Even Chameleons Stalk Their Prey: Rinonyenga Rinohwarara Rinosumudza Musoro Rawana, Twenty-First Century Imperial Sleights of Hand and the Recolonisation of Africa

Abstract

Arguing that chameleons know best how to appear to be stationary even as they are motionary towards targeted flies, at which they suddenly dart their swift tongues once within range, this paper contends that the emergent postbinary world order is a chameleons’ world; it is a world where Africans – deemed, in Eurocentric animistic discourses, to be indistinct from flies – will be increasingly cannibalised. Of course, chameleons use sleights of tongue when they feast on flies but imperialists also use sleights of hand when they want to feast on Africans. Drawing on the Shona (a people of Zimbabwe) proverbial warning rinonyenga rinohwarara rinosumudza musoro rawana (he who courts may trick the subject of courtship, to feel safe and loved, only to become violent once he has achieved his goal), this paper argues that neoimperialism is using sleights of hand to recolonise Africans in the twenty-first century. Postulating a theory of rinonyenga rinohwarara rinosumudza musoro rawana for international relations, society and politics, this paper argues for the application of Ubuntu theory in international relations but with a caveat that imperial chameleon politics and relations premised on trickery are not part of the canons of Ubuntu.