DEAR EDITOR – I would like to challenge some of the comments posted on your opinions section by Mr. Petros Makahamadze regarding the revival of PF-Zapu. (SEE HERE)While I agree with his point that the revival of PF-Zapu erodes a very substantial and significant power base of the two MDCs, I find the rest of his article quite insensitive to the facts as they are on the ground in Matabeleland and in Zimbabwe at large.
As an Ndebele person it is often very difficult for me and some my people to write or comment on what I will term the “Matabeleland Question” without getting overly emotional.
The truth of the matter is that three decades after our country Zimbabwe was liberated, Matabeleland remains economically marginalized, and the people in the region continue to feel politically disempowered as somehow Zimbabwe as a nation allowed a silly notion to develop that says the country can never have a President from the minority tribes and that the idea of a Ndebele President is unthinkable.
Somehow in spite of the noble efforts of those who gave us the Unity Accord in 1987, we seem not to have moved much beyond the split in the ZAPU ranks in the sixties that brought about the existence of Zanu-PF. This is why I take issue with what for lack of a better word I will call simplistic views espoused by Mr. Makahamadze article.
The whole point is not about MDC’s powerbase. The MDC is an evil front of imperialist forces that are trying to wriggle their way back into the country from which all Zimbabweans ejected them in 1980. They do not deserve a single mention when examining the Matabeleland Question.
For ten years we have been preoccupied with them pushing their ruinous Anglo-American designed and packaged policies to the extent of forgetting about the reasons Zapu and Zanu formed the Patriotic Front prior to 1980 and the stain on the national conscience that the Unity Accord was designed to blot away.
We have taken for granted the peace and the relative tranquility post 1987 because of the naked power hunger of the MDC whose ideology if they have any is directly opposed to what we fought to achieve in 1980.
The 18th of April 1980 was a culmination of a struggle against imperialist settlers waged not by Zanu-PF but by the combined might of ZIPRA and ZANLA forces.
ZIPRA and ZANLA forces were indeed different sides of the precious coin that bought us our freedom. Think Mkushi and Nyadzonya. Think Masuku and Tongogara and you will soon realize what I am talking about.
It is imperative for the likes of Mr. Makahamadze to grasp the fact that it was people like Dumiso Dabengwa, and Andrew Ndlovu who among others led Zipra’s effort in the war. It is people like Mabhena and others who provided the political leadership. It is these people who on the same level as President Mugabe brought us that liberation from the colonial yoke that people like Morgan Tsvangirai in their folly are trying to through away for selfish personal gains.
Mr. Makahamadze writes “People like Welshman Mabhena (former Zapu secretary general), former war veterans’ leader Andrew Ndlovu, former government minister Thenjiwe Lesabe, Effort Nkomo and Tryphine Nhliziyo are not individuals that could threaten the 1987 agreement. They are all desperate for relevance in Zimbabwean politics”.
I do not know when all these people ever ceased to be relevant to national politics as he suggests. The fact that they were not given any meaningful posts in President Mugabe’s government or in the case of Mabhena, they were actually ejected from the government does not diminish their role as liberators and career revolutionaries.
Instead of casting aspersions at them, we need to revisit the whole Matabeleland Question and genuinely ask ourselves why a man of Dabengwa’s stature would ever contemplate the revival of PF-Zapu when such a move risks taking us back mentally at least to those dark days in which a significant number of people were massacred simply for belonging to the wrong tribe.
Why are the majority of the people there still feeling shafted two decades after the signing of the Unity Accord that was supposed to dispel all tribal animosities?
Why is there a feeling of alienation in Matabeleland and a general sense of political despondency today? Why are some people inhabiting the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces-people who fought and died to liberate Zimbabwe-feeling unloved and discriminated in their own country to the extent of going for the nuclear option of pulling PF-Zapu out of the bottom drawer in order to try and get to have a meaningful say on national affairs?
Without addressing the above questions the political temperatures will continue rising in that corner of the country leading eventually to a spontaneous outburst of violence as seen in places like Rwanda. Indeed it might seem wild if not mischievous for me to make such a point but let us remember that for years the Tutsi and the Hutu lived side by side intermarried and co-existed peacefully in both Rwanda and Burundi before some people exploited their divisions for political ends leading to the catastrophic genocide of the 1990’s.
By dismissing the dismay and dissatisfaction felt by the Ndebele, Kalanga, the Tonga, the Venda and other peoples in Western Zimbabwe, we are leaving our nation vulnerable to foreign influences.
Is it not conceivable that one day a maverick neighbour like Ian Khama could seek at the behest of imperialists to utilize this dissatisfaction to interfere in the affairs of our nation?
We have already witnessed how the Botswana government has shamelessly tried to bolster the MDCs morally bankrupt crusade against our revolutionary heritage. What’s to stop such people tapping into the anger residing in the hearts of thousands of Ndebele people who survived the “moment of madness” as President Mugabe puts it, or the children of those who perished who till today cannot get a birth certificates because they cannot prove that their parents are dead?
I know quite a number of people living with such a predicament. Without the birth certificate they cannot get an identity card without which they cannot get their names on the voters roll. In simple terms they are disenfranchised in the land of their birth. This is just one example of the issues that make up the Matabeleland Question.
Only President Mugabe and the old guard in Zanu-PF have the power to examine and rectify these things before they leave the political stage. Political coxcombs in the MDC were they to miraculously emerge as our rulers tomorrow would lack the political sophistication and insight to deal with these matters. We need the President and his peers to sort this one out. Writers like Mr. Makahamadze must examine and explore the Matabeleland Question in depth before they make sweeping statements on it.
Mlungisi Nyathi
