Jonathan Moyo continued the messaging by arguing that the battle against the ‘regime change
sanctions’ strategy is the latest in a series of historic ant‐colonial struggles to ‘reclaim’ the rights
of the ‘indigenous people’ of Zimbabwe. Thus the battles against the colonial regime were
followed by land struggles of the post 2000 period, culminating in the fight to impose majority
indigenous control over the entire economy. Key to this struggle, cast in a Fukuyama style ‘end of
history’ gambit, is the intention to mobilize the youth as the key beneficiary of the process:
In the same way that the armed struggle in the Second Chimurenga was necessary to
fulfill the objectives of the First Chimurenga against colonialism, the transformation of the
ownership of the majority equity in our country through indigenization is necessary as an
expression of the Last Chimurenga to complement the economic gains of the Third
Chimurenga against neo‐colonialism…..
The..key factor of the Last Chimurenga is that its demographic content is defined by
young Zimbabweans, most of them in their teens, twenties and thirties and others in their
forties who are not only in the trenches of the struggle for economic empowerment
through indigenization but also who, along with their offspring, are the main beneficiaries
of that struggle.27
It is a symptom of the major political challenges that currently confront Zanu PF, that one of its
key strategists has begun to talk about the ‘Last Chimurenga’, as though the struggle for
indigenization, any more than the land struggles, can reach some kind of finality. Perry Anderson
has written that ‘they who speak of the end of history do not escape it’28 and it is clear that in the
complex struggles of history these and other issues will continue to be fought over, defined and
redefined and will not be cut short by the crude messaging of a party hack. This symptom
became even more apparent after Zanu PF war veterans ‘located’ a mass grave in the Mount
Darwin area in Mashonaland Central, and attempted to use it to add grist to its anti‐colonial
indigenization campaign. In the words of the Zanu PF Minister of Empowerment, Saviour
Kasukuwere, “After taking our resources, they had the audacity to throw our people in mine
shafts. It’s an insult. We need to understand that the white people are not here for charity.”29
The local outcry against the way the remains of the dead were treated by Zanu PF soon lowered
the tempo of this campaign, fraught as it was with uncovering different layers of historical
culpability that could well have included the Mugabe regime itself.30
27
Jonathan Moyo,’Indigenisation: The Last Chimurenga.’
www.zimpapers.co.zw/index.php?view=article$catid=39%3Aopinion$id=2347 Accessed on 14/03/2011.
28
Perry Anderson, A Zone of Engagement, Verso, London‐New York, 1992.
29
Jason Moyo, ‘Mass grave becomes Zim election fodder’. Mail and Guardian 25‐31 March 2011.
30
Shari Eppel, ‘The Silencing of the Bones.’ SPT‐Zimbabwe Update, No.2. March 2011.
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