andrew Sanyangore

Why is there a tendency to assume that we need charity and help of some kind? Have you ever considered that maybe ‘we’ Zimbabweans and Africans in general do not need help as we have grown too tired of it. The west has a tendency to push help like the drug pusher would push drugs. The last thing anyone wants is to be charity dependent or dependent in anyway. There wouldn't be a need for the word sovereign when applied to Zimbabwe and if you notice that word has been used a lot by most of us who are pro Zimbabwe. Leopold of Belgium pushed help and charity and genocidally murdered up to 20million Africans in the DRC. More than 20million Africans who did not need help. The saddest part is if you read letters by ManiKongo (King) Affonso of the Kongo centuries earlier to the Portuguese, he always insisted that his kingdom did not need anything from the Portuguese or anyone else. If they insisted, all he asked for where a few scholars, nothing more. A few centuries later Leopold with his understanding of the short human memory lied to the world by going around suggesting that Africans needed help to free them from Muslim slave traders when he was fully aware if the fact that he himself was using Africans as slaves and that most European countries had their hands dirty and bloody from this trade...there is no doubt he was fully aware of the Genocides by the Germans, English and French et al in Africa. Help/ Charity/ Aid = WAR. Inevitably they are (Help/ Charity/ Aid) going to be political or have some political inclination. The trouble is politics is WAR without bloodshed and equally WAR is politics with bloodshed. We as Africans have seen too much killing at the hands of the world but namely in recent history at the hands of the West and there has to come a time when these stealth wars have to stop. The powerful make billions from war; look at the Rothschilds for example. This help that you suggest Africa needs is too underhanded to accept. It comes and has come at too high a price. It will trap us back into dependency (somewhere we never wished to go before the white man forced is there under the pretext of good will and civilisation which we never asked for implemented through the enslavement of free peoples). So Even if the west genuinely wants to help, WE Africans have a right to say NO, but thank you for offering. But whenever we say that they turn around and demonise us. I'm starting to think that maybe WE Africans need to start offering Europeans help and see what they have to say about that.
Zimbabweans have been doing something about our situation for a long time otherwise we wouldn't be here. Many now work in foreign countries while sending funds home. The logic being, if you won't allow us to make money in our own country, we'll make it in yours. The health service in England given current figurers would collapse if Zimbabwean professionals left. This is a clear case of Zimbabweans doing something about 'their' situation albeit the poor NHS salary. The knowledge and wisdon gained from our frustrations is insummountable. Us Africans don't call it help, you do what you have to do, call it what you like. Looking closely, actually, we are helping the English in order to do something about our own situation. The Jews have been doing this for a long time with many nations in the West!!
It's not desirable for us however, because more than anything we need our health professionals in Zim - the opportunity cost favours this situation unfortunately. Moreover, some argue that Zimbabweans being forced to leave their home nation to feed it is simply a repackaged form of slavery where the boat has been replaced by the comfort of the Jumbo Jet and the whip or gun has been replaced by economics and money, the slave master is still the same except...there is no obvious force used but any a Zimbabwean will tell you they left Zimbabwe against their own will and that to me is just another manifestation of force (The most obvious way to rebut this point is to say Mugabe forced us out....I urge you to be more creative with your thought if you where thinking about going down that route). But all this swaying from the point. It is US Africans who should be offering Europeans HELP. Not the other way round. The way I see it they need us more than we need them be it economically, politically, historically or whatever. We have acquired enough of the west's knowledge to carry on rediscovering our own.