Sistas’ Place in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, was packed on Nov. 15 as members of the December 12th Movement reported on their trip to Zimbabwe. D12 Chairwoman Viola Plummer, along with Omowale Clay, Colette Pean and Sekou Willis, were invited guests to the Seventh Congress of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.
ZANU-PF is the governing party in Zimbabwe. Its founders waged a guerilla war against the racist white settler regime of Ian Smith and won independence. As a teenaged freedom fighter, Zimbabwe’s President Emerson Mnangagwa awaited execution by British colonial authorities before being reprieved.
Zimbabwe is one of many nations that are being punished with economic sanctions because it refuses to surrender to U.S. and European banksters. To these colonialists, Zimbabwe’s great crime was to allow its people to take back their land from European settlers.
Despite 22 years of these harsh sanctions, Zimbabwe is moving forward! A slogan of ZANU-PF’s Seventh Congress is “leaving no one and no place behind.”
While the capitalist media claimed land redistribution was ruining agriculture, Zimbabwe had a record wheat crop of 2.5 million tons.
On Nov. 7, Zimbabwe’s first satellite went into orbit. As Omowale Clay said, “Europeans do not own space.”
Colette Pean pointed out that the ZIM-SAT 1 satellite will help with weather forecasting, better mapping and reforestation. Zimbabwean engineers helped design it. It’s part of Africa’s fight against capitalist climate change.
Sekou Willis told of Zimbabwe’s resilience. The economy has sharply increased in the last two years. Inflation is coming down despite the U.S./NATO war against Russia that’s increased prices on many goods.
The African country is producing more of its own fertilizer and cement. Hydroelectric dams are being built. Textile plants are being opened to use Zimbabwe’s cotton.
Solar power is being harnessed in every part of Zimbabwe to help irrigate farmland. Crops are becoming more drought resistant.
Zimbabwe will never surrender
The meeting’s special guests were New York City Council Member Charles Barron and former New York State Assembly Member Inez Barron. Both have fought tirelessly for reparations.
Charles Barron invited the late Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to speak at City Hall. The Barrons donated $5,000 to help Zimbabwe.
Viola Plummer reminded listeners of D12’s vanguard role in supporting African liberation. Its founders helped build the African Liberation Day marches in both Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
D12 Field Marshal Coltrane Chimurenga was buried in the capital of Zimbabwe—Harare’s Hero’s Acre—with a 21-gun salute. Charles Barron described D12 as “our ambassadors in Africa.”
The Museum of African Liberation is being built in Harare.
Many African countries sent representatives to ZANU-PF’s Seventh Congress. The 14 countries that belong to the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) have demanded that the sanctions on Zimbabwe be lifted.
According to Plummer, the biggest cheers were for the Palestinian delegates.
Like the people of Zimbabwe, Palestinians had their land stolen by European settlers. Among the Israeli settlers are several thousand who formerly lorded over Africans in Zimbabwe.
“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” claimed the former Zionist Prime Minister Golda Meir, who was educated in Milwaukee. White settler leader Ian Smith claimed Black people wouldn’t rule Zimbabwe for a thousand years. Palestine, like Zimbabwe, will be free.
Zimbabwe still faces many challenges. Super-pig Elon Musk eyes the country’s reserves of lithium, which are used in electric cars. Western capitalists would also like to snatch the world’s biggest diamond mine in Zimbabwe.
British colonialists hanged and decapitated Mbuya Nehanda, the leader of Zimbabwe’s first Chimurenga or liberation war. Today her statue stands tall in Harare. Zimbabwe will never surrender.
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