Who/what are these British?

If you answer that question by saying "They are people, just as we are, if you allow for a few differences." you are probably almost as old as I am. Younger people have had their heads filled with some very strange ideas. Maybe they are inconsistent collections of ideas, but the results could be dangerous. Perhaps we can reduce the danger if we point out how the messages we hear cancel each other out.

On the one hand, they are so weak and biddable that, we are told, they only need Morgan Tsvangirai to give the order and they will lift the sanctions’ they imposed on some of our richest chefs. To us old-timers that idea sounds ridiculous, but remember that a lot of younger people have been bombarded with unlikely statements about illegal sanctions’ any time they listen to Dead BC, read the Herald or listen to the slogans shouted at rallies. As far as possible, they have been denied access to any other information.

On the other hand, these same feeble, spineless British are so powerful that they only need to tell the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to lift their sanctions’ and the red carpets will be rolled out next time our First Shopper decides to visit New York and Paris. We don’t hear any suggestion that the EU and IMF are rather tough nuts to crack; hard-headed business people who won’t suddenly resume lending money to people who have proved themselves rather unreliable at repaying. Ask them to lift sanctions’? You must be dreaming. But some people threaten they won’t let the inclusive government work until Morgan pulls off that trick.

That might be a superhuman task, but it doesn’t limit the powers of the British, according to

Tafataona Mahoso, George Charamba and their cohorts. If we believed them, no black person is capable of having an independent thought in his or her head unless the British’ put it there. In Jonathan Moyo’s heyday, Tony Blair was credited with this power. “Did he work that trick all on his own?” I wanted to ask. I don’t often listen to Dead BC, so correct me if I’m wrong, but they seem to realise they can’t credibly attribute that power to the duo who occupy TBlair’s old seat (what are their names – Clammeron & Kegg?).

Isolate people long enough, repeat a story often enough, and even old people begin to believe it. During one of those campaigns when busloads of rural senior citizens were brought into Harare to demonstrate’ something or other, I met a woman from deepest, darkest UMP, probably as old as myself (she certainly had less teeth) who seemed ready to blame young Tony B for the weather and to suspect he was plotting to steal her goats.

Next time we hear this kind of nonsense, why don’t we all, calmly, point out that if the Brits are as powerful as all that, it’s futile to resist and if they’re as insignificant as the anti-sanctions crowd’ seem to think, they’re not worth fighting?

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