Mthwakazi Free State common vision and shared valuesJanuary 2009
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you.
Then you win.” - Ghandhi
I often feel sad and pained when people remark: “You think you can get uMthwakazi’s independence by talking to Zanu-PF? You must be dreaming. Zanu-PF is vicious; independence will only come through force!”
Those remarks surrender a fundamental set of values to the system in Harare and define a world-view reduced only to the option of violence. It is this surrender of our soul to Zanu-PF that my message today focuses on.
By the end I hope I will have made the convincing argument that, as people, whether we view ourselves as Mthwakazians or Zimbabweans, we can and should reclaim the moral and ethical ground that we have surrendered to Zanu-PF in Zanu-PF’s thirty-year misrule. I also hope I will have illustrated that those 30 years of political strangulation have lasted only because we have killed the truth. In the main, I hope I will have shown that what MPC is involved in is not just politics but pioneering the redefinition of a common vision and the cultivation of a new set of shared values we can call our own.
Even as I begin to write this message, I cannot help but imagine readers asking aghastly: “Where does he get the courage to ‘challenge’, or risk the wrath of, Zanu-PF?
Let me make this my point of entry into my message.
The truth is I don’t need courage. I don’t look at courage as the displacement of fear but rather I look at courage as truth in action. So, in this sense, we often don’t consider a murderer as having courage. I see courage as standing up for and defending the truth, regardless of what anyone might think or do, the displacement of fear, if it happens, being only the by-product of the truth-delivering process. I am not even sure whether anyone can displace fear, a naturally in-built safety mechanism that makes us keep our guard, though I believe we can conquer fearfulness. I believe fearfulness is a function of many human-induced variables such as greed and unscrupulousness, all of which can be made to give way to truth.
Do I have concern? Well, I do and should, but the ideal I have decided to stand up for is far greater than my concerns and is worth any price. But my situation is no different from thousands of our people, Mthwakazians or Zimbabwean, who live and face danger from the system everyday. Therefore I do not have any special claim to personal or emotional security any more than anyone out there making the ultimate sacrifice has.
I look at myself as just one person among thousands of people, inside and outside MPC and in the greater Zimbabwean society of today, seeking the recovery of truth back into our political life, believing that together and cumulatively, in our own small but complementary ways, we can repair the broken promise of the social contract and construct a new political order which Mthwakazians and Zimbabweans will call their own.
When such questions are asked it becomes clear why present-day Zimbabwe is in this tragic political state. We are here not always because of the system’s viciousness but rather because many of us have become couriers and deliverers of fear and frightful circumspection. So the ripples of fear and fear continue to wreak more havoc further afield. In the end, if the full implications of these questions are followed, we must all do nothing.
Edmund Burke once said that all that is necessary for evil to thrive is for good man to do nothing.
Delivering a talk at University of Cape Town in 1996, Senator Bob Kennedy, echoed Edmund Burke’s message when he said:
“Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice,he sends off a tiny ripple of hope. And, crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Clearly, what is needed is not necessarily one big ripple delivering a knock-out blow. What is critical is the cumulative effect of many ripples emanating from different directions, radiating right back into the ‘eye of oppression’, becoming that knock-out blow when they strike the centre at the same time.
Senator Kennedy’s words underpin an important element that has been disgorged from the Zimbabwean body politic: truth, or more accurately, the absence of it. It could not be ripples of falsehood or doing wrong that Senator Kennedy and Edmund Burke were referring to.
This is precisely where Zimbabwe went wrong and in the process delivered a system that has wreaked this havoc on the people of present-day Zimbabwe. We allowed not an ideal or truth to flourish, instead, Zimbabwe manufactured a falsehood and tried to turn it into the truth by repetition and volume. It could never work in the long term. Here we are today, Zimbabwe at a crossroads and uMthwakazi defining its political destiny.
When the system decimated whole families and communities in a genocidal campaign in Matebeleland and the Midlands in the 1980’s many people outside Matebeleland and the Midlands cheered and willingly participated. The lie was an attempt to manufacture a state that did not exist, could not possibly exist and need not exist. That attempt was to create a pure Shona state from nowhere but by say-so and force of arms.
In the process, not only did those who became partners in this crime allow truth to be mutilated then, they surrendered to the system a fundamental value they should have jealously guarded; namely, their sovereignty; the primordial principle of state constitution that says state power is so much the people give to the state, not the other way round. This cardinal principle was inverted that fateful day in 1983 when Gukurahundi’s heavy boots marched into Matebeleland and the Midlands, not to protect but to kill and kill in the name of some fictional, fairy-tale state of Africa’s own Arian tribe. Today, that mistake has come back to haunt those who were partners in this unconscionable crime.
With the system now turned on them, the accomplices now invoke Gukurahundi as some form of appeal to the regime’s moral conscience to stop the human carnage of latter years. Their appeals are falling on deaf ears. The reason is not difficult to find. Having gone full cycle, truth is consuming the outer layers of its originators. It is moving towards the centre. So, the system is asking why just the inner circle should be targeted when its once partners in crime are roaming free out there? To stop being exposed, the inner circle is trying to stop the truth proceeding beyond the outer edges, to the centre. It is self-protection, dog eat dog style! Crucially, it is the mercilessness of truth, recovering and re-asserting itself.
Yesterday, Matebeleland and Midland’s youthful tormentors were the Youth Brigade, People’s Militia and marauding and fanatical party zealots. Today, Mashonaland’s tormentors have been the Green Bombers (sometimes called ‘oRovai’ in siNdebele), and, again, partnered by marauding and fanatical party zealots.
What is next, lurking in the shadows, ready to strike again? Who are these latest accomplices in our midst and where are they now? Who are the next accomplices in the next round of political murders and lynchings? Why is it so easy for the system to recruit accomplices? Where does it end and does it end? Why then just the inner ring? These are not rhetorical questions. Answers to these questions demonstrate the depth of moral depravity and political purposelessness to which we all now subscribe, particularly, we, the so-called educated of our societies.
As the so-called enlightened, we have mistaken concepts for cleverness, form for substance, careerism for authenticity; we dabble the fashionable as defining and sell our political souls for a song. We knowingly adulterate truth. In the end we are neither this nor that. Chameleonic in most respects, we stand for nothing. Characteristically, despite all our ‘bookish’ cleverness, we offer no leadership, preferring to hide behind those we despise as unsophisticated but front as leaders as if their lives and self-worth was less than our own. We continue to betray and derail gestating popular causes and to debunk trite knowledge, all for self-interest, and to do so without shame. And we are still going on … We should bury our faces in our hands in shame.
Politics is far simpler than our fancies of intellectual superiority make it. Those below us, our fathers, mothers, grand-fathers, grand-mothers and other lowly relatives, whom we have been conditioned to look down upon, can run and would have run present-day Zimbabwe far better than the so-called educated who ‘delivered’ Zimbabwe's independence, and us, the new generation of leaders now taking over, if our performance in Zimbabwe’s opposition movement so far be any yardstick. But we fool no one.
In MPC, we want politics to be the simple activity that it is and always will be.
Back to my point about political accomplices in our midst.
The system has a point. Genocide is a mass crime requiring the participation of thousands of ordinary civilians. Gukurahundi, too, had its civilian and paramilitary partners. It is therefore pertinent to ask: where are the other tormentors of Matebeleand and the Midlands?
The answer is simple. Like Rhodesia and apartheid-ruled South Africa’s racists, Matebeleland and Midland’s tormentors have simply melted into society, hiding. But the majority of them today don the garb of democracy deep inside the bowls of the politically amorphous MDC. Others, of course, remain within the structures of Zanu-PF. Again, today’s tormentors of the MDC will become the torch-bearers of democracy tomorrow, in yet another political formation. So, the cycle of falsehood lingers on, unbroken …
The point is not only that ideally these accomplices in the crime of genocide must be found or named and shamed but it is that they are in hiding with their dangerous ideas and secrets. Another time, another opportunity, another generation, the seeds of their poisonous tree will germinate, destroying and traumatising yet another generation of innocents. The precedent of Rwanda and Burundi has been planted firmly in present-day Zimbabwe and it should worry all of us.
For now therefore, we are stuck with a state founded on a gargantuan lie, both in terms of its constitutional framework, and, corollarily, in terms of its political aspirations. We now all know the dramatic failures of the Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia and the fragility of all other states founded on similar lies. An Arian state in present-day Zimbabwe today, or anywhere else for that matter, is simply pure fiction.
Sadly, today's opposition in Zimbabwe is still very much constructed on this mantra of a tribal state.
It should come as no wonder, then, that there is this almost assured failure in the opposition’s cause in Zimbabwe today. At the core of this failure is the continuing attempt to twist and kill the truth by men and women in positions of political influence who do not have the courage of their convictions to stand up for truth. Because there is no truth there is nothing binding the people of present-day Zimbabwe to define a political cause today. Thus, a rampant dictatorship is able to sit and balance itself on the shoulders of a squabbling but suffering population now drained of any political will and ability to organise around truth because of a perverse and pervading lie it has allowed to invade its political soul.
I want to argue today and bring the message that truth (also read ‘truth’ as principle) is a valid political cause in present-day Zimbabwe. It can deliver not just a government, something the present opposition is all for, but a new order for social harmony, economic justice and political freedom, something which we need and is long overdue. MPC is about such a new order.
For MPC regime change is not an option. We want to go back and find the reasons for present-day Zimbabwe’s critical situation. We see all these problems before, in Southern Rhodesia, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, and now Zimbabwe. Clearly, something is fundamentally wrong. Present-day Zimbabwe cannot simply continue to be governed in the way it has since 1980. It does not take anything to see that. The new vision seeks more than just regime change. It demands that present-day Zimbabwe be deconstructed and reconstructed for our time.
Regime change was always going to be a short-shrift opportunistic strike that could only succeed not because of its own strength but because of the weakness of the system in Zimbabwe. Once the opportunistic strike failed, as it has, and the system struck back, as the system has, the causeless regime change project would unravel like a carpet being rolled out. The glaring weaknesses of the regime change agenda are now there for all to see.
Perhaps it is time to look at the opposition’s failures in a new, deconstructive light.
UMthwakazi regrets that in many respects the opposition continues to project elements of the present system we would do best to run away from. We continue to see a fixation with power, power, and more power, the very evil that has blighted us. It is disconcerting. UMthwakazi is also not persuaded to the notion that anything that is an alternative to Mugabe and Zanu-PF is good. We only see it as that: an alternative, but whether that alternative is good or bad is a judgment we can only make by looking at what those who want our support tell us, promise us or do. From what we have seen so far, uMthwakazi must be worried.
Like Zanu-PF, which authored and executed Gukurahundi, the regime change project has tried to ride rough-shod over the Gukurahundi issue, the foundation of the present state of Zimbabwe. In cynical fashion, and symptomatic of its own flawed make-up, the regime change project has tried to steal Gukurahundi from the victims and play both judge and victim.
The regime change project has repeated, several times and inconsistently over the years, that it will indemnify Mugabe, sometimes that it will not. On either position, it has never consulted the people of Matebeleland and the Midlands, the true and only victims of Gukurahundi. Even as it has spoken of prosecuting Mr Mugabe it has done so in reference to human rights violations since 2000, Gukurahundi to it being an insignificant footnote of history. In the true spirit of the ‘new political order’ ushered in by Zanu-PF and distributed by its network of political operatives (for the most part ordinary citizens), uMthwakazi is only a consumer and a by-product of political processes made in Harare and pushed down the throat of Mthwakazi. It is simply that crazy an idea!
It must now be clear to everybody who cares to look the truth in the eye that Zimbabwe is in this dire political and economic situation precisely because of Gukurahundi. The human carnage of latter years has also been about Gukurahundi, about removing even the remotest possibility that the full sordid details of Gukurahundi will be exposed while its perpetrators are still alive. Those who masterminded Gukurahundi want and will get protection of office at all costs.
Therefore, for present-day Zimbabwe and Mthwakazi to move forward we need to confront Gukurahundi head-on and ask the hard questions many of us are so eager to avoid. We also need to exorcise the demon of secrecy and cover-up about it. But in confronting Gukurahundi, we need to step back from and go beyond the polarization that was created to facilitate it and consider Gukurahundi as a political problem that uMthwakazi and Zimbabwe must confront together. Because it is a political issue, Gukurahundi requires a political solution.
Zimbabwe is in an extra-ordinary political situation requiring extra-ordinary, not run-of-the-mill, usual responses. It will take more than unbridled opportunism, hunger for power, half-heartedness, conceit, vacillation and this romantic attachment to untruth, slant, distortion and haemorrhaging propaganda, to see that. It will also take selflessness and truth and commitment to that truth. It will take men and women prepared to risk personal reputation to say and do the right thing, not the fashionable and politically correct.
Gukurahundi underwrites with assured failure any political project that purports to exclude or ignore it. MPC believes that Gukurahundi must be the starting position for any genuine efforts to resolve the political problems of present-day Zimbabwe. Gukurahundi, therefore, is primarily a political not human rights problem.
Today, I invite all of us to open, not a chapter, but to begin an entirely new story, the new story of Mthwakazi and Zimbabwe.
That new story begins and ends with truth. That truth is Gukurahundi. I challenge all those who say they genuinely want to resolve the political problems of present-day Zimbabwe to tackle the real issue and take on Gukurahundi head-on. Gukurahunid is the issue. Gukurahundi is the foundation of the present state called Zimbabwe. Pretending otherwise fools no one; it helps no one.
It is long overdue for the people of present-day Zimbabwe to openly and unequivocally acknowledge that Gukurahundi was wrong, that it was a premeditated pre-emptive and planned attack on a defenceless people purely for who they are, to achieve a political end, and for the people of present-day Zimbabwe to demonstrate that acknowledgement.
It is also long over-due for present-day Zimbabwe to look at Gukurahundi as the political issue that it is rather than as purely a legal and human rights issue, as many have attempted to do so far. Regrettably, the unintended consequence of all this mischaracterization of Gukurahundi by some groups from Mthwakazi has been to diminish the significance of Gukrahundi as a political issue in the politics of Zimbabwe, much to the delight of those who stand accused of it. Gukurahundi is at the centre of Zimbabwean politics and at the core of the current political and economic crisis.
Gukurahundi does not therefore need moral condemnation that it was political; instead, it demands a united voice of acknowledgement that it was.
Acknowledging these two critical points is the beginning of a journey into the future, a break with a sorry past and the beginning of the process of re-ordering things afresh, for our time, in our own way, for our future generations.
That is the new vision MPC is talking about.
I therefore extend a special appeal to our present and younger generations to accept that history has thrust us at the heart of a defining time and that we must not fail to rise to the occasion. I appeal to the new generation to confront the difficult issues of our time with courage and sense of purpose, imagination and vision. The button is now over to us. We must know that truth will give us courage to lead but that expunging it will condemn us to cowardly excuses and point us to causeless and pointless political fishing expeditions, such as we have seen since the demise of PF-ZAPU in 1987. After the failures of the last 30 years, it is time for us to advance things imaginatively and truthfully.
It should now not be enough for our generation to say simply because things happened the way they did then things were meant to be that way and nothing can be done about it. We must not just begin questioning things, we must also begin to assemble courage to lead and point to the future. We must accept we can re-order things, that we can shape the future. We must also come to accept that the road to the future is not lit with spotlights showing a straight, well-lit road to our destination. We must know that on occasion we will fumble in the dark, despair, and stare defeat in the face but we must still find the wherewithal and strength to stand up and keep plodding on.
While acknowledging the role played by the present generation of leaders in the de-colonization process, we must not then fail to stand up and point to their glaring failures in governance, the consequences of which we see today. We must not and cannot continue to feel politically blackmailed by the outgoing leadership to continue their lie for them and, in the process, also fail in the science and art of modern governance.
Perhaps also, this is the time to acknowledge that the qualities needed to lead an anti-colonial struggle are not the same as those required for governance. Zimbabwe has failed spectacularly on the litmus test of governance and nation-building, and singularly, on building a supporting economy for a free and prosperous society. This continuing failure is matched only by the continuing anger of those who have presided over it.
We need to cultivate a new breed of leaders with requisite skills of modern statecraft, ready and prepared to lead our people in the 21st century and beyond. We need to break from that anger, that failure, and shape things our way. We need and must build happier societies under UMR and a new Zimbabwe.
It now falls on the new generation of leaders from Mthwakazi and Zimbabwe, rid of the hang-overs of prejudice, bigotry, stereotype, frightful fancy, and the inertia of personal vendettas afflicting the outgoing generation, to take stock of history and cast eyes into the distant future and carve out a future suitable for us and future generations. History, as they say, is not buried before the future is born. We are at a defining moment. We must not falter.
Let me move on to the issue of shared values.
If a common vision is the foundation of a future political order, then the shared values are the superstructure of that order.
One of the most sacrosanct values that have been abused by the Zimbabwe system is our identity. Identity makes us who we are as individuals and as groups. The system has attacked both ruthlessly, Gukurahundi being the angriest expression of that attack.
Since 1980 and throughout Zanu-PF rule there has been this concerted effort to make everybody who is not Shona either apologetic about their identity or reject it altogether.
The essence of this policy is encapsulated in what MPC has called the Zimbabwe Project, which, some would say, was evaluated in the 1990’s in the ‘Grand Plan’ document. At the time of writing this message, a hate-filled document hurling insults at, and inciting hatred against, the Ndebele (uMthwakazi) titled “Confidential Shona Series 2 – Vatakati”, has started circulating. It captures the spirit of the Zimbabwe Project. If that document is authentic, then it adds yet another disturbing dimension to this sad tale. It is worrying!
The Zimbabwe Project is an all-conquering policy of the present system to force-feed on other tribes and groups a false identity that we are all Shona. Its essential elements go beyond that. Politically, it is a project of tribal domination of anything Mthwakazi by the Shona. Economically, it defines entitlement and advantage. Socially, it pretends that we are all culturally linguistically Shona. The full reach and arrogance of the project is evident everywhere, with many Shona speakers pretending that Shona is the default language of present-day Zimbabwe. Essentially, the Zimbabwe Project is about saying Zimbabwe is a Shona state, for the Shona by the Shona. Zimbabwe’s embassies the world over are a projection of this caricature image.
The Zimbabwe Project is plainly that mischievous an idea! But it has a strong following of Shona supremacists and fantasists across all sectors of our society who defend it with all they have got. It also has shivering collaborators and acquiescents within Mthwakazi. However, the Zimbabwe Project has nothing to do with the Shona as a people. It always was and will always be the pet project of a lunatic fringe within Zimbabwean society of today. But it has done the damage, which we now need to handle with care. MPC is about stopping the historical umbilical cord of the Project attaching to posterity.
For Mthwakazians it is not so much the mischievousness of the idea that is telling as the fact that, in this day and age, any decent person would find such an idea acceptable, whatever the justifications for it. To those who crafted it and those who follow them, they see themselves as this internal imperial project exacting revenge on the Ndebele for their perceived sins during the reign of the Ndebele Kingdom. It is a sad testament to how low people can sink to satisfy their private fancies in the name of the state.
But the determination of the Zimbabwe Project to succeed even today must not be underestimated. It is unrelenting in what it seeks to achieve and ruthless in its operation, as Gukurahundi attests.
Post-Gukurahundi, it deploys reverse tribalism with frightening cynicism, striking pre-emptively and accusing those fighting to destroy its tribalism, of being tribalists themselves. It deploys the language of ‘unity’ but is silent on what it is uniting. It speaks of ‘national’, never ‘people’, and decries the ‘opening up of old wounds’ when it does not have any wounds to open up. It is enthusiastic on the language of ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ but is conspicuously glum on answering the logical question: ‘majority’ or ‘minority’ from what, for in that question is the telling answer. It befriends (note, does not make friends) those Mthwakazians who are happy to deputise its positions but makes instant enemies of Mthwakazians who challenge its rehearsed practice of tribal ordering. And for good measure, there is now something of a feigned guilt about the Project’s tribalism when what is underlying it is a ruthless proscription against other tribes or groups trying to rid themselves of the weight of Shona domination.
Thanks to the Zimbabwe Project, the politics of present-day Zimbabwe became about whether one is Shona or Ndebele at Zimbabwe’s independence on April 18, 1980. It has never relented. It remains the case to this day.
This cannot be a common vision today. It is a feudal idea that must not have any takers in today’s world.
In the language of the American Constitution, MPC takes it as self-evident that identity is a primordial right. Our vision, the modern vision, is of all our people celebrating their identity, that they are Ndebele, Shona, Tonga, Khalanga, Venda, White, Xhosa, etc. On such a vision we can and must invest all our political capital. It is worth our sacrifice.
I want to move to another set of values that have fallen victim to the system in Harare.
In Zimbabwe things have gone awry wrong, politically, the economic collapse and moral breakdown being only manifestations of political dislocation.
In Zimbabwe, Zanu-PF politics has always represented an attack on everything we hold true as shared values: equality before the law; respect for and security of the person and property; equal access to opportunities of life; respect; decency; cultural and linguistic existence; innovation and drive; family; privacy, and many values commonly captured in many constitutions as constitutional rights. Zanu-PF has been a project of flaunting, not the excesses of state power, but the absence of rights in the face of a rabid state. States don't often come as ruthless and foreboding. Mthwakazians and Zimbabweans, young and old, bear the scars inflicted by such a state.
The new vision demands recovery of these shared values, not just as constitutional paragraphs but as functional values safeguarding the citizenry from the power of the state. That now demands a new political order encapsulated in a new constitution.
It is MP’s position, however, that a new constitution on its own would not guarantee these values unless that constitution was borne of a new political order.
This is where we in MPC feel that those advocating for a new constitution are wrong. A new constitution does not create a new political order; rather, a new political order creates a new constitution and expresses itself in that new constitution. For this reason, MPC continues to call for a political conference to precede a constitution-writing process. It also continues to call for transitional arrangements under a Transitional Government, not Government of National Unity (GNU), as presently agreed between Zanu-PF and both factions of the MDC. MPC rejects the notion of a so-called GNU as nothing more than the sharing of power among those who just want to wield it. A political conference is a prerequisite for a new political and constitutional order.
Under such a new order we can differ politically without turning each other into enemies. We can eject from our midst enemy-creation, scape-goating, character assassination, witch-hunting, political assassinations, disappearances, false arrests, harassment, intimidation, harm and threats of harm, enforced expulsions, and other under-hand methods of political emasculation, all pillars of the Zimbabwe Project, and allow politics to be the driver for individual and collective advancement. We want consensus politics, which is free and informed, and which offers choice.
My conscience, and the consciences of all those who have put their heads above the parapet, inside and outside MPC, in other political and civic formations, refuses to make me silent on matters as close to my very existence as a being as such values we should take as self-evident and inviolable, and to fail to make my own contribution in the discovery of a new vision and the reformulation of a new set of shared values relevant for our time.
In a political environment such as ours, there is a political price to be paid, both as individuals and as a movement. We must not wait for what is coming. We must attack by what we are; a project for the recovery of the individual and the repair of communities and society. We must in time develop a thick skin snd stand for our values.
From now on, we can expect, as a matter of routine, to join the ever-expanding list of enemies of the state, a convenient cover for the system to clamp down on political opponents. High-handed political words and criminalising phrases will be used to label us, including suggestions that we have training bases in some such country the system may care to name, in a misinformation over-kill operation designed to set us up for the kill.
When we are so described and labelled, attacked, pilloried, mocked, insulted, or accused of one capital crime or another, it is to our commitment to a new vision and to the project of defining new values that we will look for appropriate responses. We will not be distracted.
Individuals create systems, good or bad. Ultimately, it is to individuals we must look to create a new, sustainable political order for Mthwakazi and Zimbabwe.
As MPC we know that there are good and bad people in Zanu-PF, as there are in MDC, ZAPU, MPC and all other political formations. Sadly, the good people in all these political formations tend to take the characters of their parties or movements. Nonetheless, MPC believes that there is a growing coalescence of people with a vision for the future across all political lines that must be exploited for the common good. It is this reservoir of political goodwill that MPC wants to tap into to help build a new ‘coalition of hope’ that will buid societies that are fit for our time and the 21st century.
Before I close, I want to comment briefly on MPC’s agenda.
MPC wants the partition of today’s Zimbabwe into the new UMR and a reconstituted Zimbabwe.
For us that position says UMR and Zimbabwe must be strong states. Partition would not work if either or both were to be failed states. Thus our independence agenda for Mthwakazi does not exclude but includes Zimbabwe. Partition is not a position that is without precedent in international politics.
For some partition is a radical idea, for others it is crazy and unattainable, yet for others it is tribal or anything they care to label it. It needs no reminding that Zimbabwe’s own independence was once any one or more of these labels. But that is not my point.
For MPC, first, we have set in motion a political process. We have moved from a static position of the last 100 years towards a vision. Second, we have put the issue of Mthwakazi’s independence in the public domain and thrust it in the centre of Zimbabwean politics from now on. Third, this agenda puts paid to many assumptions and certainties of the past regarding the political and constitutional make-up of what is presently Zimbabwe. Lastly, MPC has created space for the development of new breed of leaders with political skills relevant for our time.
The people of Mthwakazi must now be afforded the opportunity to pass judgement on partition and independence. We see our role as having been to give the people of Mthwakazi a modern political vehicle through which they ca n make their case to the world. We are proud to have played that pioneering role.
Finally, in my introductory remarks I made reference to what people say about Zanu-PF; namely, that Zanu-PF is vicious. Zanu-PF’s viciousness is public knowledge. The infamous ‘degrees in violence’ and ‘Hitler ten times’ speeches are well-known and have been put to use time and time again on the people of present-day Zimbabwe. We can only pay tribute to all those who have fallen victim to Zanu-PF’s viciousness.
I wish to say, though, in relation to this point that MPC has refused to make Zanu-PF’s vicious character its default position. We have refused to define ourselves by and through the prism of Zanu-PF, by eliminating all options in political involvement and reducing them only to violence and viciousness. We have chosen instead to define ourselves the way we want. We have chosen to make our default position sense, good sense, because we know this position has resonance with all our peoples.
Against all odds, and against the fiercest attacks on our political method, MPC is winning the argument against the language of war, armed struggle, force, bases, etc. We are winning the political argument for a political solution achieved through political processes. The political reach of an independence agenda fought in the public political domain, it is gradually being acknowledged, is far deeper and far-reaching than what would be achieved by an underground armed movement whose political reach will usually only extend so far as its military campaigns extend.
We hope we have defined a character for ourselves, a character shaped by our vision of a new political order underpinned and supported by a set of new values relevant for our time and future generations.
Before I conclude, may I once again remind people that MPC is a political movement not a political party. This model gives us the breadth and versatility we want to accommodate and to be accommodated in a broad-based movement for social and political reconstruction. It also helps us avoid the restrictions and strictures visited by trying to define an ideological position. Our cause is our ideology. A political party model would be restrictive and not suited for our purpose at this time.
With this pragmatism MPC is ready to play its part in championing the cause for a new future shaped by us, for our time and for posterity. We have no doubt that the future lies in a new UMR and a reconstituted Zimbabwe. We have not invented the independence agenda; we have only advanced a long-held desire by successive generations of Mthwakazians to be free in an independent and sovereign state of their own, as they were before the establishment of colonial rule. Only we have named that political destination United Mthwakazi Republic (UMR).
I conclude by posing a rhetorical question.
Is all this worth our while and troubles?
In all probability, not for us! But for our children and children children’s sake it is a cause worth every ounce of our sweat and every stretch of sinew in our bodies. History and posterity will record that we were right.
I thank you.
Ndabezinhle Edwin ‘Shamase’ Mkwananzi
President - MPC
Issued By,
The Department of Communications
In the name of MTHWAKAZI, I greet you
In my first message, my major task was essentially to introduce our new political movement, UMTHWAKAZI. I stated uMTHWAKAZI’s main objective as the establishment of our new independent and sovereign state of UMFS.
I am pleased today to report that judged by the level of participation in our Discussion Forum, the e-mails we are getting, the votes on the on-line Referendum we are running on our site, other websites that refer to us and general enquiries about uMTHWAKAZI, the task of introducing uMTHWAKAZI, though on-going, has largely been achieved.
My task today is to go further and say something about nation-building, identify the stakeholders in that nation-building process and suggest in general terms what we need to do beyond this website.
Nation-building
Our task is a clear one: nation-building. We want to re-build the nation of Mthwakazi after eight decades of colonial rule and over two decades of Zimbabwe’s genocidal and
oppressive rule.
Nation-building is about freedom. Freedom is nationhood. Without freedom there is no nation except in the formal sense of physical territory only. Under Rhodesia the black population failed to be a nation because it was under oppression. The blacks rose up against that system and defeated it. In place of Rhodesia Zimbabwe was born. From inception, Zimbabwe became decidedly oppressive and dominative of Mthwakazi. In other words, uMthwakazi lost freedom with Zimbabwe’s birth. Without freedom, uMthwakazi has failed be part of the ‘nation’ of Zimbabwe except in the nominal sense referred to above.
Hence uMTHWAKAZI has been formed to spearhead uMthwakazi’s own quest for true freedom; nationhood.
Nation-building is therefore not a fanciful idea. It is not something that anybody can get up
one morning and decide to draw up from nowhere. It has an inner unifying (jellying) force.
That inner force is freedom, its presence or lack of it. So while uMthwakazi has been denied it in Zimbabwe, freedom is plentiful within Mthwakazi and it is the force now pushing uMthwakazi to seek to express it in a free and independent UMR.
In launching uMthwakazionline publicly, our specific target was the mind. We aim to change the present mind-set which sees uMthwakazi’s political oppression under Zimbabwe as a given, permanent and unchangeable. We aim to psyche our people not just to reject Zimbabwe’s oppression but more importantly to enable them to appreciate mentally that they can do something about it and succeed. We needed to break the mental barrier of impossibility of things. We all need to say it can be done, and we will do it. We must be reminded that doing is Mthwakazi’s very foundation.
We are sure some people questioned our very sanity in launching the UMR project. Some were shocked at the folly of ‘challenging’ Mugabe. Yet others felt a chill down their spines for what they read as “treason in words”. For others everything we propose is simply impossible. All these reactions betray a particular mental barrier of inaction about which this very project of uMTHWAKAZI is about removing. Get this right Mthwakazi: UMthwakazi’s freedom can be achieved.
UMR can be born. Freedom will be achieved and UMR will be born. We will do it and the simplest and best way to do it IS TO DO IT. It is all about conquering the mental barriers first. We have no doubt we are succeeding in this regard.Once we win the mental war, we will have overcome our first major hurdle.
UMTHWAKAZI and uMthwakazionline are about changing the mind-set that says ‘nothing can be done’ (or uMlimu ukhona) to one which says ‘we can and must do something about it’. Over time we are sure all of uMthwakazi will join us to make the impossible possible, the ‘untalkable’ ‘talkable’. Once the mind-set changes to one that accommodates doing we will start to DO. And then we will all see CHANGE.
UMR will only be achieved by DOING. Umlimu unceda abazincedayo. Singafi sisaphila
Mthwakazi!
Nationhood: Our Stakeholders
Mthwakazi, true nation-building can never be a hurried process. It admits no short-cuts or quick-fixes. It follows its own laws, reveals processes and moods over which individual actors often have little or no control. However, if all actors actively and freely participate the outcome is largely the intended one.
Nation-building is also not a private affair. It belongs to the people and must be owned by the people to be truly one. If not, the result is the political gangsterism we have seen in Zimbabwe in the past 24 years, of individuals with no popular mandate to rule holding a
whole population to ransom through the instrumentation of force and fear. In building the nation of Mthwakazi, uMTHWAKAZI has sought to prevent the private ownership of that process from the onset. Popular ownership starts not later, but now.
In deference to this cardinal principle of nation-building, uMTHWAKAZI resolved from the onset to identify and reach out to all the stakeholders in this nation-building process.
However, even if we wished to we cannot mention each of those stakeholders by name. We mention here those obvious ones which uMthwakazi society easily identifies with. We emphasise though that we desire to leave out no one in our nation-building process.
(i) The people (uMthwakazi society)
In a rather obvious way, the people are the ultimate authority. However, it is not as obvious as some people think. The ownership of all political processes by people must be demonstrable to be authentic. It must not be for reference only. Without popular ownership of the political, the process is privatised by individuals, who because they have no moral authority to rule, hold the people at political ransom through coercion and fear. Zimbabwe is a classic case of this.
Zimbabwe is a state that never got to grasp the difference between rule (nation-building) and subverting an oppressive system (dismantling it).
The first requires skills; for the second stubbornness will usually suffice. Effectively, Zimbabwe is a failed state. This failure is present and continuing. For us as MTHWAKAZI therefore, the first step must be to make the people the true owners of that nation-building process from the start.(ii) Izinduna (Chiefs)
The centrality of izinduna in Mthwakazi politics is well known. Because of the proximity of izinduna to the people, colonialism found them useful in maintaining the colonial system.
Izinduna are a vital component of Mthwakazi politics. Since colonialism izinduna have been abused by one system after another. At present, after killing them with Gukurahundi because they were perceived as the backbone of ZAPU power, Mugabe and Zanu-PF have turned to abusing them through a combination of political bribery and coercion. Even as izinduna are benefiting financially from this abuse, uMTHWAKAZI fully understands the invidious position they find themselves in under the present murderous system. We call on all of uMthwakazi society not to ostracise them. We extend our invitation to all izinduna to play their part in the building of our nation and the establishment of our UMR.
(iii) AmaKhumalo
AmaKhumalo are fathers to the King. Ngobaba beNkosi. But they don’t ‘own’ the King, neither do they have any claim to the King which is greater than that enjoyed by any other Mthwakazi citizen. Not all the Khumalo clans belong to this circle. The role of the
amaKhumalo will always be pivotal both at this formative stage and after the establishment of UMR rule. It is up to the Khumalos to see what role they can play in the nation-building process. UMTHWAKAZI extends its invitation to them to be partners in Impi YeHawu.
(iv) Monarchists
Broadly, this is everybody who believes that in any political system uMthwakazi will establish under UMR, the King must be an important element of that system. As a movement, UMTHWAKAZI also belongs to this group. As we state in the first edition of our
website under UMR Governmental System, we believe that the monarchy must form an important component of government at the level of provincial government. The precise mechanisms to do that will of course be left to constitutional law and drafting experts.
(v) UMphakathi WeNkosi (King’s Inner Circle)
UMphakathi were the King’s inner circle chosen by the King. While uMphakathi could be hereditary it was never a constant. King Mzilikazi had his own, so did King Loengula.
UMphakathi has a key role to play in Mthwakazi’s nation-building process and is invited to play its role in this regard.
(vi) Modernists
This is a generic grouping into which, again, uMTHWAKAZI falls. It includes private individuals, professionals, business, sector groupings, civic bodies, political organisations etc who believe in a modern political system and political institutions that serve the interests of Mthwakazi modern society. It includes all welter of political opinion on what Mthwakazi society should become under a modern UMR. We need point out though that this grouping is not necessarily mutually exclusive to monarchists. This explains why uMTHWAKAZI appears in both camps.
(vii) Political parties or organisations: Zapu 2000, Zapu in Diaspora, disgruntled members of Zanu-PF, the MDC
Political parties such as Zapu 2000, Zapu in Diaspora, disgruntled members of Zanu-PF and the MDC who share uMTHWAKAZI’s vision of an independent UMR are welcome to join uMTHWAKAZI. We envisage uMTHWAKAZI as a broad coalition, much in the mould of the ANC in South Africa. Each of these groups is pivotal to building our new nation and we look forward to working together with them. Let us not forget that those of our people now in Zanu-PF who were leaders of ZAPU in the 1980s, and whom we stood by at that dark hour, went through hell at the hands of this very system we are seeking to remove. Whatever their political station now and whatever the perceived reasons for it, let us bury our differences and move on with them if they want to work with us. Akusilima sindlebende kwaso Mthwakazi. We must remove any disunity that the system can try and exploit to our detriment. But we will not be naïve.
(viii) Pressure groups, cultural groups etc
All pressure groups like Imbovane YaMahlabezulu and Bulawayo Dialogue, and cultural groups like Vukani Mahlabezulu, are also invited as partners in this political process.
UMTHWAKAZI does not seek that they dissolve themselves to join it. It is up to those groups to decide to do so. UMTHWAKAZI is prepared to work with all these groups as the organisations they are so long as they share our vision of a free and independent UMR.
(ix) Abadala (The Elders)
This group is the custodian of uMthwakazi’s traditions and culture. Culture includes politics.
Though they have never been a political grouping abadala have always been important in all aspects of Mthwakazi society. They must be included in this nation-building process. It is up to all of us to point each other to where this reservoir of Mthwakazi’s knowledge and wisdom is. Abadala sit at the apex of Mthwakazi society. We also want them to play a part in the building of uMthwakazi.
(x) Other groups
Last but not least this group includes any groups not herein specifically mentioned.
Purpose
The purpose for providing all this detail is to assure all of uMthwakazi that our movement, MTHWAKAZI, has not privatised the nation-building process or sought to exclude anyone from it. We also want to underline from the onset that ownership and control of that process must belong and remain with uMthwakazi society at large, not anyone else.
Further, as we state in our Welcome message, we also claim no monopoly over the nation-building process or how the political struggle should be waged. We will be prepared to work with any organisation or individuals who are committed to the establishment of UMR through peaceful political process.Through this website, and by this message, uMTHWAKAZI is making it clear that no section of our society must be left out or be antagonised by uMTHWAKAZI’s inability to consult widely and adequately.
What uMTHWAKAZI has simply done is, first, establish forums (uMTHWAKAZI and Mthwakazionline) through which debate about Mthwakazi’s independence can be taken out of the private domain and converted it into a public agenda and, secondly, we have provided the vehicle (MTHWAKAZI) through which that public agenda can be achieved.
More importantly, we have initiated a process, not an event, whose nature and outcome will be determined by the nation of Mthwakazi itself. Beyond that, we have not gone. This consultation is about getting the mandate from Mthwakazi to move the process beyond this point. For doing this, we can’t be wrong.
Having said that, those of us who are genuinely concerned about uMthwakazi’s oppression under Zimbabwe rule, and we know we are in the majority, will understand and accept that under a murderous dictatorship such as Zimbabwe’s, the formation of a political movement that seeks to remove that oppression can never be something for which a public meeting can be convened at Amakhosi Township Square to consult. But we could not go on doing nothing. In the face of inaction, someone had to take the lead.
UMTHWAKAZI has. But we have not sought to exclude anyone, or to claim monopoly or superior knowledge over the liberation process. In releasing uMTHWAKAZI and its web-based version Mthwakazionline to the public we have demonstrated our commitment that uMTHWAKAZI must be a movement truly representative of and owned by uMthwakazi society as a whole. In getting uMthwakazi to come out of political hiding to talk, debate, ask, comment and criticise, we have achieved our first goal. That first goal is to have uMthwakazi engage this issue of our independence mentally. Over time, we have no doubt whatsoever that we will conquer the culture of fear and silence, enabling our freedom to become common talk.The second goal, as I outline below, must be to ACT to achieve our UMR.
Identity of MTHWAKAZI’s Leadership
We have also received e-mails that raise concern about the ‘anonymity’ of uMTHWAKAZI’s leadership. Some have even called uMTHWAKAZI ‘faceless’.
UMTHWAKAZI will not dismiss these concerns slightly. We have no doubt that the majority are genuine and arise out of a genuine concern to avoid being caught in a ‘political trap’ set by the establishment. Some of the e-mails are of course sent by agents of the system to try and induce us out of our perceived ‘anonymity’. Frankly, we are least concerned about this latter group because we know the whirlwind of Mthwakazi’s march to freedom will sweep them aside. But, again, we will not be naïve and reckless.
Our concern is with those who are genuinely worried about investing their trust and indeed lives in people they do not know. These are people who want to work and move our nation building process forward. Before we attempt to address these concerns we must record that this concern is also shared by those of us who have formed uMTHWAKAZI. As a movement we want to be careful, at least from the beginning, that we do not attract on board agents of the enemy who seek to destroy our movement at birth. But as a movement we have refused to allow that cycle of mistrust to continue.
We have broken the cycle by going public. Going public is only a start, but a significant one. But we want to draw a line between care and paranoia. We hope we will get the balance right and move forward with secured certainty.Turning to the public’s concern about our anonymity, in our position as a new political movement, we must admit, it is no easy thing to give the sort of guarantees people expect.
And perhaps we should not even attempt to do so because in reality we are liable to lie. But if this is any guarantee at all, when the time is opportune uMTHWAKAZI will reveal its ‘face’.
For the moment, we must leave it to people’s own sixth sense to guide them. Beyond that, we cannot say. In truth, we must leave it to our work to build that bond of trust between and among us all. No one can cheat time.
We also know this about you Mthwakazi: amanyala livele aliwangeni bantwana beNkosi.
Njalo, okubolileyo kuvele kuyazinukela nje. Those who do not know uMthwakazi’s national psyche have accused you of being slow, stubborn, and of refusing to partake in Zimbabwe’s scramble to self-destruction. Yet your judgement of Zimbabwe has been
proved right. Nanku manje, kuyini amandlwane la Zimbabwendini? Once again, we count on uMthwakazi’s impeccable national psyche to judge uMTHWAKAZI. But we are under no illusion that only the endorsement of the people’s trust and their full support will make uMTHWAKAZI the authentic movement it seeks to be. We don’t expect to be given that trust gratuitously; we want to earn it, and we will.
Finally on leadership, we wish to make it absolutely clear that the leadership of MTHWAKAZI has NOT been elected. The leadership shall be chosen democratically by the people of Mthwakazi in an appropriate forum established for the purpose. What uMTHWAKAZI has is an interim structure tasked with building uMTHWAKAZI into a true force for Mthwakazi’s liberation. Indeed, it’s natural for any political movement to commence this way. UMTHWAKAZI is no exception.
However, to MTHWAKAZI’s internal democracy, we are committed.
Beyond the website – ACTION
Beyond the website, uMTHWAKAZI wants ACTION.
The Americans say any action in any direction is better than no action at all. We too have to ACT now.
As a nation we have inescapably come to a stage where INACTION is no longer an option.
But what action we need to take must ultimately be the responsibility of the whole nation of Mthwakazi working together.
But it is not lost to us that people look to MTHWAKAZI to provide leadership. And we will.
UMTHWAKAZI will always defer to the overriding authority of the people. But the people and uMTHWAKAZI must enter into a covenant from the onset, by which a symbiotic relationship is indelibly created. Only within such a relationship will uMTHWAKAZI provide the leadership expected of it. Until the substantive leadership of uMTHWAKAZI is chosen, the interim leadership of MTHWAKAZI will proceed on the assumption that such a relationship exists or will come to exist soon. We are however confident of popular endorsement.
In the coming months uMTHWAKAZI will be working on a set of programmes whose specific purpose is to transform us from a talking political movement to an acting one. We will provide leadership on the ACTION we expect out of our symbiotic relationship. In talking of action we imply no rabble-rousing, subversion, sabotage, provocation or any of the needless violence that defines Zimbabwean politics. Certainly, we have NO DEGREES IN VIOLENCE! What we have in abundance is common sense and love for people, regardless of the tribe or ethnic group they come from.
By ACTION we mean sustained responsible ACTION that will stand the test of time and deliver our UMR peacefully.
To the Government of Zimbabwe, and indeed the international community, uMthwakazi publicly registers its commitment to resolving its quest for an independent and sovereign UMR through peaceful political process. Via this route I am prepared to provide the leadership with which I am temporary entrusted. I trust and I am sure that the substantive leader chosen by uMthwakazi will continue on the same route and deliver our independence without undue hardship to Mthwakazi and the people of Zimbabwe. We keep referring to the ‘velvet divorce’ of The Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia as an example of peaceful separation.
UMthwakazi did not deserve Gukurahundi, neither do the Shona deserve anything similar; nor does any people. Gukurahundi is a legacy of political scoundrels who let their political egos carry them away. UMTHWAKAZI must do well to stay clear of leading our people to anything remotely proximating that sordid history.To avoiding that, and to peace and human dignity and freedom, uMTHWAKAZI is committed irrevocably.
Conclusion: okhubekayo ngohambayo Mthwakazi
This simple SiNdebele saying sums up my conclusion.
To those who only see wrong in what we have initiated we say uMTHWAKAZI has at least provided the benchmark against which to measure your rightness. We challenge them to let out that rightness to uMthwakazi public to judge as we have done our own independence agenda. If there was nothing our critics would have said nothing. Then we would have had nothing. And then nothing! Nothing!
Kuzekubenini sisitsha siphila Mthwakazi?
UMTHWAKAZI has stopped the vicious cycle of ‘nothing’.
Ukusolwa yikubana uyenza. Those who founded our nation were never cheered by those they challenged. But they did when they had to do. Today, uMthwakazi is the proud product of their sacrifice and bravery. We too have come to stage where we must DO.
But we will not be deterred by those who seek the comfort of familiarity and inertia. We are not afraid to suffer the pain of anxiety and temporary discomfort if that suffering will deliver permanent happiness to our future generations and those of us who will be privileged enough to see UMR delivered during their life-time.
Those who want to move with us along this difficult road are the overwhelming majority of Mthwakazi who must not and cannot continue to suffer under Zimbabwe’s despotic and spiteful rule. It is this long suffering and silent majority whose endorsement we seek but the UMR we will deliver will also be for those who today stand as our critics.
Whatever we do now, the end of Mugabe’s rule must never find us in the same position uMthwakazi has been in the pat 24 years of Zimbabwe’s rule.
We must prepare to move on. The final and true destination of Mthwakazi is UMR. There we must get without fail.
Nxa sikhubeka okutsh’ukuthi sizafika.
Ngeki’phele l’indaba izilungiswe!
On behalf of MTHWAKAZI, I thank you.
From MTHWAKAZI President
Message from President of NOMW
Umuzi ngumuzi ngomama, isizwe yisizwe ngabomama: Mobilising women for a new Mthwakazi society
Bomama, Manina, Zintombi! Mthwakazi!
We are all familiar with the Zulu/Ndebele saying: “Wathinta abafazi wathinta imbokodo!” It translates roughly to: “Provoke women and you will be crushed!
Today, in mobilising for Mthwakazi, I want to say to all Mthwakazi women and uMthwakazi society at large, that we have long moved from the political world where those words were relevant and apt. That world is gone now.
I want to say today we are into and want to define a new political world in which our primary purpose is to rebuild, recover, soothe, comfort, and prepare our children to take over as responsible leaders who will build a society for men and women, young and old, disabled and able, Ndebele, Venda, Tonga, Shona, Xhosa, Khalanga, White, Indian, Coloured, etc etc.
Do away with society that insults, and incites violence against, others!
Do away with society of broken homes and families!
Do away with society that turns our children into instruments of politics and merchants of death!
By divine guidance do away with a society that sanctions the rape of the girl child and the woman as a weapon of politics and out with a society that turns the boy child and the man into such a weapon!
Out with a society that strips our men, women and children of their humanness and turns them into political instruments!
Out with a society that has no respect for women except as instruments of politics or objects of lustful pleasure!
Out with a society of generalised disorder, disrespect and gratuitous vice
Bomama, political charity begins in the home. Political charity in the home translates to political responsibility in public life and public office. It creates a society that nurtures and produces children and public officials equipped with the humane and social skills of tolerance, respect, diversity, governance, accountability, communication, organization, and sense of community purpose. It locates the individual within a community and defines the community as a creation of the individual acting collectively. As such political charity recognises that the individual is the basic ingredient of the family and society. For that reason it aims to make the best it can out of the individual.
As the mothers of the nation and the mothers of our children, and as wives to our men, and as women, we are responsible for the nature of the society we produce, the children we nurture and bring up, the men we deploy out there and the government we get. We have been found wanting.
As with most of us in present-day Zimbabwe, we have surrendered to Zanu-PF the values that make us women and worthy of the name, ‘mothers of the nation’. We have given in to political bullying through methods that are too shameful to repeat here and allowed the breakdown of everything, from the home, the family through to the institution of the state. Today we stand in owe of the state, our children, our men and other women, all because we too easily allowed the invasion of our soul and body by political bullies we should long have ejected from our body politic.
But we can recover our pride of place and once again become the repositories of order, progress, respect and good old-fashioned love.
I am proud to cite WOZA as an example. WOZA has shown that as Mthwakazi women we can stand up to political bullying and institutionalised abuse of women and become who we want to be, that we can create the society we want and a state that we will truly call our own. We can only pay tribute WOZA women for showing the way.
That reminds me!
I am sorry I forgot to introduce myself but I am sure you can forgive me for that omission; these are emotional issues which are close to my heart as I am sure they are to all women out there, whether they are Mthwakazians or Zimbabweans.
I am MPC’s interim President of National Organization of Mthwakazi Women (NOMW). I am tasked with organizing and recruiting uMthwakazi women to join MPC and become the shapers of our new society of Mthwakazi and our new state: United Mthwakazi Republic.
I am honoured to be playing this role at this stage.
Today, I invite all Mthwakazi women, regardless of colour, background, race or tribe, who believe in the values and the agenda MPC stands for, to join MPC and become part of the political movement shaping a new political destiny for Mthwakazi, and indeed, a new Zimbabwe.
My maiden message today is short.
I just want to say:
In, with a society that upholds and respects the woman and the girl child;
In, with a society where men respect their women and women their men, parents their children and children their parents;
In, with a society that sees a person as a person, not a political definition or label;
In, with a society that gives people equal access to opportunities of life;
In, with a society that rewards hard work;
In, with a society that enables parents to feed, cloth, entertain, educate, and give their children the best healthcare available;
In, with a society of general good and goodwill to others;
Mthwakazi, a society where the most ruthless political bully is the supreme ruler is alien to Mthwakazi. Manje sikuvumelelani? It is never too late to reject such a system. We have the power to change it. Let us change it.
In confronting and exorcising ourselves of such a terrible system we are not looking to banging pots and pans or to dance dishonourably in streets or to shout obscenities across open spaces. We want to do so by helping define a new future, a common vision and a new set of shared values, as MPC President says in his message. We want to leave that system behind and define a true Mthwakazi woman the way we want.
Yes, I am not shy to say it; we want the new political order under Mthwakazi to be a time for love. A time for young people to court, build &adequately provide for their families. A time for the old to renew their vows and those who have broken up to kiss and make up and for others to find new love. We want the new Mthwakazi to be a society of responsible good times. Yes, we will let the good times roll!
I invite you all Mthwakazi women to come and join me and other Mthwakazi women I am now working with, to be part of this new movement of hope.
Together, let us stop the demeaning practice of ‘donated’ sewing machines.
Let us refuse to be bussed to some construction site of small rural bridge or dam, to carry stones for the local politician’s television or radio show.
Let us refuse to be herded into some run down co-operative of this or that to waste our quality time on some politician’s ego-boosting pet project.
Let us say we are women, but not just any women but Mthwakazi women.
MPC is about enabling and empowering women to be women again, to regain their dignity and reclaim their rightful place as the mothers of our society, the custodians and repositories of Mthwakazi’s future.
As Mthwakazi women we have another opportunity to correct things. That opportunity has arisen in the form of MPC. Let us rise up, tie our bellies that are weeping for the lost African child, father, mother, husband, brother, sister and help lead uMthwakazi out of the political wilderness.
This is uMthwakazi’s ideal. This will be UMR’s reality. But we must all work for it now.
I thank you.
Phumuzile Ndlovu
President - NOMW
GOVERNMENT LINKS
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Prosperity and ProgressMthwakazi Free State Web Portal Matabeleland Postal Stamps FFSA
Contact
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