Mthwakazi you are right to keep away from phony revolutions, make-believe 'civil disobediences'!

I bet when those screaming mobs in 1980 called for Joshua Nkomo to be killed, they were engaged in a 'revolution'.

I bet the MDC has been engaged in a revolution for 'excellence' and 'democracy' since 1999!
And I bet the Harare mob and 'looteritariat' running about directionlessly and purposelessly on the streets of Harare today are engaged in a 'revolution'!

I also bet MDC-T and ZPF -  Zanu-PF's phony successors and Zanu-PF's rejectees, respectively, - are today 'revolutionaries' as champions of democracy!

But wait, aren't they all Shonaists and Gukurahundists? And Shonaism and Gukurahundism are not about being Shona or supporting Gukurahundi, but about a perceived cultural and political dominance and superiority of the Shona over uMthwakazi. Look at their political structures, their behaviours, and their attitudes - all riding on the political crest of Zanu-PF's perceived triumph over uMthwakazi!   
And Zapu leader, Dumiso Dabengwa, is unfortunately wrong about attributing uMthwakazi's disinterest to the mobsterism and gangsterism and the looting going on in Harare in the name of a 'revolution', to the fear of a second Gukurahundi. Dabengwa is also sending the wrong message to Mthwakazi, giving credibility today to a fear uMthwakazi defeated and exiled way back in 1985.

So uMthwakazi knows the truth. The idea of a second Gukurahundi is fantasy. It will never happen again Mthwakazi! Not even in any disguise!

UMthwakazi's absence in this ritual of borrowed madness is purely down to two things; principle and character.
On a matter of principle, uMthwakazi is rejecting and expressing her disdain at unprincipledness and this affinity to mayhem and disorder emanating from Harare; rejecting a tendency from this mob from Harare to stand for and against nothing. It is about uMthwakazi also rejecting this crass opportunism and openness to venality. The results of both: Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina, GNU's and now something showing an ugly political face from the shadows called a 'Transitional National Authority'. When they thought they had all the political cake to themselves again - to the exclusion of uMthwakazi - those in MDC-T and those now expelled by Zanu-PF - completely ignored and rejected that idea when it was so publicly espoused many times and over many avenues. So what has changed?

As a political character, uMthwakazi are true revolutionaries who will spearhead one when one is due and proper, who will have the courage of their convictions to defend order against the forces of disorder when such a choice is imposed on her, as it is now, and who will stand by what is right and just against time and circumstance regardless of the locus of the political wrong or the identity of the political malfeasor or the alleged victim.  

For Mthwakazi, it is never about who but about what political principle, what idea, and what vision one speaks about. In these two things and these two things alone, must be found uMthwakazi's present attitude to what the mobs and looters are currently doing in Harare - egged on by their 'leaders' - in the name of a 'revolution'. And by the way, when those mobsters and their leaders seek political traction from Mthwakazi - which they want so desperately - they refer, rather inconsistently and incongruently, to their activities as 'civil disobedience'. Looting, destroying property, and endangering innocent lives with random missiles such as hurled stones and catapults - and you call that 'civil disobedience'? Revolutions by definition are about protecting the people, not endangering them!

And how come all of a sudden - 36 years after Zimbabwe's independence and 36 years after uMthwakazi has been suffering a genocide and political malignment and economic dispossession and fighting for democracy and freedom alone - we suddenly have this new 'civil society' which is more 'injured' since 1999 than uMthwakazi who has been for the past 36 years?

I may further point out in relation to Dr Dabengwa's remarks above, that in the 1980's uMthwakazi fought a revolution 'leaderless' while he and the late Lookout Masuku were incarcerated and while Nkomo and the Zapu leadership had been systematically severed from uMthwakazi. The greater principle, the higher ideal of freedom, dissolved fear. That ideal will still see the same end today!

Today, uMthwakazi - 'leaderless' - has galvanized similarly again. Nobody has told uMthwakazi to behave as uMthwakazi is in relation to this present mayhem in Harare, only uMthwakaziness has. It is not Mugabe or Zanu-PF per se on whose side uMthwakazi is standing today, but the side on which Mugabe and Zanu-PF stand in the face of a polar choice imposed by mobs between order and disorder, a choice between a Zimbabwe which is like South Africa and a Zimbabwe which is like the DRC.

And - as usual and as expected - and against those Mthwakazians who are threatening to forget who they are - uMthwakazi has again made the right choice; the right call on this occasion.

There is no 'revolution' and there is no 'civil disobedience' in Zimbabwe today and happily so too, if it was going to be led by what we see so far and conducted in the manner we have seen so far.

In this connection, I am happy to see that the true news in Zimbabwe today is that the South African afro-pop music outfit - Mafikizolo - are now in Harare for a gig at the Belgravia Sports Club on Saturday. We hope peace-loving people will be allowed to attend freely and enjoy themselves and drown away these incoherent noises from these mobs and looters in what is always wonderful music from South Africa.
And when those who believe otherwise about standing and defending the side of order against disorder wake up one day to the ugly and angry face of faceless looters and mobsters collecting their priced TV's and cellphones and raping their wives and daughters in broad daylight - if mobsterism and gangsterism are allowed to prevail - they will know which side they should have defended when mobs first kicked open their neighbour's door and they cheered, but it will be too late. No sane person wants a DRC in Zimbabwe (despite the affinity!). Zimbabwe's authorities and the SADC region must reject these mobs and looters and their political gang-masters, whether those gang-masters are inside Zanu-PF or the within the ranks of the so-called 'opposition' or so-called 'civil society' - the last of which are always a handful of individuals who have appointed themselves 'representatives' of the people when no civil society group ever does.

As I have been at pains to point out in my previous articles Mthwakazi, these gangsters and mobs are the same people who cheered uMthwakazi's massacre at the hands of Gukurahundi and who have continued to be the base political metal for Zanu-PF's oppression and economic deprivation of uMthwakazi. That they have now quarrelled with Mugabe and Zanu-PF is no reason for Mthwakazi to reject Mugabe and Zanu-PF more than uMthwakazi already has, and is certainly no reason for Mthwakazi to now see them as 'good' and uMugabe and Zanu-PF as 'badder' at their instantaneous political switch. No! Quite the contrary, their actions and activities make uMugabe and Zanu-PF, not a choice between a lesser of two evils, but a real, easy and principled choice for Mthwakazi: order over disorder.

So, I can say uMthwakazi must continue to refuse to be drawn into a non-existent 'revolution' or non-existent 'civil disobediences'; that she must now openly denounce this juvenile tantrum that is now breaking people's windows, and also continue to refuse - like vultures - to squabble over the imagined decaying carcass of the State. The State is there; intact. At the end of any change or revolution, we all need to build from and on the State, rather than build one anew!   
I can therefore go so far as to suggest, Mthwakazi, that in Mthwakazi - in the City of Kings and Queens - uMthwakazi must stand on the side of law and order and stand up against the marauding mob from Harare and chase and beat it away if ever this mob sought to export its nefarious activities into Bulawayo and Matebeleland. We all know why this mob wants uMthwakazi to rise up, and it is not for Mthwakazi's benefit, but itself.

Let it be said loud and clear, then, that uMthwakazi will not in 2016 be politically pawned to die needlessly in order to invite a United Nations Security Council Resolution to benefit another set of political scoundrels, as Joram Nyathi has suggested in his article in The Herald today.

It is you the mobsters and political gangsters from Harare who put these people in power in the first place and have maintained them there as long as it suited. Get rid of them alone just as you put them there alone in the first place and leave uMthwakazi out of it. If you will, and you must, then make the ultimate sacrifices just as uMthwakazi has already made those ultimate sacrifices and saved you from the worst excesses of this system. Indeed, but for Mthwakazi, you would all have been wallowing in gulags and wasting away in endless schools of ideology. UMthwakazi has done her part; you do yours too!

But who has said there should be no revolution?

When there is need for one then there should be one. But whose revolution? These questions uMthwakazi can no longer take for granted.

And where is all this directionless, tribalistic mayhem headed (witness the attacks on VP Mphoko against well-known long-time squatters on State properties!)?

Against a repressive system, a stop-start, tentative, trial-and-error, and 'ready, fire, aim-type' of operation will sure strengthen the system, rather weaken it, and self-beat society to permanent submission. And this is exactly what these mobsters and these looters in Harare are helping achieve. They are headed nowhere slowly! UMthwakazi is not and cannot be part of that!

If uMugabe and Zanu-PF must remain in power to stop a greater evil than them happening, rather than uMthwakazi 'going with the flow', then let it be. In that temporary choice, that political detour, uMthwakazi will be right to stand on the side of Mugabe and Zanu-PF, whether directly or indirectly. The political stakes can't be pitched higher!

A last point needs be said about Mugabe and Zanu-PF, Mthwakazi.

The thing is, Mthwakazi, first, there is nothing worse than a genocide that Mugabe and Zanu-PF can do against uMthwakazi now. Secondly, Mugabe and Zanu-PF cannot also do anything worse in economic and developmental terms than they have already done and are doing. They have played all their aces and brought down their political sledge-hammers but they have nothing to show for it in terms of the supposed political capture of Mthwakazi. Recognizing that, is uMthwakazi's first step not just to political renewal but to recovering her part of the State.

It is for these reasons - this political stalemate between uMthwakazi and Zanu-PF - that I believe Zanu-PF are the right way for Mthwakazi to go at this stage. The rest, are unknown unknowns around whom uMthwakazi must stake nothing politically. We have learned better!

I have taken some stick recently over my recent articles about uMthwakazi and Zanu-PF, but I remain convinced that now - where things stand - uMthwakazi's political interests are best served in a manner uMthwakazi would never ever have even imagined, and which many Mthwakazians cannot countenance now. But is freedom ever born painlessly?

I would rather have freedom - and uMthwakazi's on-going political struggle is for freedom for all - but if you have to impose temporary choices along the way to freedom, between order and disorder, then there is no choice: order is the only choice!.