Making the politically unthinkable thinkable is how to recover and advance uMthwakazi!

Your article at Bulawayo24 Sisi Nomazulu Thata made interesting reading (http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-94420.html).

I notice that the same day Bulawayo24 ran your article they also carried a story about South Africa and its position on Zimbabwe. The interview itself can be found here. Bulawayo24 very cleverly and accurately titled the story: 'South Africa won't interfere in Zimbabwe, Mugabe was lawfully elected' (5/08/16).

I devoted considerable time on South Africa, Mthwakazi and Zimbabwe in general in my article which you are responding to and therefore do not wish to add to what I have already said. What I will say, though, is that do not just read what is written. Understand what is not expressed! South Africa will not allow Zimbabwe to 'fall' to civil or other uprising outside a ballot process.

Back to your response. Succession and regime change politics 'spurn' their 'civil' society equivalents of all sorts. We all know the 'civil society' organizations – existing and now defunct - allied to regime change politics of MDC-T, the political godfather of regime change. We needn't rehash that ground. But what of succession politics and ZPF, who are their hatchet offspring?

Here is what we know as a fact. We know that ZPF is a direct product of succession politics – everybody knows that. You then have to ask yourself: Who are ZPF's 'civil society' storm troopers?

The obvious suspects just jump straight to your face. It's not just their Gulf oil-type of funding that is stunning. It is also the speed and impunity with which they are operating, bar the choreographed 'arrests' of their 'leaders'. You then have to ask the question in the reverse direction: Who is succession politics' political godfather, the political linchpins of Tajamuka, ThisFlag et cetera? And boom, there is the answer! So Sis' Thata, before you rush to allocate votes to ZPF so benevolently and generously, as you appear to have done in your article, pause and ask yourself and resolve these a priori questions first.

And there is another more salient point to be made in relation to ZPF in particular about uMthwakazi – an Mthwakazi I am so pleased you are this passionate about Sisi.

The entire leadership of ZPF, with minor notable exceptions, are central figures of the establishment that unleashed Gukurahundi on Mthwakazi in the 1980's (remember the principle of collective and organizational responsibility?). This is important. You have to take all of them as they are and not as you now wish they were, and in terms of what they did, not what you wish they shouldn't have done. All of them, their hands are dripping with uMthwakazi's blood as the hands of some of their friends they have left behind in Zanu-PF. More about Zanu-PF in a moment. Stay with me…

Let us extend the above logic to VP Mnangagwa. If as now expected Emmerson Mnangagwa is kicked out of Zanu-PF before the end of the year, and he joins ZPF or forms his own political party, and starts mouthing off about how evil Mugabe is and how Mugabe instituted Gukurahundi, would he be by the act of being expelled (or by his 'voluntary' departure) be sanctified and cleansed of all his Gukurahundi past? This is your own logic about ZPF Sisi. But let me not waste too much time on that; that is logic and logic is not the point here. The point is politics.

The simple politics is: how long and to what end shall uMthwakazi become the citadel or stronghold of the politically aggrieved and expelled, and how long should uMthwakazi be swung this way and that by spent and discarded political characters and outfits that have no possibility of ever holding State power in any foreseeable future? My article to which you are responding made this point clearly in relation to regional power – South Africa -  and the international community at large – on who they view as a political party of government, moving on ...

That is the simple, plain, and raw political reality uMthwakazi has to confront head-on and deal with, not the romanticism of politics or the numbing effect or titillation of victimism. We simply can't be victims forever. We need to convert ourselves to doers, and as a political existence we can!
And this brings me to uMthwakazi.

You mention in your response the many times I mentioned the word 'Mthwakazi' in my article. Thank you for counting that, and that is the point. My article was about uMthwakazi, as this article is, not anyone else, and it is on uMthwakazi I also want to focus here.

Before I go further, I must agree with you that uMthwakazi must be dealt with sensitively given what has happened to her under Mugabe and Zanu-PF rule. It would be insensitive of me (or anyone) to pretend to measure the sense of private and collective loss uMthwakazi is suffering and has suffered as a result of Gukurahundi and the many anti-Mthwakazi policy outrages Gukurahundi spurned. But that is as far as it goes and should go. Beyond that the world is not waiting for Mthwakazi to end the grieving process and start the engagement process. If anything, all Mthwakazians can see for themselves how cruel a world that was complicit to Gukurahundi is, and remains. There has just got to be simply a way for uMthwakazi to break away from and out if this vortex of self-disapproval.

My articles would have convinced some Mthwakazians that our choice is a choice between two of lesser evils – aligning with the so-called opposition (your clear preference Sisi!) or Zanu-PF, uMthwakazi's perennial political enemy. I disagree, and still see even this choice as artificial, and that's what I tried to highlight in my articles – probably unsuccessfully.

I believe uMthwakazi can make a deliberate political decision (not choice) on what to do now which is based on uMthwakazi's political interests as uMthwakazi and which doesn't surrender or abandon uMthwakaziness but instead, and indeed, enhances it. UMthwakazi has the power to decide. UMthwakazi has the right and power to be uMthwakazi. More about this below ...

As you know, and all Bulawayo24 readers out there now know, I have suggested uMthwakazi coalition with Zanu-PF in 2018, not this unfolding mayhem called clearly allied succession politics. Three strong reasons for that. First, this act will place uMthwakazi's hands on the levers of State power. Secondly, it puts paid to this idea that uMthwakazi is a political football of political scoundrels from Harare. And third, it helps uMthwakazi swap political positions with this mob from Harare which gave us this tyranny in the first place. The point uMthwakazi will be making to this mob is that uMthwakazi will not follow its political mood swings and temperaments hither and thither, certainly not jumping and running excitedly about directionlessly about totally non-existent 'revolutions'! And this is what my article warns about 'hatred' for Mugabe, its blinding effect – unless it is reigned in. UMthwakazi could easily see something where there is totally nothing – and that's a dangerous place to be politically!

Talking of the third point Sisi Thata, have you noticed how my recent articles have completely silenced the usual venomous attacks from Shonaists and Gukurahundists at the mere mention of the word 'Mthwakazi'? They have not conducted their usual anti-Mthwakazi hatchet job. This says everything - ukuphambana labo – they can't stomach it! They are stunned! Why? Do you see what I see? They want you with them always as their political 'juniors' or as by-products of their mob-like activites. So deep down, they know the full implications of such a swap, and that is why I think uMthwakazi must seriously consider my view. But I digress.

Here is the important point. 'Coalitioning' with Mugabe and Zanu-PF in 2018 – and in this endgame -  ensures you one very, very important thing. And that is, it stops uMthwakazi from potentially ending on the same side as one Emmerson post- this endgame. As uMthwakazi, you will not want nor will you wish to live with the feeling and knowledge that you have ushered into office one Emmerson Mnangagwa via the political back door, and if you are not careful, you will. You have to twist the knife and strike pre-emptively at such a dangerous political enemy. Even if Mnangagwa remains in Zanu-PF after Mugabe – for those who want to know the truth – he will be in the wrong place. His political and governance history is now far so chequered and so variegated he is a political liability to anyone who touches him. He is just spoilt political bananas! I wonder whether ZPF would want to touch him with a barge pole. He is now in political Limboland, neither moving out or in – on his own. You don't want to recover him from there Mthwakazi by ignorance and naivety.
I said above that my main focus is uMthwakazi, not others. Let me return to that.

In brief, what I am saying is exactly what you have touched on Sisi in your article, that uMthwakazi needs to and must do the unthinkable to break away from and out of this serious dilemma. Politics – as they sometimes say – is the art of the (im)possible. Or sometimes – the art of compromise! Both these sayings are apt for uMthwakazi today. And what a better time to achieve this political feat of doing the unthinkable than at the precise point of a transition; at an endgame!

The critical question in the minds of many Mthwakazians – as I can imagine – is: How do you then think you (meaning me) and uMthwakazi will succeed where uNkomo and Zapu failed?

Let me start off with a social answer. The fact that one person or organization failed in something doesn't necessarily follow another person or organization will. Apart from anything else, such a view assumes that everything stays the same and equal. Yet that is not the plain political reality uMthwakazi faces now and has faced for a long time. The problem is not with the ever-changing reality around uMthwakazi but the never-changing attitude and unshifting position of uMthwakazi on many matters political. Of course, at the core of this failure, is the absence of Mthwakazi leadership – not rooftop or mega leadership - but politically brave leadership which will say all those 'right' things uMthwakazi ought to know but does not want to hear, ought to do but uMthwakazi doesn't want to do, and ought to discard but uMthwakazi wants to stubbornly cling on to (and that excludes ubuThwakazi of course).

The sought after answers are of course political. Let me attempt to give them.
To offer those, let's start at the beginning – where it all went wrong in 1987. I deliberately start in 1987 because that is where the political separation between uMthwakazi and those it had hitherto seen as representing her political interests happened.

On 22 December 1987 Joshua Nkomo and Zapu severed themselves from uMthwakazi (uMthwakazi in the widest sense described in the first of my three articles). You can read 'Mthwakazi' as referring to freedom and democracy, not an ethnic description. Zapu followers in Matebeleland and elsewhere felt betrayed. They knew they had not been consulted. They felt angry, abused!

I therefore want to posit that on December 22, 1987, Nkomo and Zapu left uMthwakazi behind and became self-serving individual members in a privatized political cartel they called Zanu-PF. You don't have to be a scholar to know and see that. And what passed for a 'Unity Accord' is a one-page document of betrayal. Since then the so-called 'Unity Accord' has been used as a chain of bondage around the political necks of uMthwakazi, by which uMthwakazi is controlled and manipulated. Only after years of being part of it this system, Dumiso Dabengwa left it and 'revivied' Zapu claiming the so-called 'Unity Accord' was dead. But this is all in the then, and not the now.

The now is totally different. Apart from the fact that the Zanuists and Zapuists of the so-called 'Unity Accord' era are either expired or tired, the remaining two or three are on their way out, by natural or other means. Further, the political and economic conditions are now totally different and unrecognizable – internally and externally.

UMthwakazi has not remained static either. Whereas uMthwakazi never existed or was as if she never existed in the political interregnum of 1980 – 2000, she is now ALIVE and VISIBLE everywhere, thanks to the efforts of those pioneer Mthwakazians who took up the mantle in early 2002 – and against similar opposition from the establishment and derision from Mthwakazians themselves – to chart a futuristic way for Mthwakazi, which is the today's reality you are also now so passionate about Sisi Thata. It all goes to show the power of truth, the strength of right! Here we are today, uMthwakazi as a political force no one can ignore. This is totally different from those individuals who for selfish and self-serving reasons became Zanu-PF, leaving uMthwakazi in the political cold.

It is from here – from the position of this new and recovered Mthwakazi – that the coalition with Zanu-PF – a new emerging Zanu-PF - of which I today speak, should start from, not the Zanu-PF of the dying Mugabe and disappearing Mnangagwa and the now dead and gone Joshua Nkomo, Simon Muzendas, Joseph Msikas, John Nmomos and Canaan Bananas of our land. May All their Souls Rest in Peace! This is therefore the new political reality Mthwakazi, of an Mthwakazi you easily forget today did not 'exist' only yesterday, and a new emergent Zanu-PF.

So, to be brief Sisi Thata, I couldn't be one to set uMthwakazi on a Zanu-PF of Gukurahundi, to be 'swallowed' as Nkomo's Zapu. True, Gukurahundi is a word that will always attach to Zanu-PF - but that has to be only when Zanu-PF (the new Zanu-PF) doesn't want to clean itself of its past or uMthwakazi doesn't want to disabuse herself of her misconceptions about the possibility of such a new Zanu-PF. I couldn't be clearer: the timing to work with Zanu-PF couldn't be more right!  

The critcal question is how? What is the proper vehicle for uMthwakazi as uMthwakazi to make such a move?
I provided the clue in my article you have responded to Sisi. I said such a vehicle could be called IFF – Independence and Freedom Front. However, because this is the name I proposed for a Ballot name for such a coalition with Zanu-PF, uMthwakazi might want to use instead the name, INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM COALITION (IFC) as a compromise if Zanu-PF agrees to such a coalition. UMthwakazi might also simply choose to adopt IFF for itself anyway (on the anticipation that Zanu-PF will refuse to change their name, which they are entitled to). The exact modalities of what such a coalition would mean in practice can be worked out later. IFC or IFF should, on paper, be able to accommodate the various strands and spectrums of Mthwakazi formations, one always hopes.

It is tempting for other Mthwakazi groups to talk of an organization that includes the word 'Mthwakazi' – especially 'radical' Mthwakazi groups (all products of the 2002 pioneering work). That is not advisable. The idea is of course not to put out something that is rejectable offhand in terms electoral laws (potentially) and something that is questionable politically within Mthwakazi itself. A lot of explaining would have to be made.

I think I have to end now.
You said a lot of other things Sisi. I see nothing in them except someone debating passionately a topic dear and close to them. I welcome all of that. I also welcome the wider readership that your own more popular article has indirectly given to mine. I think we need to debate these things but do so mindful of the fact that we have no unlimited time and at the end of the day we need to act.

For now, I believe we all have to help uMthwakazi see the change that is happening now in correct political rather than emotional terms. In my view, that way we will have something to contribute to the spiritual recovery of those of our loved ones we lost to Gukurahundi and those to whom today and in the future we need to deliver a full, functioning and happy Mthwakazi – an Mthwakazi arriving to them on the sacrifices of those we lost to a political madness that is all now but a waving hand in the distant horizon.

UMthwakazi must now be part of the new normal, co-owning and co-shaping things to come - with others. To do so, we need to be politically brave and smart. Let us all be both, or help each other be today, at this point of change – in this endgame!