The ManicaPost
Editor’s Musings
Wendy Nyakurerwa- Matinde
THE black-on-black violence that typifies Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa — no matter how subtle it is — manifests in different forms, for instance mob justice, black undermining, harassing a fellow black person in the workplace and unwarranted Twitter wars — which is the latest fashion for the current keyboard generation.
These are just some of the signs of an inferiority complex and black self-hate.
The affirmation of ‘black is beautiful’ therefore finds itself on slippery ground and cannot exactly resonate with the black masses who seem to believe that nothing good can come out of the African community.
Yet this is coming at a time when poverty rates throughout the African continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, at least according to the World Data Lab.
In fact, Africa is among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions.
But despite that, micro-blogging site Twitter has exposed this self-hate in a segment of the Zimbabwean community.
Apparently, through white indoctrination, it is possible to hate yourself too much, to dislike your identify, your Africanness — and feel that you aren’t good enough.
These thoughts can then lead to impulses to want to punish yourself and self-distract through exaggerated ranting about the situation you find yourself in — perceived or real.
This explains why Zim Twitter, commonly known as Zwitter, often goes into overdrive when one of the keyboard ‘warriors’ dig up depressing information or images of a ‘poor’ Zimbabwe; and like a pendulum swings to the other extreme of eerie silence when something good is happening in the Southern African nation.
For example, as Air Zimbabwe’s Chimanimani gracefully flew to China to ferry the first batch of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine early this week — way ahead of many other African countries — our own Zimbabwean keyboard warriors chose to look the other way.
In their silence, you could feel that they were not very happy that Zimbabwe had managed to secure those 200 000 doses so quickly.
Compare that with the hype created around the image of a dilapidated rural school in Gokwe or Chipinge and you will understand how self-hate thrives on constantly criticising and judging.
When this hate takes over, you can almost touch the euphoria as someone talks about their own worthlessness and failure as well as that of their kith.
What a tragedy.
The focus is always on the slums, the most miserable environment as the negative stereotype of Zimbabwe as a nest of poverty is propagated. At the heart of it all is low self-esteem.
But maybe even more tragically, self-hate convinces the victim that the people around them view them through the same discerning lenses, hence the lack of confidence in telling the country’s good news.
But is poverty — in its very broad context considering that societal expectations differ across civilisations — peculiar to Africa, particularly Zimbabwe, the small tea-pot shaped country tucked south of the equator?
Since we hear so much about Zimbabwe’s ‘poverty’, is everyone in Europe, Asia and the Americas living pretty?
Do they all have enough food and clean water, as well as access to an efficient health system and a comfortable bed, among other things?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is a resounding NO.
Poverty is a global problem that does not start and end in Zimbabwe.
According to the European Data Journalism Network, 17 percent of Europeans are poor, that is 85 million inhabitants of the Old Continent, although of course there are major differences between countries with others doing considerably well.
And while begging is commonplace in most big global cities, it seems synonymous with Paris, France.
From the beggars at the metro stations, the people who approach you outside restaurants, to the families in bus shelters and those who play a song or write a poem in exchange for some small change, the variety and amount of begging in Paris can be shocking.
In the evening, the number of homeless people around Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, the largest international airport in France, is sad.
In total, there were around 8,8 million people living below the poverty line in France in 2017.
But the patriotic French people prefer to keep it in-house as they mend their affairs.
They have a true sense of identity and an intimate conscience of unity and common belonging. But perhaps even more interestingly, poverty is so much higher in the United States than in other industrialised countries.
Regardless of how poverty is measured — the United States is at its high end. Whether we look at children’s poverty or the working class, the story is the same.
Yet data from the World Values Survey indicates that 100 percent of all Americans who are in the lowest income group are either very or quite proud of their country.
Then there is Madrid in Spain, Europe, where you will find a shanty settlement called Canada Real, one that makes Epworth’s Mahalape or Dangamvura’s Federation luxury settlements.
Surprisingly, these patriotic Spaniards do not rush to their embassies chanting their country’s derogatory songs, neither do they talk about their dirty laundry in public. How a country is portrayed is therefore a choice of its inhabitants.
Fellow Zimbabweans, instead of portraying a nation in turmoil, we can choose to tell the world about the vast investments opportunities in our country; or how we are extending the olive branch to our former foes in our re-engagement drive.
Till next week, let’s chew the cud.
