State has no appetite to keep memory of Lookout Masuku- MDC official

An MDC official Discent Collins Bajila has accused the government of Zanu PF of showing no willingness to have anything identified with the name of the late Zipra commander Lookout Masuku after the Bulawayo City Council backed down on the motion of having Barbourfields named after him.

He said the debate on whether or not Barbourfields Stadium in Bulawayo should be renamed after the late Commander of the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army General Lookout Khalisabantu Vumindaba Mafela Masuku should be looked at from the multiplicity of dimensions within which it falls.

"The simplistic but ever critical dimension is one that locates General Masuku as an icon of the liberation struggle whose memory is under serious attack from the state," Bajila said.

"Unless the masses do something novel, one day there shall be children who will never know that once upon a time there lived a man named Lookout Masuku. The state has no appetite for keeping the memory of General Masuku alive especially given the fact that he died as a result of its cruelty. It is thus inevitable that the masses who wish to keep this memory alive will at some point take the matter of the memory of General Masuku into their own hands in defiance."

He said those masses will naturally and justifiably view anyone resisting such a move as a fan of the state and may use the power they have to punish the state and its sympathisers.