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Mnangagwa's abuse of Ndebele leaders condemned

26 Mar 2019 at 08:32hrs | Views
1893 MHRRM condemns Mnangagwa's use of instrumental power over some of Matebeleland's Civic Organizations

The 1893 MHRRM issues a statement of grave concerning regarding Mnangagwa's meeting with Matebeleland civic organisations against the backdrop of a climate of heightened and accelerated human rights abuses in Matebeleland and in Zimbabwe in general as well as against the backdrop of international condemnation of such human rights violations.

Such a meeting, without any neutral convener, can best be described as scandalous as well as imbued with a sense of covert and overt Gukurahundist instrumental power threats. The meeting is much ado about nothing but only a public relations exercise meant for the international community for an extraction of some semblance of legitimacy and a "signal of progress" when the opposite is true.

As Mnangagwa signals right, he takes a left turn with much gusto and devastating consequences. People must follow the events of the Harare shootings, then the Motlante Commission comes in, the fuel hikes demonstrations and shootings and rapes and then now he picks up a collection of Matebeleland Civic organizations to give hope to the international community that he is making progress. The next left turn he will be taking will be very devastating to many.

Mnangagwa and his government know one language, which is violence or brute force in order to capture power and maintain it. This brute force can be switched on and off at any given time. It is the DNA culture of the regime. Any threat to that powerbase is met with devastating human rights violations.

On the very day of Mnangagwa's meeting with Matebeleland civic organizations, we observed his military government arresting a Matebele journalist in the name of Zenzele Ndebele who has and is at the forefront of further exposing the regime for its Matabeleland "Gukurahundi" Genocide of the 80s of which Mnangagwa and others in his government including Mugabe played a key and leading role.

A few months ago we witnessed the arrest, on trumped charges, one of the prominent Matebeleland leaders, Moses Mzila, who has been very vocal about the demand for Truth and Justice for the Matebeleland Genocide.

The Movement also notes with grave concern that the meeting with Matebeleland civic organizations happens at a time when Zimbabwe has become a fully-fledged military state where issues of governance and any processes that take place in the country are commanded and run by the gun. We have witnessed arrests of activists at the Motlante led Commission post the shooting and killing of 6 demonstrators in Harare.

We have also witnessed the shooting and arbitrary arrests of civilians during another wave of demonstrations post the 130% fuel price increases on the 14th January 2019. 20 demonstrators are estimated to have been killed during this period where the internet was completely shut down to be able to carry out such abuses away from the radar of the international community.

The Movement's grave concern also extends to Mnangagwa's government's heightened and accelerated pogrom of human rights violations especially in Matebeleland where farm land grabs and displacement of locals by aliens from their lands is the order of the day. We have witnessed an accelerated black imperialist pogrom of exploitation of Matebeleland's mineral resources using a web of violent alien gold panning syndicates who do the panning on behalf of their bosses up the government and security cluster leadership chain.

For years and in the past few weeks, we have witnessed an intensified and accelerated black imperialist pogrom of educational and cultural genocide in Matebeleland where teachers with no competency or proficiency in local Matebeleland languages are deployed at infancy school level with reckless abandon.

We do not observe any deployment of Matebeleland teachers in Mashonaland at infancy level schools and if this were to be done in Mashonanaland we will be the first to cry foul as such will violate the Rights of the Mashona Child. The infancy school level is where the mother tongue is crucial for young children to learn and grasp concepts of various subjects they are taught.

The deployment of these Shona teachers is done against the best interests of the Matebele Child and in direct and clear violation of the 1990 United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child particularly Article 30 that stipulates the Right of children to their culture, religion and language among other Rights mentioned.


It must be stated without any hesitation that the black imperialist pogrom of the regime is well calculated to destroy the future generations of our Nation. Our children are our future. If their languages are destroyed, our Nation is destroyed. It's a ruthless and systematic agenda meant to destroy our cultures and languages with impunity.

Equally it must be stated once more that this black imperialist pogrom is well enunciated in the regimes' 1979 Shona Grandplan that defines both the whites and the Matebele as the enemies of the state of Zimbabwe that need displacing to create a Shona Superstate.

Over the past few years and in recent times we have seen both the Mugabe and Mnangagwa governments denying the Matebeleland people their Rights to revive and restore their cultures including the Restoration of the Institution of Kingship. Since September 2017, the regime has deployed all its security forces to thwart any efforts and attempts made by the Matebele to meet in public spaces to revive and celebrate their diverse cultures openly. This is in clear violation of the Rights of the people of Matebeleland and is an affront and an outrage to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter of 1948.

Therefore both the Mugabe and Mnangagwa regimes are perpetrators of gross human rights violations in Matebeleland in particular and of late, due to threat to their powerbase, to the rest of that country. Any authentic and just process that has to deal with the issue of Truth and Justice for the Matebeleland Genocide including development in Matebeleland cannot be perpetrator designed, driven and managed. It needs a neutral convenor and guarantor of international repute.

The notion propagated and gleefully churned out by Jenny Williams, after that tea and biscuit meeting with Mnangagwa, that he, Mnangagwa is a "listening President", is scandalous. It is a blasphemous of Jenny Williams to try and sanitize the gory image of Mnangagwa internationally so cheaply. It makes the victims of Mnangagwa cringe at such statements. Mnangagwa and his cronies including Robert Gabriel Mugabe are the cause of the problems that face Matebeleland and the rest of that country.

He came to that meeting to pretend to listen, write up some minutes and dupe the gullible that he is "listening" to things he is the ultimate cause of. To suggest that it took Mnangagwa 38 years to be a "listener" against the backdrop of continued and relentless onslaught on the human rights of our people using the security apparatus of that country since 1980 of which he has long been a dangerous and ruthless enforcer of such a policy, is an outrage to the victims of Mnangagwa's government, both dead and surviving.


Released by the 1893 MHRRM Information and Publicity Department





Source - 1893 MHRRM
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