I said what I bloody said & I stand firm in it.

Not once did I undermine or excuse colonialism, in fact, it’s the first catalyst I acknowledged. Mainly colonialism, slavery & bad governance have led us here.

All 3 are interlinked & excusing the latter is dishonest. THREAD https://twitter.com/becca_mts/status/1318855917824245760

I’ll use Zimbabwe as an example. The colonial era (1888 - 1980) had a disastrous impact. From racialised land policies to Britain engaging in neo-colonialism in order to loot Zim’s resource wealth. However, the example I’ll focus on here is repression of freedom of expression.

The colonial regime implemented repressive laws which worked to restrict freedom of expression in order to silence challengers. Laws such as: The Broadcasting Act (BA) giving the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) monopoly over broadcasting to push propaganda...

Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 but instead of repealing said repressive laws & decolonising the constitution, Mugabe inherited the BA law & used it in similar ways in order to silence his political challengers. The BA was then replaced with the Broadcasting Services Act

Other laws implemented by Mugabe’s gvt to repress freedom of expression are the Public Order Security Act & the Criminal Law Act, Protection of Privacy Act & till this day, ZBC is still used as the gvt’s mouthpiece all to repress freedom by silencing dissenting voices

Mugabe’s gvt also *physically* directly & indirectly repressed freedom of expression eg: the 1983 massacre of Ndebele civilians (Gukurahundi) that led to over 20,000 deaths & Operation Remove the Rubbish (Murambatsvina) resulting in the killings/displacements of over 700,000 ppl

And many more cases such as the mismanagement of the cholera outbreak of 2008 to silence opposition etc. All this to demonstrate how *both* the colonial leaders & African leaders are to blame for curtailing Zimbabwe’s freedom of expression thus crippling democracy

Colonialism is to blame because Mugabe, like many other post-colonial leaders, was put in power as a result of colonialism & picked up where it left off. But African leaders *are also to blame* because they had *agency* after independence yet chose coloniality >> decolonisation

This is an example of why I argue that it is intellectually lazy to excuse poor governance. Repression was handed to them but they had agency. They had a choice. So whilst we rightfully condemn colonialism, we must also hold African leaders accountable for choosing greed.

Colonialism still perpetuates our systems today & stands as the ‘first runner’ of Africa’s woes & instead of African leaders to drop the baton & establish new just systems, our leaders chose to catch the baton & strengthen & extend colonial law as is demonstrated by Mugabe.

Colonialism played a heavy hand in the atrocities I have referenced & it also facilitated them. However, colonialism did not force Mugabe to massacre 20,000+ Ndebele people, (in)directly kill/displace 2.4-odd Zimbabweans or to strengthen colonial repressive laws. He had a choice.

2.4 million Zimbabweans*