Open letter to MDC president prof Welshman Ncube

Dear Professor Welshman Ncube,

We are addressing this Open Letter to you as President of MDC ahead of the Copac Final Draft Constitution - which you and your Party have signed up to - being presented to present-day Zimbabwe's Parliament for approval next week. We invite you and your Party to introspect and reconsider your and your Party's position in relation to the Copac Final Draft Constitution now.

We are sure that as KMNC we speak on behalf of the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland when we say it is not too late for you and your Party to hit the 'abort' button and stop this Copac Final Draft Constitution ever going to Parliament or through the motions of present-day Zimbabwe' Parliament.
We accept that you and your Party will say, as you are entitled to, that this Copac Final Draft Constitution is not a Final Draft you and your Party would have wished. No doubt Zanu and MDC-T will say the same. This Open Letter is therefore not about whether the Copac Final Draft Constitution is good or bad but it is about drawing your and your Party's attention to certain fundamentals that we believe you and your Party have surrendered to in 'agreeing' to this Copac Final Draft Constitution and in circumstances and conditions as it has been 'finalized'.

We are already reading of public apathy. This is a timely window of opportunity for you and your Party to redeem yourselves and put yourselves on the correct side of public opinion, certainly on the side of the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland.
Allow us to start at the end.

About three weeks ago, you and your Party joined Zanu-PF and MDC-T to take the constitution-making process away from the People and paste together what you jointly called a 'deal'. You and your Party took this action in respect of constitutional issues that your respective Parties 'problematized' by calling them 'contentious' or 'parked'. Of course, and quite rightly, for the People, these were not and are not 'contentious' issues. They were and are simple and straight-forward submissions that the People said they wanted at the invitation of you and your Party and Zanu-PF and MDC-T following the GPA. It is for these very reasons that you and your Party and Zanu-PF and MDC-T said these issues were 'contentious' that the decision over them should have been for the People to make, and should have been left in the public domain. In the event, you and your Party and Zanu-PF and the MDC-T, against your and your Party's public protestations, suddenly changed and agreed to a 'deal' which you and your Party and Zanu-PF and MDC-T quickly signed off and quickly dressed in the constitutional clothes of the Copac Final Draft Constitution. This was done in secrecy. That secret has now been locked away from the eyes of the People in what is now the Copac Final Draft Constitution whose approval by the Referendum you and your Party now seek. We now hear details of what was 'agreed' are now going to be made public – after the fact!

Is this action not a re-privatization and re-'secretization' of the State at a critical juncture of political transition, at a point when the People thought the State was being finally opened up and being released from the arthritic and bone-crunching grip of Zanu-PF misrule? And how is your Party not co-perpetrator and co-actor - not accomplice – with Zanu-PF and MDC-T, here?

This action follows many public pronouncements by you and your Party denouncing the so-called Ministerial Committee, and your and your Party's public undertakings that you and your Party would not be part of that Committee and that you would resist the constitution-making process being taken over the by so-called Principals. In your and your Party's view, does your and your Party's action now not go to the heart of political integrity so mercilessly mutilated by Zanu-PF's 'fast-food' approach to government and rule for over 30 years?

Should secretive political fait accomplis not have ended with the so-called 'Unity Accord'? In your and your Party's view, is the revived Zapu really stupid?

We turn now to devolution. You and your Party made public statements that you and your Party would not give in on the devolution that the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland said they wanted, but you and your Party have signed off as devolution something you and your Party know is not devolution at all though the word 'devolution' is used in the Final Draft to refer to what is political substance 'decentralization' (in fact, re-centralization) of political power.

Is this not deceiving and misleading knowingly – and lying - the very reason Zanu-PF has been so bad and so wrong and so vicious against present-day Zimbabwe for over 30 years? Are you and your Party not about to become part of a vicious system to defend a new lie?

It has also been admitted in the past that devolution is a demand of the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland, why have you and your Party betrayed the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland, and, like Zapu before, delivered them freely to political bondage again via this so-called 'deal' and the resultant Copac Final Draft Constitution?
And related to deceiving and misleading – and lies – why have you and your Party seen it proper to go along with the political distraction of presidential running mates, something which you and your Party know full well is not a constitutional but a Party political matter?

And when the Copac Final Draft Constitution has strengthened and increased the powers of the President - and bloated Parliament - why are you and your Party going along with the false narrative – and deception - that the powers of the President have been curbed and that Parliament is not bloated? Is Parliament now the political retirement home for Zanu-PF and MDC's failed would-be government ministers?

And still related to deceiving and misleading, what is the official language of present-day Zimbabwe under the Copac Final Draft Constitution? Is that wording in relation to languages not intended to deceive the public?

Turning now to Gukurahundi. As you and your Party may know, true estimates of members of the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation mass-murdered by present-day Zimbabwe through Gukurahundi stand - at the very least – at a minimum of 400 000.

Is it not totally disingenuous and preposterous of a document that purports to be a Constitution of a State to be silent over such a world-known and world-acknowledged pogrom? How are you and your Party not party to such a document?

Should the Copac Final Draft Constitution in fact not contain a whole Chapter devoted to Gukurahundi?

Turning now to Zimbabwe as a State. What is presently formally known as the Republic of Zimbabwe was founded by the Great Ndebele Warrior King, King Mzilikazi Khumalo. In the early 1890's history saw King Mzilikazi son, and successor, King Lobengula Khumalo, and the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation, gallantly defend that State against colonialism and its Shona collaborators. Yet the Zimbabwe State established in 1980 has subjected those two great Ndebele Kings and the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation to sustained political derision, manufactured lies and sponsored anti-Ndebele hatred in order to make present-day Zimbabwe a Shona State. And this Shonalized Zimbabwe, in 2013, still wants to legitimize this Shona rule over the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation through what is now about to be presented to Parliament as the Copac Final Draft Constitution.

Should it not be the case that the Copac Final Draft Constitution, as a supposedly transitional Constitution, should put an unequivocal, if brutal, stop to all this anti-Mzilikazi, anti-Lobengula and anti-Ndebele political poison that has issued from the Zimbabwe State since 18th April 1980 – whatever the ultimate political destinies of the Ndebele People and Shona People?

Should the Copac Final Draft Constitution not put an end to this politically manufactured nonsense that Zimbabwe is a Shona State?
Is it therefore now not the case that the Copac Final Draft Constitution is already a failed and still-born constitutional project precisely because in the end – via this secretive so-called 'deal ' - this Copac Final Draft Constitution is really an instrument of political power and a political weapon being wielded specifically at the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation rather than being a Constitution? Indeed, shouldn't de-politicizing present-day Zimbabwe's Constitution really be the start and end for the Copac Final Draft Constitution, particularly during transition, rather than have a rumbling and politically patronizing Preamble try and mask the political animal the Copac Final Draft Constitution is?

And talking of the Preamble to the Copac Final Draft Constitution, the very first sentence of that Preamble is a shameless lie that sits on the rest of what is elaborate simulation (appearances intended to deceive) and dissimulation (withheld truths that are intended to deceive). Where is Gukurahundi in the Preamble?
We turn to the Constitution as an accessory to State crimes and as a 'safe-house' harbouring fugitives from international criminal justice and as a political closet locking away political skeletons.

Everybody knows that that Zanu-PF, in the name of and on behalf of Shona rule, publicly displayed its gross activities against the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation, so that nothing about them is not known or can be hidden. Why have you and your Party gone along with or allowed yourselves to be part of a conspiratorial process that turns what is supposed to be a Constitution into all of the above things?

Finally, we believe your Party was elected on the basis of its opposition to Zanu-PF.

This so-called 'deal' and its resulted Copac Final Draft Constitution has made you and your Party Zanu-PF. Is this not what we, together with you and members of your Party, condemned and denounced Zapu for? Are you and your Party prepared to accept this? Have you and your Party worked so diligently and so intelligently only to trip at the last hurdle and turn yourselves into Zanu-PF?

A Constitution is a huge document. These are only few examples. We have put them in the form of questions to avoid sounding judgmental. We have tried to pick examples that focus on the fundamentals of political integrity, true leadership, and courage. For our purpose we define true leadership not just as power to influence but also as insularity to influence by power, and we define courage not just as ability to confront wrong but also as preparedness to confront truth.
We also know, and accept, that you and your Party are working with and within a political enemy, but the open political assault of this Copac Final Draft Constitution on basic political values and political fundamentals, which have made Zanu-PF rule this political aberration, cannot surely now be right because you and your Party have now made yourselves to be part of it.

We deeply regret that while as KMNC we do not doubt your and your Party's bona fides we should not fail to question your and your Party's political judgment on this occasion. We questioned your and your Party's political judgment in inviting Professor Arthur Mutambara to the leadership of your Party in the past. We have been proved right. We are in little doubt that if you allow yourself and your Party to be party to this political monstrosity coming dressed as the Copac Final Draft Constitution you and your Party will live to regret again. And this all looks bound to end up in political tears again. As the KMNC and the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland we believe you and your Party have an opportunity to redeem yourselves now by withdrawing from this Copac Final Draft Constitution immediately and aligning yourselves with the true and emerging change-makers, and re-positioning yourselves as an experienced political force for a fresh transition that is true and genuine.

As our acronym KMNC suggests, we are Kingdom of Matebeleland National Congress. We are also in the true sense of that word – fringe – but we are in no doubt that our hands are right on cue with the political pulse of the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland at this point in the long history of the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation.
You and your Party may not agree, but as the KMNC and the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland we do not believe that post-Zanu misrule what is today constituted as Zimbabwe can continue to be governed as it has in the past 30 years, or even as Zimbabwe for that matter. We firmly believe that – unlike this Copac Final Draft Constitution which is herding the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland into a political cage as political captives – a true transitional constitution is required and such a Constitution will be one that will give birth to new rule, to the re-emergence of the Kingdom of Matebeleland as an independent State and to the birth of a new Republic of Zimbabwe. Only such a Constitution, in KMNC's view, can be a Transitional Constitution, not this political manifesto called the Copac Final Draft Constitution passed off as a Constitution.

Allow us to give a short example of this political 'cattling' of the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland. Chapter 3 of the Copac Final Draft Constitution says that Zimbabwean citizens have a duty "to be loyal to Zimbabwe." Even putting aside Gukurahundi, why should the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland be loyal to Zimbabwe any more than the People of Mashonaland should be loyal to the Kingdom of Matebeleland? Why should the French be loyal to the UK, and vice versa, or South Africans be loyal to Namibia, and vice versa? Why should the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland be invited – at least that is how it comes across – by you and your Party to vote for their political bondage - for a political trap – wrapped up as a Constitution?

As you can also see, as KMNC we have no physical address, nor would one be politically clever at this stage. And by the way, for purposes of replying to us use our e-mail address: kingdomofmatebeleland@yahoo.com. But in another place, another time, we would be writing you from our offices in Bulawayo or any other centre of our choice. But we cannot because we speak for and have stood up for the Ndebele People and the Ndebele Nation and the Kingdom of Matebeleland in a political culture where asserting Ndebeleness is a crime and wrong punishable by death itself and where everything wrong and grossly criminal said and done on behalf of this anti-Ndebele Shona rule practised as Zimbabwe rule is rewarded, with those responsible for and glorifying Gukurahundi being rewarded most!  
This in itself makes another critical political point!

And that is, the political voice of the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation and the Kingdom of Matebeleland is silenced in a Zimbabwe that regards itself as a Shona State. Consequently, no matter how genuine, how committed to political justice for all, and how well-intentioned, none of those things will count for anything until and unless the Ndebele People and Ndebele Nation and the Kingdom of Matebeleland become free. And until then, constitution-making under Zimbabwe, as you now have seen, will always be politics in another name, and will essentially be about this group of Shona political malfeasors politically covering up and protecting the previous group, and so on and so forth, generation after generation. We hope you and your Party's experience will have taught you that when all is said and done Zimbabwe is about maintaining Shona rule over the Ndebele People, and on that one political point, the Shona People close rank. You and your Party can see now how the Ndebele People are crying foul over this Copac Final Draft Constitution but how the People of Mashonaland are largely silent about it.
It may well be that you and your Party have inadvertently legitimized all this by suggesting to the world at large that Zimbabwe is a 'nation' State when Zimbabwe is in reality constituted as and operates as a Shona tribal State.

As you and your Party face the unfolding political reality, and as the betrayal by those that you and your Party considered your friends sinks in, is it not the time to leap in and salvage whatever you and your Party can salvage for yourselves and the People of the Kingdom of Matebeleland? Otherwise like Zapu before, you and your Party are ending up with absolutely nothing and are about to become just another statistical good example of what not to do as an Ndebele person in politics in a Zimbabwe built and operated as a Shona State.

We appeal and urge you and your Party to withdraw your political signature to the Copac Final Draft Constitution, now, before it goes to Parliament next week, and trigger a halt to this political manifesto elevated to a Constitution!

We thank you.

KMNC