BY TENDAI RUBEN MBOFANA It has never been in doubt to most of us that the government that came into power in 1980 in Zimbabwe, was nothing more than a British project, which was created to hijack the genuine and gallant people’s revolution in order to establish a system that would perpetuate colonial interests and protect the erstwhile masters’ interests — since, the real liberators were regarded as a potential threat to the status quo. Those who took time to study how elections of 1980 were conducted by the British under governor Lord Soames would know how Zanu was permitted to commit some of the most horrendous and barbaric pre-election atrocities with impunity in the run-up to its disputed “victory” as the ruling elite knew that they never attained the true trust, love, and support of the majority of Zimbabweans. Why I call the 1980 Zanu a hijacked party is that it was no longer anywhere near the original Zanu founded by icons such as Leopold Takawira, Herbert Wilshire Chitepo, and Josiah Magama Tongogara, who had been suspiciously assassinated, most likely by the same characters who were now in charge of the already former revolutionary party (something that even the then President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, realised, as he rounded up and arrested most of the senior Zanu officials based in his country, after the killing of Chitepo). Even the then Mozambican leader Samora Machel understood this fact very well, as he was also reportedly highly distrustful of the likes of the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe, and his close ally Edgar “Twoboy” Tekere, when they suspiciously and hurriedly crossed into his country in 1975, soon after the death of Chitepo on March 18 of the same year, to take over the party’s military wing, Zanla, in order to complete the hijacking. As such, it was not surprising that barely two years into Zimbabwe’s independence, this fake and hijacked Zanu would embark on arguably the worst atrocities ever committed in this country — as the regime’s military cold-bloodedly butchered over 20 000 innocent and unarmed civilians, largely in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces — yet, the British, who today tout themselves as human rights and democracy defenders (even imposing laughable half-hearted, utterly ineffective, and pointless targeted sanctions on four top officials, and one company) looked aside, continued providing the country with military assistance, and to top it all, Queen Elizabeth knighted then brutal dictator Mugabe with some dubiously titled “Grand Knight Cross in the order of the Bath” in 1994. Why were these ridiculous targeted sanctions that we witness today — whose objective I have never quite understood, as they neither have the punch nor the sense, to genuinely and seriously force any greedy, cold-hearted and evil-minded tyrant to change his ways — not imposed when the hijacked Zanu regime was busy massacring tens of thousands of mainly Ndebele-speaking people? Well, the answer to that is simply that this British-engineered Zanu was a tool to annihilate whatever was left of the genuin