The Institute of African Knowledge, a Zimbabwean research entity, plans to build a towering bronze and stone monument honouring the former Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
As reported by BNE IntelliNews, Kwame Muzawazi, the founder of the Institute of African Knowledge, which is developing the Liberation City west of Harare, told Russian state-owned media Sputnik that the monument will be one of the centres of the memorial exhibition. He said:
Africa remembers well that it was the crushing defeat inflicted by the Soviet Union on Hitler’s fascism that inspired the peoples of Africa to national liberation struggles and gave them hope of throwing off the colonial yoke and becoming masters of their own homes again.
Muzawazi said that various countries, including Russia, have pledged financial support for the obelisk which is planned to be made of bronze, stone and mosaic.
The monument will be erected on the top of a hill in the 100-hectare city and will be at least 15–20 metres high.
Muzawazi claimed that the decolonisation of Africa is incomplete as former colonial masters, including Britain and France, still exercise influence in some of their former colonies.
Zimbabwe is one of Russia’s closest African allies and Harare has not condemned the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine and ongoing war.
Zimbabwe and Russia’s ties go back to the 1970s when the Soviet Union, of which Russia was part, supported the African nation’s 15-year liberation war against British colonialism.
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