These are men and women who are in positions of power who exploit and extort their own people for personal gain and ridiculous amounts of wealth. They are the people who see Africa get raped by the West (and now the East has joined too) and instead of murderous rage, like it and see it as an opportunity to make a quick getaway to wealth. These are the very same pimps whom the narrator mentions- that continue to peddle Africa to the highest bidder. These individuals must be dealt with before a truly successful war can be waged against the hegemony that is the West.
The narrator aptly names one of his chapters "the wasp is
corrupt". He goes on to tell the reader how a wasp that was building her
nest used all the resources around her including the food which was an innocent
caterpillar that she killed with her venomous sting. The narrator equates her behavior
to that of the white settlers in the colonial era and in "these times of
neo-colonialism." As much as it holds true for the settler, the same can
be side of the Africans in power and those like them who are going to one day
step up. Theoretically, the settler and the mother country ceased to be such
evil the day South Africa got her independence. In the case of Zimbabwe, it was
seen to it that they were nova to soar to such heights by the Third Chimurenga.
Today the wasp is the hero and heroine, the teacher and the businessman, and
the civil servant and the politician who in their entire splendor, have sold
the masses downriver for their gain. These are the people who must be dealt
with first before we go fighting western economic and political hegemony
because so long as these individuals are around, no true victory can be
attained.
The narrator at times spends too much of his anger on the white racists and
their vestiges in Africa. He seems to forget that in each victory the settler
had over the African, an African had a hand in it. Individuals like Lotshe, the
narrator's dead uncle and African members of the Selous Scouts come to mind. This
bad seed has lived through the ages and has led to many false starts in the
narrator's country and in Africa as a whole. They are the ones on whom the continent
must focus their attention as a whole because at each turn they weaken the
cause and the resolve of the continent. Their actions at each turn give the supremacists
greater fervor and openings to exploit. Their actions vindicate the white
humanitarians who come in with aid that has strings attached to it. Africa’s
blows against neo-colonialism are weakened by these people who grow a
conscience that favors the Whiteman. In any struggle sellouts are either totally
eliminated or silenced till victory is achieved. Such must be done before we
start facing our more illustrious white enemy.
One might say that the white man still has a monopoly over many African
minds and African economies and worse still; their politics and those we must
continue the good fight. Africa thus has precedence. If history is anything to
go by, it shows that after the initial reactions to colonialism, Africa has
always come back stronger and managed to dethrone the white colonialists. In
essence, the Whiteman has been defeated once; it can be done again
(chisingaperi chinoshura). Adding on to that we have home advantage, only the
people with true roots get to win the majority of the time. The Whiteman has no
true roots in Africa. He has to rely on the weak, the myopic and the willing to
get a foothold on the continent. Furthermore, when one looks at the big
historical picture -something the narrator neglects half the time- the presence
of this Whiteman in our land becomes a mote in God's eye. We are essentially
free were it not for the sellouts amongst us.
If the narrator and many others like him were to manage to liberate us from
white supremacy and economic hegemony one problem still remains. The problem is
the fact that our land is still a whore eaten to the core by the syphilis of
the white man's coming. Our land can never be whole so long as we as its people
do not take care of that syphilis. It is an ailment that has generally caused
corruption, greed, and subservience to white ideas and the man behind them.
Africa must vast the medicine man first before it goes fighting the Whiteman
who in the book is represented by the West. She must visit the medicine man
because if she doesn’t the west will use her weakness to their advantage. Africa
can never be truly free until she is rejuvenated and has a clear cut goal. Right
now all she does is win battles but never the war.
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