THE GOKOMERE EMPIRE

By: Felipe Argote

In times of the World Cup in South Africa many, myself included, have been surprised and a lot more will be surprised to see the places as developed and as beautiful natural sites offering Africa.

The European arrogance which claims to have discovered America for example, where already lived 30,000 years before our ancestors, who claim to have discovered the Pacific Ocean when the history tells was chief Comagre who showed Vasco Nuñez de Balboa the way, who then came to the archipelago of pearls, murdering and pillaging the Indians tribes found in his way, just as the Portuguese, Dutchmen and Englishmen who came to South Africa have hidden to say about the vast region that civilizations existed for hundreds of years.

One was that of The Great Zimbabwe, located northeast of South Africa in the present Republic of Zimbabwe. This country before independence was called Rhodesia, the name of the English who controlled and squandered these lands as his private company, having at their disposal tens of thousands of black slaves and thousands of white workers brought from England with the delusion that these regions were the Biblical mines of King Solomon.

For centuries Europeans have argued that these colossal ruins of a stone without mortar could not have been built by blacks, and assurances that may have been built by the Phoenicians or the Arabs. Its ancient ignorance led them to decide that this was a city built for the mines of King Solomon.

The further development of archeology shows that the great Zimbabwe was the capital of the black empire Gokomere and reached its highest development in the fifteenth century. Its economic strength was based on the gold trade. Excavations have shown that Gokomeres traded with the Arabs and Chinese. The complex of stone indicates that the great Zimbabwe was a huge city with high economic activity of more than 10,000 stone walled enclosures with more than 10 meters high. One of the buildings left standing is the Great Wall that is believed was built around the twelfth century and had at least three access doors lintels. Also stand part of the Royal Palace, a huge stone building. There was found the bird called Zimbabwe, a sculpture carved in stone that now appears on the flag of the country. Also near the Great Zimbabwe, the caves adjacent to the capital of Gokomere civilization can be found cave paintings of over 35,000 years, while the first cave art developed in Europe was 5.000 years later. The Great Zimbabwe has been declared World Heritage by UNESCO. The empire stretched not only in the current Zimbabwean whose name was recovered after independence but included part of today's Mozambique.

It is believed that its decline in the seventeenth century was due to the depletion of gold and overexploitation of hunting and logging. When they had changed their activity from gold to the slave trade it was colonized by the Portuguese. Those who remained in the stampede formed the Mutapa kingdom in Mozambique. This was known by the English as Monomotapa. At this moment is when the idea that in this area were the mines of King Solomon began. This leads to a Netherlands company called East India to the foundation of the Cape Colony, the first European settlement that will lead the creation of South Africa. This argument was used by the company to convince the first European settlers to relocate to this area. It was false. There were no mines of King Solomon and the Great Zimbabwe gold was exhausted. Instead two hundred years after was discovered in South Africa, specifically in Johannesburg, the largest gold reserves on the planet. While searching north of Cape Town a dummy mines they were established, unknowingly, on the largest gold mines in the world.

Zimbabwe was colonized in the late nineteenth century by Cecil Rhodes who came to trade 90% of the world's diamonds. Rhodes colonized Zimbabwe enslaving the natives. He had his own private army of the British Society of South Africa, with which seized the land to blacks who enslaved, and encouraged the settlement of white farmers who mainly located in the area called Mashonaland.

One hundred years later, the descendants of the native black teas have expelled from Zimbabwe in a systematic way the white farmers, who say in their defense that these lands have been occupied by them for generations.

Between Zimbabwe and Mozambique is one of the wonders of the world, falls Mosi-oa-Toenja (the smoke that thunders), at Zambezi River, the largest water curtain in the world. It fell to 500 million liters of water per minute.