Opinion / Columnist
Eddie Cross crosses the line
11 Oct 2014 at 06:54hrs | Views
Recently Mr Eddie Cross of the MDC-T penned an article in which he attempted to analyse the crucial milestones in the Zimbabwean journey towards self-destruction. In his analysis he deliberately distorted information about ZAPU by making a hideous misrepresentation of information suggesting that ZAPU attempted a coup to over throw the government of Zanu in 1983.
ZAPU in its entirety is appalled at Mr Cross' attempt at revisionism and regards his stance and unprovoked attack as unfortunate and uncalled for. ZAPU did not expect a man of Cross' calibre to take Zanu-PF's work of vilifying ZAPU to this length. We all know that Zanu-PF has sought to erase the contribution made by ZAPU and ZIPRA from the people's memories, one such vile attempt is the confiscation of ZAPU's wartime records.
Let me quote Mr Eddie Cross verbatim "In 1983, Mr. Mugabe decided to deal with the only effective opposition to his rule in the form of Zapu. They had attempted a military coup a year before and now had a small number of "dissidents" operating as rebels in the rural areas".
Mr Eddie Cross describes himself as a Christian, one basic value of Christianity is honesty, but one wonders how this simple principle eludes Mr Cross. If Eddie Cross was an amateur politician he could have been forgiven for being overzealous, however, the reality is that Mr Cross is a seasoned politician and he chooses his words carefully to deliver the message he intends to deliver. Therefore ZAPU moves from the premise that Mr Cross sought to deliberately misinform, tarnish ZAPU's image and to distort history.
In 1983 when Dr Joshua Nkomo was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman of BBC during his time in exile in the United Kingdom, Dr Nkomo made it clear that ZAPU did not have any dissidents and alluded to the fact that the scourge of the dissidents was actually a creation of the government of the day. After winning the first elections in 1980 Zanu-PF and President Mugabe became obsessed with a one party syndrome. They then sought to destroy ZAPU as Zanu-PF considered ZAPU an obstacle to their desire for a one party state under Zanu-PF. Zanu-PF went into a propaganda spin using the incidents of few ZAPU combatants who defected from the barracks for reasons that were not associated with overthrowing the Zanu-PF government.
It is an open secret that the Zimbabwe National Army hounded out the ZIPRA cadres who had joined the army and some of these cadres became dissidents, but the majority of the dissidents consisted of the personnel from the security forces, who by night masqueraded as dissidents and the same people during the day appeared to the same villagers they abused at night as part of the state security apparatus.
ZAPU did not have a hand in any of these dissidents, Mugabe knows that and his security forces knew that, so it baffles the mind for a man of Cross' calibre to stoop so low to manufacture lies against ZAPU.
If ZAPU had wanted to usurp power by force it could have achieved that very easily.
What is most ridiculous is Mr Cross' assertion that ZAPU had attempted a military coup. ZAPU would like to put it on record for posterity that at no point in its life time had it ever attempted a military coup or any other form of coup for that matter. ZIPRA was a well-trained and highly disciplined army. During the demobilisation process it surrendered all its weapons. Maybe Mr Cross is basing his 'misinformation' on the arms catches which were found in ZAPU properties. If so, then this goes to show how shallow some individuals could be. Zanu-PF has always been a cunning and merciless party which would go all the way to achieve its nefarious goals. One famous case in point was the killing of the white tourist which was attributed to the dissidents by the government. If one looks at this very closely one realises that the government was unwittingly admitting to this callous act, one may ask how?, it is simple, dissidents belonged to the government not ZAPU.
ZAPU challenges Mr Cross to produce incontrovertible evidence which proves that ZAPU ever attempted a military coup in Zimbabwe or to withdraw his statement which seeks to re-write history and
ZAPU Europe Department of Information, Publicity and Marketing.
Email: zapuinformteam@gmail.
Source - Thulani Nkala and Themba Mthethwa
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