(TALKZIMBABWE) Tribalists know nothing about heroes

Tribalists know nothing about heroes
By: Jonathan Moyo, MP
Posted: Sunday, September 5, 2010 12:32 am

IF there is one telling development which has exposed the incurable poverty of leadership in the two MDC formations and further underlined the irretrievable irrelevance of both parties to Zimbabwe’s political history and future, it is their astonishing inability to understand the meaning and context of national heroism and their shocking readiness to unashamedly wave ethnic flags to justify their opportunistic tribal nonsense under the treacherous cover of the so-called inclusive politics of the moment.

There are three highlights that have defined the background to this development.

The first highlight was the amazing but clearly opportunistic if not mischievous call by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to have the late Chief Khayisa Ndiweni — who died on August 4 2010 — declared a national hero. Apart from being a cheap ploy to appeal to Matabeleland voters, Tsvangirai’s call to have Chief Ndiweni a national hero provided clear evidence not only that he does not understand the meaning and context of national heroism, but also that he has no qualms about distorting and corrupting national heroism in his vain hope of winning back the Matabeleland vote that he used to take for granted but continues to lose by the day.

The second highlight of the background to the issue in question was an ill-fated attempt by Prime Minister Tsvangirai to seek a prominent officiating role in the 2010 programme to commemorate national heroes last month under the claim that doing so would be in keeping with GPA politics.

That incident demonstrated that Tsvangirai is desperate to be seen as a significant and positive part of our country’s liberation memory because he and his foreign handlers and kitchen cabinet know only too well that history records him as a celebrated opponent of the gains of the liberation struggle.

Tsvangirai’s desperation to use, if not abuse, his office as Prime Minister, to have an official role in the annual programme to commemorate national heroes as a consequence of the September 15, 2008 GPA stands in sharp contrast to the dignified and disarming way in which the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, an icon of the liberation struggle, dealt with the same issue following the implementation of the historic December 22, 1987 Unity Accord.


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Just check the record and you will not find even one instance when the late Vice President Nkomo, who is universally acknowledged as Father Zimbabwe, ever asked or demanded to be accorded an official role in the annual programme to commemorate national heroes in the name of real national unity which was forged in 1987. If Nkomo did not do it with the liberation history on his side, why on earth is Tsvangirai trying to do it when the history and legacy of the liberation struggle are clearly not with him?

Is it not obvious to Tsvangirai and his henchmen that the 1987 Unity Accord with its liberation politics of national unity is far much more fundamental and far much more important to the history and future of this country than the 2008 GPA?

Is it not self-evident that the former is permanent while the latter is by definition temporary and therefore going nowhere?

But these questions, revealing as they are, stand beside the point because the issue at stake is about the misunderstanding of the meaning and context of national heroism by the two MDC formations and their readiness to seek tribal refuge in the face of very serious national matters.

The third highlight of the background to the issue in question was when the leaders of the two MDC formations, particularly Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and Welshman Ncube, sought to compete with one another over what they imagine is a Ndebele vote by feebly and disingenuously claiming that the late Gibson Sibanda, who passed away on August 24 2010, deserved to be accorded the status and honour of a national hero.

While the very cheap and unfortunate tribal intentions of Tsvangirai and Mutambara in their dishonest quest to have Sibanda declared a national hero were palpable, it was left to the Midlands’ Welshman Ncube to beat the drums of discord the loudest as he ironically waved a tribal flag in pursuit of national hero status for Gibson Sibanda ostensibly on behalf of the people of Matabeleland.

On September 1, 2010 Newsday reported amazing tribal stuff from Welshman Ncube in a front page article headlined “Matabeleland is marginalised”.

The daily newspaper quoted Ncube as saying: “On Wednesday last week (August 25 2010) I was at the late Gibson Sibanda’s house where community leaders were discussing the now common inclination to treat people from this region (Matabeleland) as second-class citizens.” The newspaper further quoted Ncube, as claiming that: “Clearly there’s a strong perception within the region of such marginalisation and it does not matter whether that is the reality or not but there are obvious actions that have given rise to this belief and that ought to be addressed ...

“People should be treated fairly and equally but in the minds of the people of Matabeleland this is not happening. Personally I’ve not sat down and confirmed that nowadays if you are from Matabeleland you cannot be made a national hero. But even without the study the belief from the region is that it is so.”

These tribal sentiments attributed to Welshman Ncube by Newsday are as mind boggling as they are disappointing, not least because they contradict and even undermine Ncube’s otherwise excellent and principled as yet to be acknowledged contribution to the political stability that Zimbabwe enjoys today following the failed 2008 destabilisation agenda of the enemies of our country.

In many untold ways Welshman Ncube has been the voice of reason and maturity from the opposition ranks that helped and even ensured the success of GPA negotiations.

Zimbabweans owe him a debt of gratitude for that. It is against this backdrop that his latest tribal ranting over the granting of national hero status to the late Gibson Sibanda is mind boggling.

In the first place how in God’s name does the granting or not granting of national hero status to an individual called Gibson Sibanda become a regional issue for all the people in Matabeleland? In other words, how does the granting of national hero status empower the people of Matabeleland and conversely how does the failure to grant him that status marginalise them? Surely, there’s some gibberish to be unpacked here.

One of the now well-known, widespread but unacceptable tactics of politicians from Matabeleland over the last 30 years is to link and tie their personal interests and fate with the interests and aspirations of the people from the region. This is a terrible tribal cul de sac. It is sad that Welshman Ncube has fallen into it as part of his quest for the inconsequential post of the presidency of his MDC formation currently led by Mutambara in the hope of becoming yet another unelected Deputy Prime Minister, all in a bizarre effort to checkmate Thokozani Khupe, whose irrelevance is tempered by the fact that she defeated Ncube at the polls such that her position as Deputy Prime Minister has the support of the electorate as an elected Member of Parliament.

Otherwise it is absurd for Welshman Ncube to suggest that the people of Matabeleland define their situation in terms of the personal interests and fortunes of politicians from the region including whether such politicians are declared national heroes.

That sort of thing does not put food on anybody’s table; it does not pay school fees and does not pay medical bills, let alone build roads or clinics among other essentials of life. Like their compatriots elsewhere in the country, the people of Matabeleland are preoccupied with policies over personalities and what they want more than anything else is the development of their communities.

Welshman Ncube’s claim that there is now a perception that if someone is from Matabeleland then they cannot be made a national hero is inflammatory rubbish which should be condemned in the strongest terms because it is ridiculously false.

What is instructive is that Ncube himself admits that his claims are not based on any study or reality and he is thus unable to vouch for them as fact. But if that is the case, why is Welshman Ncube peddling things that he does not know? That kind of inflammatory and divisive behaviour under the cover of tribalism is not the mark of national leadership.

The attempt by the two MDC formations to use a tribal card to have the late Gibson Sibanda declared a national hero is insulting, not only in national terms, but to the people of Matabeleland who deserve to be treated with respect without being put in the political pockets of individual politicians from the region who have hidden personal agendas that have nothing whatsoever to do with community or national development.

In the circumstances, and given the issue at hand, that the two MDC formations suffer from an incurable poverty of leadership underpinned by their irretrievable irrelevance to Zimbabwe’s political history and future as exemplified by their incredible inability to understand the meaning and context of national heroism with the status they’ve sought for the late Gibson Sibanda as a case in point, it has become necessary to clarify three fundamental and important issues arising from the foregoing:

In the first place, there is no reason why 30 years after our independence we have people, including those who should by now know better, creating unnecessary confusion about the meaning and context of national heroism when it is, in fact, an open-and-shut case. Nobody can or will ever be declared a national hero if they do not have a consistent lifetime record of not just opposing imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism in Zimbabwe, but also of doing so in a manner that entails self-evident personal sacrifice.

In the second place, it is unacceptable and indeed objectionable in the extreme for individual politicians from Matabeleland, and indeed from any region or tribe for that matter, to seek selfish positions under the banner of tribal marginalisation.
Politicians like Welshman Ncube who now wants to lead his MDC should seek party and government office on the basis of their own individual track records in serving the people on the delivery front, on the ground and not on the basis of primordial instincts, such as tribalism, which are easy to assert, but difficult if not impossible to prove.

It is notable that for all the false noise they make about change and because they are unacceptable neo-colonial creations of British and American authorities from whom they are now trying to free themselves at the eleventh hour, the two MDC formations find themselves so ideologically orphaned that they have become not just poor but terrible imitations of Zanu-PF in a hopeless bid to be relevant to the Zimbabwean and African situation ahead of the next polls at which foreign puppets will be punished severely by the electorate.

A further examination of these three considerations will help explain the matter at hand starting with the issue of how the two MDC formations have become so cornered as to necessarily become terrible imitations of Zanu-PF.

However you look at the matter, the fact that the MDC formations and their media hacks have spent the last six or so weeks preoccupied with the question of the definition of a national hero proves beyond doubt that the two parties and their leaders are now firmly stuck in Zanu-PF’s national agenda, but only as terrible imitations.

What this means is that despite their bombastic talk about change, political reform and all the donor-driven jazz, the MDC formations are not alternatives to Zanu-PF but are poor imitators.

That is why they want to have their sellouts declared as national heroes and that is why they want to copy, always in a very bad way, everything that Zanu-PF does including copying Zanu-PF revolutionary songs such as Nyatsoterera. Have you noticed that when you hear MDC youths singing without listening to the lyrics the music is very much Zanu-PF? Ask any musician and you’ll be told that you sing music and not lyrics or words and so there’s no prize for guessing what matters more between the music and the words, not least because the latter can be changed as many times as anyone wants, while the music stays the same!

What makes the two MDC formations terrible imitations of Zanu-PF is that they want to sing Zanu-PF music on which they have put treacherous British and American lyrics which do not resonate with the history and future of the national situation. That is causing a discord which is frustrating the leadership of the two MDC formations while irritating the general public which can no longer stand the charade.

Then there is the issue of how the two MDC formations are playing with fire through their attempts to invoke tribal issues, especially in Matabeleland. The fact is the less said about this matter the better because it speaks for itself.

However, this much needs to be said. The late Vice President Joshua Nkomo was Father Zimbabwe and not Father Matabeleland. That alone should be enough food for thought to all political pretenders out there who suffer from backward political ambitions.

Some two years ago Welshman Ncube went to Matabeleland and told the people there that he would not seek the presidency of his party because in his view then it was not possible for somebody from Matabeleland to become President of Zimbabwe.
That is the justification he used in defence of Arthur Mutambara’s leadership of his MDC. This was clearly a tribal position.

Now Ncube wants to replace the same Mutambara while relying on the worst form of the same old tribal argument.

Everyone can see that Ncube now understands that a Shona president of his party has no chance of winning a national election but may, and this is not guaranteed, benefit from a protest vote in Matabeleland to the point of being a kingmaker and even a Deputy Prime Minister or even Deputy President.

It is therefore clear that Ncube still subscribes to the same regressive tribal philosophy that got him to hire Mutambara in 2008 except he now would rather have the spoils to himself now that he believes his party has no electoral votes outside Matabeleland and there is no reason to have those votes benefit somebody from Manicaland like Mutambara.

Well, as already mentioned, this is a matter better left unsaid for it speaks for itself on the ground better than any words from any politician.

The ball game would be very interesting and meaningful if Welshman Ncube’s audience and indeed constituency were outside Matabeleland. The case of Raila Odinga in Kenya is instructive for the likes of Welshman Ncube and even Tsvangirai. Odinga is a Luo from western Kenya but his electoral constituency is in Nairobi’s Kibera Township.

There’s another point for consideration by Welshman Ncube and the like-minded. While it is very true that all good politics are local since there is no physical place called national, it is also true that all localities are increasingly becoming melting pots with multiple ethnicities. For example, at least 20 percent of the population in Bulawayo is not Ndebele and that percentage is growing. Food for tribal thought!

Then there is the whole question about who is a national hero. It is understandable that the two MDC formations have seized on this issue as part of their terrible imitation of Zanu-PF in the hope of becoming relevant to the political history and future of Zimbabwe. But let us be very clear, it is not possible by definition for anybody associated with or involved in the 1999 formation of the MDC to ever be a national hero. That is impossible and there is no need to waste time about that.

In summary and by definition, a national hero in Zimbabwe is somebody who in their lifetime persistently and consistently opposed imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism in a heroic fashion involving recognisable personal sacrifice. Put differently, a national hero is somebody who in his lifetime either did heroic things involving personal sacrifice to contribute to the attainment of our national independence, meaning our sovereignty, or/and to the defence of that independence or sovereignty.

Anybody who made personal sacrifices to either contribute to the prevention of our independence or to the overthrow of that independence on behalf of imperial or colonial or neo-colonial interests is a sellout and not a national hero. That is the bottom line.

That is why, like elsewhere around the world, our national heroes are either comrades who fell during the liberation struggle or others who were with them in Zanu-PF (which is inclusive of Zipra and Zanla comrades since the 1987 Unity Accord) who have since departed for the eternal world. Because it is about their pursuit and defence of our independence and sovereignty, an overwhelming number of our heroes will be men and women in uniform from our armed forces.

If you don’t understand this ask the Americans and they will educate you about their own national heroes with reference to who is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

What we have in Zimbabwe about national heroes is not different from what they have in the US.

Of course, there are other awards of excellence and achievement which people can claim or be bestowed. The status of national hero is one of a kind and is not given to every Jim, Jack or Jane.

Nobody, including those who were either involved in the liberation struggle, who has collaborated with our colonisers in a fake so-called struggle for democracy since 2000 should ever dream of becoming a national hero by dint of that treacherous fact.

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Jonathan Moyo (MP) is a former Minister of Information and Publicity and a member of Zanu-PF