(HERALD) Myth about development of Matabeleland

Myth about development of Matabeleland
Sunday, 15 May 2011 00:00 Opinion
By Cain Mathema

A myth has been created by many people in Matabeleland, by Western diplomats and their governments, by political parties (many of which are not Zimbabwean really even if they may be led by Zimbabweans and their membership is made up of mostly black Zimbabweans, these parties include MDC-T, MDC, MDC 99, Zapu-Dabengwa and Zapu-Madlela-Siwela) and by the so-called non-governmental organisations like Bulawayo Agenda.

They are not NGOs because they are created and funded by Western governments, they are departments in government ministries of the United States, Britain, France and other Western governments and Western imperialist billionaires like George Soros. This is why these NGOs have so much money to throw all over the place on individual leaders, employees and silly conferences. Where do they get the money from? Can they please tell us that? No black person in Zimbabwe has enough money to create and fund the activities of the Bulawayo Agenda and WOZA, and they have never told us where they get their funds from and who formed them.

These organisations have nothing to do with black citizens of Zimbabwe, and Bulawayo in particular, owning and controlling the economy of this country and Bulawayo. These so-called NGOs, funded by white supremacists, are led by black pikininis who are given large fat salaries.

The myth we are talking about here is that His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Head of Government and Commander-In-Chief of the Defence Forces, Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe, has neglected development in Matabeleland (that is Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Bulawayo).

This myth has been going on especially since the late 1990s. The myth never existed before then. The late 1990s saw a lot of landmark developments and events taking place in the country and outside, e.g.

(a) The passing on of our beloved Vice-President Dr Joshua Nkomo (Father Zimbabwe, non-tribalist from the beginning to the end, Chibwechitedza), this made some people, especially our detractors, say his passing on left a vacuum in the leadership of the Ndebele people and that Ndebeles had no leader any more. But Joshua Nkomo, as we all know, was never a “Ndebele leader”. He was the leader of Zimbabwe, at one time with our President Robert Mugabe as his Secretary for Publicity and Information.

(b) The end of the first 10 years of the Lancaster House Constitutional Agreements, part of which said that land redistribution in Zimbabwe would be carried out using the “willing-seller willing-buyer” principle during the first 10 years of independence.

(c) The passing of land legislation that clearly showed the way forward (the way that pleased King Mzilikazi, King Lobengula, Somhlolo Mathema, Mhabahaba Mkhwananzi, Maqhekeni Sithole, Mbiko Masuku, Mkhithika Thebe, Mashayamombe, Gutu, Mapondera, Whinya, Dombodzvuku, Mukombwe, Dliso Mathema, Queen Lozikeyi, Mkwati Ncube, Mbuya Nehanda, Kaguvi, Negondo, Mtshane Khumalo and Mncumbatha Khumalo) on the issue at the expiry of the first 10 years of independent Zimbabwe.

(d) The coming to power in Britain of Tony Blair and his New Labour Party; his country colonised us, turned us into colonial slaves, murdered our people, raped our mothers and sisters, and plundered our resources and worked with the Christian missionaries like Charles Helm and John Moffat (son of Robert Moffat and brother-in-law to David Livingstone) of the London Missionary Society (LMS), Fr Prestage of the Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Knight-Bruce of the Anglican Church and Shimmin of the Wesleyan Methodist Church to bludgeon us blacks psychologically in order for us to forget ourselves and our past when we were independent politically and economically since time immemorial; Blair’s party went out of its way to show that it was an imperialist agent party par excellence not only in Zimbabwe but all over the world, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan where its troops slaughtered citizens en masse and executed Saddam Hussein on false charges, and Blair says he feels good about it even after acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was executed on false charges, he even says at one time he considered invading Zimbabwe to remove President Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power, again for nothing but to make sure that Zimbabwe remains a British neo-colony with the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai being choir boys and girls in charge of the country on behalf of British capital; but, thanks to Sadc, Blair failed in his murderous schemes on Zimbabwe; and

(e) The formation of the sell-out MDC party by the Westminster Foundation in London, a fund jointly run by the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and the Liberal Democratic Party, which is financed jointly by the British intelligence services and the companies of the British ruling class, companies that include Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered and 400 other British companies still operating in Zimbabwe, companies that support the illegal sanctions, companies that colonised us under the leadership of the British South Africa Company of Cecil John Rhodes.

Before the 1990s, President Mugabe used to be received as a statesman everywhere in Western Europe and in the USA, he even was awarded all sorts of doctorates by all sorts of universities in these countries. In hindsight, one is but forced to say that the West was trying to pamper Cde Mugabe, they were hoping to spoil Cde Mugabe so that he forgot the ultimate goal of the liberation struggle — that is, to achieve both economic and political independence. When the West realised that the man still continued with the liberation agenda, it began to demonise him, it began to make a rogue out of him and a hater of Ndebeles. But President Mugabe refused to be pampered; he refused to forget what King Mzilikazi, King Lobengula, Chief Negomo, Chief Mashayamombe, Chief Gutu, Chief Mutasa, Chief Mapondera, Chief Sigombe Mathema and Chief Rekayi Tangwena stood for —- genuine independence for the country, nothing more, nothing less.

In addition to demonising the President, the West also imposed the murderous illegal sanctions and Zidera co-authored with the MDC boys and girls and these have led to Mpilo Hospital being a ghost of what it used to be, even Bulawayo’s factories have become ghost factories. That is their democracy — “we will kill you and starve you until you see the light of regime change!”. In other words, the change that the MDC parties stand for is to go back to the days when blacks were slaves of the British and their white settlers in the country, the days when the British and the white settlers created tribalism as a tool for divide-in-order-to-rule.

When they invaded the country, they said they had done so in order to “liberate the Shonas from the Matabele; and today they are saying they are on a crusade to “liberate” the Ndebeles from the Shonas! Hence the anti-Shona sentiments by the NGOs and political parties in what is referred to as Matabeleland, a creation of Rhodes and Jameson and the whole British ruling class for the purpose of divide-in-order-to-rule. If President Robert Mugabe were part of this scheme, he would not be accused of suppressing development in Matabeleland, an accusation they never labelled him with until they saw that the man would never veer off Joshua Nkomo’s path, the path of the Mambos.

But what is a myth anyway?

According to the basic thesaurus, a myth is a fable, legend, saga, fairy tale, fairy story, allegory, parable, falsehood, fiction, illusion, invention, fabrication and an untruth. And the Macmillan English Dictionary For Advanced Learners (International Student Edition), says a myth is something that people wrongly believe to be true. A myth can also be understood as a simple way of describing what is happening in the world, that is, in natural and social phenomena. A simple way of describing natural and social phenomena is an uninformed, unresearched way of explaining the world — it is like saying the sun rotates around earth, or so and so was struck by lightning because so and so bewitched him/her, or because the gods wanted it so. Eventually, however, such a way of explaining the world, especially to the unlearned and less travelled, becomes the truth, a truth that is nothing but falsehoods, manipulation and exaggerations, a truth which is no truth at all.

To say that President Robert Mugabe has not given enough attention to and enough resources for the development of Matabeleland can be best described as a myth, that is, falsehoods that obviously (because they are falsehoods) have no evidence but sweeping statements of people who have gone mad with trying to keep Zimbabwe a neo-colony. The hysterical accusations levelled against President Mugabe have no statistics, no data, no comparative information whatsoever. They are just sweeping, hallucinatory misinformation statements that are meant to hoodwink people who may not have enough experience of what has happened in other parts of the country, they are hallucinatory statements based on Jameson’s map of dividing the country along the Munyati River into Matabeleland and Mashonaland, a boundary resoundingly rejected by King Lobengula because such a boundary never existed even before Mzilikazi ever came to this country in 1839.

I am writing here as a Nguni, as a Mkhwananzi, as Jama, as iNqama, iBhukudwane whose great-great-grandfather was Somhlolo Mathema , the commander of the Inqama Regiment (Inqam’elophondo) all the way from Zululand with commander Mzilikazi Khumalo (before he was installed as king) assisted by Mncumbatha Khumalo, Mbungwana Matshazi, Mhabahaba Mkhwananzi, Mkhithika Thebe and Maqhekeni Sithole, among others, to found one of the greatest nations in the world, the Ndebele nation, Umthwakazi (“the huge bushman” because by 1860 most of the Ndebele, 60% percent of them, were non-Nguni and non-Suthu people by descent, they were mainly Shona people). We the Ngunis of Mzilikazi, built a nation by bringing together several tribes, the biggest segment of which was Shona — the Moyos, Nkomos, Tshumas, Mpofus, Gumbos, Sibandas, etc.

We could not build such a nation if we were tribalists, if we went about telling people that they were inferior. Because of this, I cannot be a tribalist, I remain a true Nguni of Mzilikazi, a nation builder by bringing all our people together regardless of tribal descent. And our boundaries went beyond Mazowe, up to Mutare, up to the Kalahari Desert — the Munyati River boundary was drawn by Rhodes and Jameson. I therefore say: SHAME ON THOSE WHO FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS FROM RHODES AND JAMESON!

The Shonas before us, the Kalangas before us, the Tongas before us, the Suthus before us, the Vendas before us and the San people before us believed in and practised non-tribalism and they owned and ruled the country from the Kalahari Desert up to the Indian Ocean, a multi-ethnic country. Any genuine Nguni therefore cannot be a tribalist, cannot be influenced by Rhodes’ ideology of divide-and-rule. Any genuine Nguni can only do things according to Mzilikazi, Lobengula, Ngungunyana of Gaza, nation builders and rejecters and fighters of colonialism, Pan Africanists through and through; and this goes for Dumbudzvuku the founder of the Rozvi Empire and all the Mwenemutapas before and contemporary to him.

In this discourse we will look at examples of what has happened in terms of development in the last 30 years (since 1980) in Tsholotsho (which is in Matabeleland North), that is, development in five broad subject areas — education, health, transport and roads, water and irrigation and electricity supply. We will also have a word or two on development in Bulawayo. This will be done to show what a myth it is for anyone to say that President Robert Mugabe has neglected Matabeleland. We believe in evidence, if you cannot prove what you say or preach about, please shut up because we are really tired of superstitions, because superstitions are beliefs in and practices about unproven things that are creations of the human mind after it has failed to understand and prove why these things happen the way they do.

Historical Background

The first African Reserves (pieces of land that the British colonisers created for Africans displaced by force from their traditional settlement land to go and live so that white settlers and companies could occupy the best land in the country) in Zimbabwe were the Gwayi Reserve (today’s Tsholotsho District or Communal Lands) and the Shangani Reserve (today’s Lupane District or Communal Lands, and Nkayi District or Communal Lands).

African Reserves were created all over the country in order to remove the black people from the best arable land. Obviously, therefore, the best lands happened to have had the best rainfall patterns as well and the best grazing lands. The first two reserves were created in 1894. In Mashonaland the reserves were not created until 1898, yet in that part of the country Rhodes and his hordes of white invaders and settlers started removing blacks from their best traditional lands soon after the British flag was raised in Harare in September 1890; and the first blacks to be killed for resisting colonial occupation were in Mashonaland.

The first to be killed included Chief Negomo in Murehwa. His headquarters were raided in 1892 by British South Africa Company (BSAC) roops early in the morning resulting in his death and the death of 21 of his people including one of his sons. Both the Gwayi and Shangani reserves were areas of Kalahari sands, infested with tsetse flies, mosquitoes, malaria and poor rainfall patterns, and the two of them were full of dark teak and mukwa forests (amagusu amnyama) teaming with wild animals like lions, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and kudus. The reserves had very few people living there.

In other words, these reserves were not good for people, animal husbandry and cropping activities. Indeed, that is why they were selected — to make the blacks less and less independent economically, blacks were turned into colonial slaves, they were forced to sell their labour power at least for three months a year through laws like the hut tax laws and through being openly kidnapped by the BSAC and its white settlers and turned into slaves.

The reserves were a source of cheap labour for white farmers, government departments, white mines and white local authorities. The reserves did not have good roads, they did not have enough water, the people did not own the land, they had no title to anything, they could be kicked out of the reserves anytime, once minerals were discovered there.

Blacks in the reserves were not allowed to have access to loans, the numbers of their cattle were limited by law, there was no electricity in the reserves, schools were built by churches (whose real role was to educate the blacks so that they became tame colonial slaves who despised themselves, hated themselves, their past, their religion and their cultures); that is why Rhodes gave all the church denominations large tracks of land, land that used to be occupied by blacks before colonialism and white racism, and large sums of money annually or monthly in order to psychologically bludgeon the black people and blacks had no right to vote, they were not even allowed to walk on pavements, only whites were allowed by law. Life in Tsholotsho (as in all the African Reserves) was nothing but a horrible grind. The colonial government gave enough assistance in Tsholotsho to enable blacks to breed more colonial slaves.

l. To be continued