ZIMBABWE HAS HAD THOUSANDS OF GEORGE FLOYD’S BUT NO ONE CARED.

Zimbabwe has been under the knee of unilateral US sanctions, which have collectively punished millions of innocent Zimbabweans, murdering thousands, while displacing over 4mil who have become refugees and a burden on SADC for 19yrs.

When we protested these sanctions, very few black people in America or Africa joined our protests. Even pseudo-revolutionaries like Andile Mngxtama of BLF took the rightwing white propaganda hardline that sanctions are not destroying Zimbabwe but Zanu PF corruption is.

This mirrors how now, many white supremacists in America are telling us lies about George Floyd’s past to justify a hate crime and murder.

EFF also sided with MDC [the lead opposition party of Zimbabwe] when they [MDC] began to try and use illegal violent protests to destabilize Zimbabwe and force undemocratic regime change.

What is ironic is MDC was formed by white Rhodesian farmers and the west to reverse land reform and return land to white settlers, in contrast with EFF’s manifesto.‬

‪What Africans need to understand is Zimbabwe is the most revolutionary country in Africa. This is why a whole US congress created a specific legislation to sanction Zimbabwe [ZDERA], while two US Presidents went further to declare three national emergencies upon the small country, identifying it as an unusual and extraordinary threat to US interests.

After this a further five economic sanctions that included the deployment of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were imposed alongside EU, Canadian, Australian and their allies’ sanctions.

The purpose of these coercive measures being to collectively punish the Zimbabwean people for being the best educated Africans shrewd enough to take their land back from white settlers, build a formidable black economy with the second biggest stock exchange in Africa and transform that economy into black hands. More critically, sending its army to Mozambique and Congo to stop western sponsored destabilization.

So by Africans standing and watching such a revolutionary country being suffocated under US oppression and this crime against humanity [sanctions]; you are no different to the cops who stood and watched George Floyd being murdered by a white supremacist.

In fact, you are tacitly supporting the racist ideology that Africans should not own their own land, transform their economies or defend other African nations when attacked by imperialists. That’s what you are standing down for.

#BlackLivesMustMatterToBlackPeopleFirst for them to matter to other races. Suffice to say #SanctionsMustMatterToZimbabweansFirst before other Africans begin to care about Zimbabwean human rights being violated by the US and the entire western world. ‬

For if Africans can’t see their own humanity in a revolutionary power like Zimbabwe. If you can’t stand up for African rights, forget someone else -worse still your enemy- treating you [an African] like a human being when you allowed Zimbabweans to be dehumanized for their resistance of western hegemony.

Rutendo Bereza Matinyarare.