Mugabe's mockery of Matabeleland youth means they cannot rely on Zanu-PF

Addressing a Zanu PF star rally in Manicaland, PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe recently made disparaging remarks about Zimbabweans based in South Africa, saying most of them had menial jobs and were content with buying bicycles and blankets. "In Matabeleland South, there has always been a tradition that if you have not been to South Africa, then you're not a man, Mugabe told party supporters, adding that there were a record number of border jumpers from the south-western provinces. "They came back from South Africa, some came twice a year carrying some blankets. "That was a tradition. If they got a bicycle, they were sorted. They would come, stay a week or two and go back.

Mugabe's speech is clear testimony that ZANU pf and the people of Matabeleland have different stories, despite the fact that both have been delusionally trying to move in the same direction but with only one side benefiting. This union has been possible only because the people of Matabeleland have been living on false hopes. Hopes that one day they will see development in the region only to see development of underdevelopment in the whole region since 1980. And what do they get in the 2013 elections campaign? A sitting president finding it funny and laughing his lungs out at them for being economic migrants in South Africa.

That was an alarming speech which confirms that it is now time people of Matabeleland should learn to face the crude and rude reality that Zanu pf has no plans for them and start considering voting for themselves in elections. Yes I mean voting for THEMSELVES so that they can be responsible for their own problems and solutions to them. As long as you lose together, losing an election wont matter that much. The president's speech, although some ears it landed as some form of dry humour, was a derogatory speech pregnant with mockery, scorn, contempt, disdain, ridicule and scoffing from none other than a figure who is supposed to be not only sympathising with the people of Matabeleland but having a responsibility of finding ways of solving their socio-political problems. Some will disagree but this unfortunately serves to confirm Mugabe as the founder of nepotism and tribalism in Zimbabwe and as the figure who enacted these -isms to continue unabated for the last 33 years leaving the vast majority of the people of Matabeleland with no other option than to head down south for their own survival and the survival of their families. And as a result, he is now laughing, not that he finds it funny, but probably because his GRAND PLAN has been successful.

A lack of economic opportunity among the people of Matabeleland, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed a lot to the erosion of families as head of families join the trek down south.- a problem that Mugabe's welfare policies for many years may have worsened it.

Of course, South Africa has always been regarded as 'greener pastures' by Zimbabweans as far back as 1890, since the times of Wenela. But the solution to that exodus was naturally supposed to be found in 1980 when Zimbabwe attained its independence from British rule. For the people of Matabeleland, what independence offered to them was not education, health or jobs. Instead murderous army of Gukurahundis was unleashed unto them leaving at least 20 000 civilians dead in Matabeland and parts of the Midlands. That history helps explain the wealth gap between the people of the South and those from Harare, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities in the Matabeleland region.

My own analysis of Mugabe's utterances regarding the youth of Matabeleland mean that the past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past, because the president of the country is pouring scorn on their suffering in the middle of 2013. People need to understand this reality. It is not a necessity to recite here the history of tribal injustice in Zimbabwe. But it needs to be highlighted that so many of the disparities that exist in the Matabeleland region today can be directly traced to beliefs like those expressed by president Mugabe in Manicaland this week, that the other tribe is content with buying bicycles and blankets. Therefore following that speech by Mugabe, should be time that the people of Matabeleland realize that addressing the path to their own liberation means acknowledging that Mugabe's ZANU pf will never offer them with anything except hanging them up there to dry as a laughing stock for being economic migrants in South Africa and therefore people need to vote wisely, vote for people who not only share the same beliefs but same background too. They should vote for someone who has the potential providing their children with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations.

They need to realize that they indeed have a choice, including a choice to say no to a politics that breeds tribal division, and conflict, and cynicism. Therfeore I doubt so much that an individual like Welshman Ncube of the MDC or Dumiso Dabengwa of ZAPU can find it amusing that people of Matabeleland South work only to afford a bicycle and a blanket. Poverty must never be found amusing. Mugabe's remarks were not only denigrading but also seem to elevate and justify what is wrong with his system of governance which virtually failed to give new modes of thought, new ideals of life, new hopes, new aspirations and failed to lift the youth out of unemployment. They say experience is the best teacher. The rule under Mugabe must teach them that they will not be able to solve the challenges of their time unless they exercise their vote to empower themselves - to get hold and control their resources most possible through devolution of power. Beitbridge Border Post revenue should start developing Beitbridge before being spent on either Sheraton Hotel or the National Sports Stadium in Harare. Same applies to Victoria Falls, Hwange National Park, Matopos and other tourist attractions and holiday resorts.

Now on the back drop of the president's speech, the people of Matabeleland should therefore now have a strategic task.  A task to free themselves from control and oppression by other people and try to resurrect and heal from the dependence syndrome. People of Matabeleland need to vote for themselves. Vote for themselves and venture into a march for a more just, more free, more caring and more prosperous region. People of Matabeleland should therefore vote to free themselves and their off springs from a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves. Jean-Paul Sartre once attested that fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.