Matabeleland Genocide (1980-1987 And Beyond) - Zanu-PF's agenda in the region pt2

The first article on Zanupf's agenda in The Region showed how it has continuously used tribalism to endlessly segregate, discriminate, deprive, oppress, marginalise, relegate to second/third class the people of Matabeleland and The Midlands and worst of all create, through the sum total of these repressive methods, a mindset in some of us that we are inferior and therefore less equal to the Shona people. The article also showed why Zanupf should take full responsibility for the Genocidal terror against innocent and unarmed civilians outside of a war situation as well as account for the lives of the thousands murdered in cold blood by the 5th Brigade. Further it showed how Zanupf's hatred for the people of Matebeleland did not end with the suspension of the mass killings and that tribal hatred was the key motivation behind the atrocities.

It is neither political mischief nor an exageration to call Zanupf's agenda in Matebeleland the black version of South Africa's pre-democracy apartheid system or to say it is the equivalent of any known Genocide committed anywhere in the world.  The horrors of the war of liberation could not match the viciousness with which Zanupf unleashed terror on The Region through the Gukurahundi Genocidists who used inhumane methods worse than those used by Hitler on the Jews. While recent reports especially fron declassified diplomatic cables confirm the long-held suspicion that these dastardly acts of cruelty were committed under the full glare of the most powerful nations whose governments remained either too shocked to act or simply looked the other way it is not wrong to expect them to have intervened to stop the massacre.

Unless doubts over the existence of this agenda are erased and an acknowledgement made of Zanupf's gangsterism determination to pursue a  scorched Matebeleland agenda and its full implications are exposed it would be difficult to understand the bitterness we hold, why The Region is so politically fragmented and disunited, why it is habitually self-destructing and has a propensity for committing political suicide in the name of so called national interest when that nation has never looked after its interests. Understanding why we are losing our identity with its diverse cultures, why we are permanently losing our land, losing job and educational opportunities totally, squeezed out of entrepreneurial spaces ranging from air-time vending to industrial production, being language absorbed, losing control of our natural resources, or simply put losing our claim to The Region as our natural home will even be more difficult. We will not understand why each job taken in Matabeleland by every single non Ndebele person means that several children in Matebeleland are going without food, fees, clothes, bousing, medical care, insurance and most of all hope for a just society.

The involvement of the people of The Region in the nationalist movement of the 1950s onwards  was justified by a legitimate desire for independence whose attainment would translate into access to political power for everyone regardless of tribe, social  class, religion or lack of it, gender, region, culture etc. Since 1890 political power for us only exists as an idea.  No amount of space here would be enough to fully describe  the manner in which our brothers and sisters heroically distinguished themselves in the battle-front in order to free this country. Countless fighters perished in the war to achieve independence but ironically even more surviving Zipras both demobilised and serving in the National Army, were killed by Zanupf during the ethnic cleansing operation with the hope that they were also killing the glorious history . Can this just pass as a moment of madness or as a closed chapter or as a bygone? All this time we were struggling to free ourselves, the colonists were frantically working to sabotage the liberation process. We should of cource not doubt the genuineness of many who followed Zanupf to seek independence but the bottom line is that Zanupf is a cold war project of Nato and this truth must be respected.

The year 1980 presented an opportunity for the enemies of the people of The Region to unite against what they chose to see as Zapu insolence, conjoined with the spread of communism in Southern Africa through the authentic six liberation movements which by the way did not include Zanupf long seen as the UNITA of Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe's political profile had to be 'reconstructed', his image in the western world was projected as the most educated black man' while in Africa he was projected as a true Pan Africanist and many Africans bought this fraudulent deception hook, line and sinker. Mugabe falsely acted socialist/communist  and won African confidence in him as an iconic defiant son of Africa who confronted imperialism at every turn. We should be surprised that all defiers of imperialism from Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, stooge turned defier, who  'made the British kneel' were either ejected from power or brutally killed. But not with Robert Mugabe.

The late former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly stated in 1979 soon after the signing of the Lancaster House Conference on Zimbabwe that it was not going to be necessarily the party which wins the elections which would rule post-colonial Zimbabwe. An inference therefore that this statement revealed their preference among the two parties is not far-fetched. The rigging of the 1980 elections led by the Thatcher Government through Governor Lord Soames seemed insufficient though to permanently bar the people of The Region from having a stake in a free Zimbabwe. When Joshua Nkomo complained to him about the Zanupf violence he was told by Mugabe to campaign in his own country (Matebeleland) and leave him to campaign in his own country Mashonaland. Zanupf violence determined the electoral outcome in Mashonaland on a people severely traumatised by the Kip system during the war. The question is why did the British government risk losing credibilty and integrity over a matter they had authority to deal with. The sudden 'thawing' of relations between the British Government and Zanupf was ominous and the Region did not read its stars correctly. Clearly Zanupf's strategy to rub-off The Region from the map of Africa found confluence with Thatcher's government strategy to destroy Zapu for being a Soviet progeny. The British strategy would leave Zanupf without a credible political competitor while the genocide would guarantee the British sleep over Rhodesia and the safety of Apartheid South Africa.

While British concerns in Southern Africa may have died in1994 after the ANC victory as well as the global fate of communism it is possible that justification for continued reluctance by the British to help achieve justice over the Genocide in their capacity as the withdrawing colonial authority may have since shifted to 1890 or some other considerations. The cross-pollination of the British and Zanupf strategies could have survived turbulance in relations during the chaotic land reform but their longevity is yet to be ascertained as signs are in place that they are on the mend with current British excitement over Mugabe's exit difficult to hide.

Perence Shiri's 1986 enrolment at the prestigious British Royal College of Defence Studies would among other things prepare him for the strategic position he would assume as the British point man in the Kim il Sung's DPRK/Zanupf relations, Mugabe's 1994 Chariot ride with Queen Elizabeth through the streets of London, the 1994 Robert Mugabe Knighthood (KCB RG Mugabe) conferred to him as well as his award of an Honorary degree by Edinburgh University at the height of the brutalisation of The Region are important events that help to unravel the Zanupf Grand Plan. Perence Shiri must have become the British point man in the Zanupf/DPRK agreement to do crime in The Region.

Moses Mzila Ndlovu
ANSA INTERIM LEADER