When ANC was formed 100 years ago, the idea was to end the subjugation of native South Africans by foreign occupiers, some of whom have developed this idea that their 400-year stay in the country obliterates the facts of history and makes them natural South Africans.

Equally when Zapu and Zanu took up arms to wage the war of liberation for Zimbabwe, that struggle was based on an idea to bring back the stolen dignity of the African, to restore the freedom of the native African, to reclaim the territorial ownership of Africa by Africans, indeed of Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans.
The dignity of the African is not dependent upon the benevolence of its former enslavers and colonisers, neither is the freedom of the African based on the legal definitions provided by those who yesterday enslaved Africans, and today are keen to perpetuate the subjugation of the African by patronising the post-colonial governments in Africa through the contrived doctrine of democratisation and libertarianism.

The idea of a dignified and restored African has not happened in South Africa just like it has not happened in Zimbabwe, indeed not in any one country across the African continent.

Zimbabwe has to its credit significantly progressed in reclaiming its stolen land, and has made commendable efforts at empowering the native African in matters of business and the economy. But that is as far as it goes, boasting and bragging about politically motivated forceful land reclamation, coupled with a politically inspired powerful rhetoric on the indigenising of the economy.

National accountability and sustainable capacity building to ensure the overall success of these policies remains obscure and relegated to levels of inconvenient matters that require unnecessarily burdensome commitment on the part of fortune-seeking politicians.

In South Africa it is worse. The land is still firmly occupied by the very people who forcefully displaced the native African centuries ago, and the ANC leadership has the temerity to expel from its ranks advocates of land reclamation, even going as far as labelling them racists.

Jacob Zuma presides over a system that slanders and criminalises advocacy for nationalisation of South Africa's minerals resources, and he has the audacity to preach the goodness of both land reclamation and nationalisation of resources whenever the need to solicit for votes arises.

The sickening duplicity seems to work perfectly for him. He successfully rode on the vociferous revolutionary rhetoric of people power to topple Thabo Mbeki from the presidency of South Africa six months before the completion of his second term, just as he also won the ANC's presidency at the expense of the same Mbeki, singing with an impressive pretence of bravery the revolutionary song, "Mshini Wami".
Those Zimbabweans nominated and appointed to be in the leadership of Copac have seemingly taken it upon themselves to be the anointed custodians of the ideas that should guide and govern Zimbabweans, treacherously overlooking the idea that created the Zimbabwe they so much seek to legislate, even going as far as attempting to efface the role of the liberation struggle in the birth of the same country whose governance they proclaim to be correcting. That is the message one can easily derive from the released draft constitution that Copac seeks to have ratified by the people.

The centres of struggles during the colonial era vigorously vibrated for want of freedom, dignity, justice and happiness — freedom from colonialism and imperialism, dignity stolen by powers of foreign occupation, and justice on the backdrop of an oppressive colonial regime that considered the African sub-human and next to flora and fauna, playing civiliser to our ancestors by destroying our civilisation and replacing it with a foreign one, and demonising our culture as paganism while elevating Western beliefs and values as civilised Christianity.

The idea that brought about the fall of colonial empires was the idea of defeating and discrediting domination, colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.

The sad predicament of Africa today is that the continent increasingly faces the rise of puppet politicians and intelligentsia.

We have a frightening increase in treacherous political and civic leadership, and it is sad that the intellectual of yesteryear who was a staunch advocate for self-determination has become a pawn that legitimises post-colonial domination of Africa by those defeated colonialists who have suddenly found it logical to teach the tenets of democracy to those who conquered them out of undemocratic colonial rule.
The founder fathers of African independence had hearts filled with unfaltering faith, and they nurtured and inspired the idea of self-determination with a spark that shook the foundations of colonial expansionism. We have a sad reality in that some in the leadership of Africa have become the West's appointed assassins of the idea of African sovereignty.

Joyce Banda of Malawi wears a shameless face of dependency, and her idea of prospering Malawi is pleading for donations from former colonisers. She maybe the explicit one, but she is not alone in this game of assassinating the idea of African independency.

The very countries that once sacrificed the blood of their own people by hosting Zimbabwe's liberation forces today cannot openly condemn the illegal sanctions onslaught on Zimbabwe for fear of losing donor-funding from those that are strangulating Zimbabwe's economy.

We have today people who masquerade as proponents of democracy and freedom when all they are doing is facilitating the domination of the continent by the imperial West.

The trade mark of these people is that they always are fighting against liberation movements, relentlessly trying to portray liberation ideas as archaic and obstinate — in fact so bent on assassinating the ideas that freed us from colonial subjugation.

Try as they may, ideas cannot be killed. Ideas do not die. You can tarry ideas but you cannot kill them. You can derail ideas but you cannot kill them. Che Guevara was an embodiment of revolutionary ideas and self-sacrifice, and though cut down by imperialist bullets under the skies of Bolivia, the man is not dead but immortal among us today, inspiring revolutionaries across the world that true freedom and dignity can be fought for and won.

Zimbabwe cannot be manipulated into endorsing a constitution whose essence is to facilitate the West's idea of democracy in the country — even to the point that the West openly attaches conditionalities to the outcome of the drafting of such a constitution. The EU has been quite explicit about its interest in Zimbabwe's draft constitution, declaring that an unfavourable outcome will result in the extension of the illegal sanctions.

Indeed the political interests behind most of the provisions in the draft constitution are Zimbabwean political interests in as far as the individuals harbouring those interests are concerned.

The real problem is that one group pursuing such political interest is backed by Western imperialists for its pliancy to Western hegemony, and as such the group has become a threat to the idea of Zimbabwean sovereignty, not for its interests but for its proneness to manipulation by a Western block with vested interests.

How does one explain a clause that says Zimbabwe's foreign policy shall be guided by international law? Is it not the foreign policy of countries that ratifies and domesticates international law? Is the principle of complementarity that guides enforcement of international law not guided by the diktats of foreign policy for individual countries?

The United States and Somalia are the only countries that are not signatories to the Law of the Sea Treaty and the Children's Rights Treaty. While Somalia has had no substantive government to carry out duties like signing and ratification of treaties since 1992, is it not the foreign policy of the United States that has guided that country in refusing to be party to these treaties?

Why must it make sense for Zimbabwe to have its foreign policy derived from international law when the so-called world leading country uses its foreign policy to interpret and to accept international law?
Is it not a case of these Zimbabwean assassins of ideas playing patronage politics in compliance to the diktats of those whose foreign policy on Zimbabwe employs international law as a tool to slander the revolution of the country?

Post-colonial Africa is young and thirsty for dignity, thirsty for courage, thirsty for ideas that symbolise true freedom and prosperity, and the continent is thirsty for a leadership that instils confidence in the people. Africa is thirsty for hope.

Can we today read the revolutionary faith of Herbert Chitepo in the draft constitution we seek to pass as the supreme law of the land in Zimbabwe? Do we read this revolutionary conviction in Douglas Mwonzora, Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana and in Edward Mkhosi, and indeed in the whole Copac team? Do we read it in the MDC-T national executive and do we read it in Zanu-PF's Politburo?

That revolutionary conviction belongs to the people of Zimbabwe and must never be betrayed by anyone, not even by the principals of the misnamed Global Political Agreement. Did the people of Zimbabwe speak during the outreach programme that gathered ideas about this draft constitution? If they did were they listened to?

We cannot allow assassins of ideas to make compromises that will kill our conviction and passion for a truly independent Zimbabwe. We must by definition be a demanding people, a people hungry for the restoration of our dignity, our true freedom, and a restoration of our identity; a people hungry for an expression of strength.

We must be a people driven by this eternal romanticism for self-determination — a people invigorated by the idea to make Zimbabwe a competing economic and military power among nations.

We as a nation must be driven by this lucidity, this dedication and this wisdom that can only be found in people of compassion.

Zimbabwe as a nation desperately needs this judicious combination of youth and wisdom. We are a young country that needs people with hearts that speak justice and bodies that vigorously stride for revolutionary action.

That alone will make land reclamation a success story and that alone will make the economic indigenisation policies benefit the country as a whole, not the sugar-coating scenario the South Africans have seen with the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE).

If ever there was a narrow-based policy on this planet it is the BBBEE. It has only benefited a tiny group of ANC elites and that is all about this policy.

We cannot boast of an economic empowerment programme or a land reclamation programme that selects a few elites to enjoy independence and freedom on our collective behalf. That behaviour is reactionary and counterrevolutionary.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.