Opinion / Letters
Dear Cyril, hobnobbing with Mnangagwa's cronies wounds my country
2 hrs ago |
81 Views
Dear President Ramaphosa,
Your private visit last week to President Emmerson Mnangagwa's farm has unsettled millions of Zimbabweans, and it deserves a public reply.
You arrived in our country at a moment of profound constitutional peril. Mnangagwa is leading a brazen effort to dismantle the 2013 constitution - a charter endorsed in a national referendum by more than 3-million Zimbabweans - through intimidation, state-sponsored violence, and a parliamentary process that has descended into theatre. Constitutional Amendment Bill No 3 carries a slate of changes whose cumulative effect, like the two amendments before it, is to strip power from the people and concentrate it in the hands of the executive.
Into this moment, you walked. And the company you kept tells its own story. Seated at Mnangagwa's table were Paul Tungwarara, Kudakwashe Tagwirei and Wicknell Chivayo - men whose business empires are tethered to Mnangagwa's political longevity, and whose interests are best served by the mutilation of Zimbabwe's constitution that he is engineering. They are not patriots. They are passengers on a gravy train, and you were photographed boarding it with them.
The speculation here, Mr President, is that Tagwirei is being groomed as Mnangagwa's anointed successor - a man who, by every honest measure, is unelectable. That is precisely what one of the proposed amendments would permit. Whether or not you knew this, your visit has been seized upon as an endorsement of Mnangagwa's constitutional coup. Surely your protocol team flagged the names on the guest list? Surely you understood the symbolism of breaking bread with them? If you did not, that is troubling. If you did, it is worse.
You were not, by any visible measure, on a mediation mission. We saw no parallel meetings with civil society, opposition leaders, the church, organised business or the legal fraternity. There was no breadth, no balance, no evident attempt to understand the country whose crisis you were ostensibly engaging.
We have been here before. Former president Thabo Mbeki stood on Zimbabwean soil, after one of the bloodiest electoral seasons in our history, and pronounced that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. That single sentence licensed a decade of impunity. South Africa's errors - its quiet diplomacy, its strategic blindness, its instinctive preference for ruling-party fraternity over principled engagement - have helped to entrench the repression and crushing poverty that today define our country.
The bill is also being paid in your country. The very conditions that South Africa has helped to preserve are what drive Zimbabweans across the Limpopo in their hundreds of thousands. If your government is serious about easing the pressure on its own citizens - about ending the ugly accusation that Zimbabweans are “taking South African jobs” - then it must abandon the fiction that propping up Mnangagwa serves regional stability. It does the opposite.
If none of this interests you - if the 17-million people inside Zimbabwe and the more than 800,000 in your own country are not your concern - then please, with respect, stay out of our affairs
Let me be plain. Zimbabweans must be allowed to solve our crisis ourselves. Not through meddling from our neighbours, not through another coup, but through the honest reckoning we have postponed for 45 years: that Zanu-PF has metastasised into a minority regime oppressing a black majority and can no longer be reformed from within. What we need is a broad-based stakeholder engagement that gives birth to a new social compact.
You should know, Mr President, what it costs us to write to you in this register. The verbal abuse, the burnt shops and the indignities endured by Zimbabweans in your country are agonising to witness from across the border. I understand South African anger; I also understand why a qualified accountant from Bulawayo or a teacher from Mutare will board a Kombi with a single suitcase to chase a job washing dishes in Sandton. We are a proud people, and our timidity has been exploited by a small political clique who profit from our humiliation. So here is the request, Mr President - and the call to action.
Decline future invitations to Mnangagwa's farm. Insist, as Sadc chair, that any engagement with Zimbabwe include the voices Mnangagwa has tried to silence: civil society, the churches, the legal profession, the opposition, organised business and ordinary citizens. Use your platform to call publicly for the withdrawal of Constitutional Amendment Bill No 3 and for the unqualified protection of the 2013 constitution.
Stop confusing the comfort of incumbents with the stability of nations. And if none of this interests you - if the 17-million people inside Zimbabwe and the more than 800,000 in your own country are not your concern - then please, with respect, stay out of our affairs.
You cannot help us by helping those who are suffocating us.
Yours, in love of country,
Trevor Ncube
(Ncube has permanent residence status in South Africa and is head of Trevor & Associates)
Your private visit last week to President Emmerson Mnangagwa's farm has unsettled millions of Zimbabweans, and it deserves a public reply.
You arrived in our country at a moment of profound constitutional peril. Mnangagwa is leading a brazen effort to dismantle the 2013 constitution - a charter endorsed in a national referendum by more than 3-million Zimbabweans - through intimidation, state-sponsored violence, and a parliamentary process that has descended into theatre. Constitutional Amendment Bill No 3 carries a slate of changes whose cumulative effect, like the two amendments before it, is to strip power from the people and concentrate it in the hands of the executive.
Into this moment, you walked. And the company you kept tells its own story. Seated at Mnangagwa's table were Paul Tungwarara, Kudakwashe Tagwirei and Wicknell Chivayo - men whose business empires are tethered to Mnangagwa's political longevity, and whose interests are best served by the mutilation of Zimbabwe's constitution that he is engineering. They are not patriots. They are passengers on a gravy train, and you were photographed boarding it with them.
The speculation here, Mr President, is that Tagwirei is being groomed as Mnangagwa's anointed successor - a man who, by every honest measure, is unelectable. That is precisely what one of the proposed amendments would permit. Whether or not you knew this, your visit has been seized upon as an endorsement of Mnangagwa's constitutional coup. Surely your protocol team flagged the names on the guest list? Surely you understood the symbolism of breaking bread with them? If you did not, that is troubling. If you did, it is worse.
You were not, by any visible measure, on a mediation mission. We saw no parallel meetings with civil society, opposition leaders, the church, organised business or the legal fraternity. There was no breadth, no balance, no evident attempt to understand the country whose crisis you were ostensibly engaging.
We have been here before. Former president Thabo Mbeki stood on Zimbabwean soil, after one of the bloodiest electoral seasons in our history, and pronounced that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. That single sentence licensed a decade of impunity. South Africa's errors - its quiet diplomacy, its strategic blindness, its instinctive preference for ruling-party fraternity over principled engagement - have helped to entrench the repression and crushing poverty that today define our country.
The bill is also being paid in your country. The very conditions that South Africa has helped to preserve are what drive Zimbabweans across the Limpopo in their hundreds of thousands. If your government is serious about easing the pressure on its own citizens - about ending the ugly accusation that Zimbabweans are “taking South African jobs” - then it must abandon the fiction that propping up Mnangagwa serves regional stability. It does the opposite.
Let me be plain. Zimbabweans must be allowed to solve our crisis ourselves. Not through meddling from our neighbours, not through another coup, but through the honest reckoning we have postponed for 45 years: that Zanu-PF has metastasised into a minority regime oppressing a black majority and can no longer be reformed from within. What we need is a broad-based stakeholder engagement that gives birth to a new social compact.
You should know, Mr President, what it costs us to write to you in this register. The verbal abuse, the burnt shops and the indignities endured by Zimbabweans in your country are agonising to witness from across the border. I understand South African anger; I also understand why a qualified accountant from Bulawayo or a teacher from Mutare will board a Kombi with a single suitcase to chase a job washing dishes in Sandton. We are a proud people, and our timidity has been exploited by a small political clique who profit from our humiliation. So here is the request, Mr President - and the call to action.
Decline future invitations to Mnangagwa's farm. Insist, as Sadc chair, that any engagement with Zimbabwe include the voices Mnangagwa has tried to silence: civil society, the churches, the legal profession, the opposition, organised business and ordinary citizens. Use your platform to call publicly for the withdrawal of Constitutional Amendment Bill No 3 and for the unqualified protection of the 2013 constitution.
Stop confusing the comfort of incumbents with the stability of nations. And if none of this interests you - if the 17-million people inside Zimbabwe and the more than 800,000 in your own country are not your concern - then please, with respect, stay out of our affairs.
You cannot help us by helping those who are suffocating us.
Yours, in love of country,
Trevor Ncube
(Ncube has permanent residence status in South Africa and is head of Trevor & Associates)
Source - Trevor Ncube
All articles and letters published on Bulawayo24 have been independently written by members of Bulawayo24's community. The views of users published on Bulawayo24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Bulawayo24. Bulawayo24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
Join the discussion
Loading comments…
