Pye

You're all excited because you've found an "educated" man who happens to share and validate your appalling attitude towards other Africans. What this man is saying is utter rubbish, and perhaps that explains why he felt the need to start his argument by intimidating people with his degrees. One can have a thousand degrees, but that does not automatically make that person intelligent, wise, nor does it mean that everything they say is factual. The suggestion that Africa had borders in the same sense that we understand modern territorial and national borders is fundamentally misleading. There is a significant difference between the territories or spheres of influence of precolonial kingdoms and the rigid, internationally recognised borders imposed through colonialism. If Africa already had borders in the modern sense, what exactly was there for colonial powers to partition among themselves? More importantly, African societies were not static. Communities moved across territories in search of water, grazing land, fertile soil and better conditions for survival. Their movements were not necessarily confined by fixed territorial boundaries as we understand them today. Take the San people, for example, among the earliest inhabitants of what is now South Africa. Their traditional way of life involved extensive movement across the land. Can anyone meaningfully identify where their ancestral territory began and ended using today's understanding of borders? Let's stop confusing the existence of precolonial kingdoms, territories and spheres of influence with the modern nation-state borders that colonialism imposed on Africa. They are not the same thing.

Being Zimbabwean does not mean I must remain silent about issues affecting our neighbours. Africa’s progress is our collective concern, and equality should never be mistaken for divisive politics.