Nothing good comes out of Mathebeleland?

Kuwe Mnumzana Mbonisi Gumbo,

After reading your letter written to Mnumzana Trevor Ncube today on Bulawayo 24, I feel compelled to write you this letter but certainly not a reply to your grievances. I am just highlighting many issues regarding our situation in the region that borders on your letter, is there anything good coming out of Mathebeleland? I am writing you at my own risk, great risk aware of reprisals arising from my response. I will dare to take the consequences of my words; I have done so before I will do it again where I feel there is need to talk!

To repeat what we all know, Mathebeleland was and still is marginalized since we got our independence in 1980. The barbaric Gugurahundi atrocities followed by a silent genocide in both North and South Mathebeleland are well known to us. Because people risked their lives in documenting the atrocities, Gugurahundi atrocities are recognised even by the US, President Barack Obama spoke about genocide when he met the Woza courageous women in the White House. Bulawayo is a shadow of its own; many companies have relocated to other places for many reasons, one of which is water scarcity in the city and of course the refusal of Zanu PF to complete Zambezi-Mathebeleland Water Project.

There are currently serious food shortages that are worse and lethal in some parts of Mathebeleland. There are already cases of people dying because of none availability of food right in Bulawayo. The Food-Aid distribution is mainly on party lines, reducing the people of Mathebeleland to sell their souls and become holders of Zanu PF cards ever to survive famine. Schools are teaching in Shona language, or are Shona speaking, most children in the region do not understand Shona, making it extremely challenging for the children of Mathebeleland to perform well in their academic achievements. I can go on about the challenging issues in Bulawayo and Mathebeleland, the list is too long.

Girl children are not given the same privileges as the boys in getting education. This is our cultural problem and not that of the government. Women empowerment is minimal or none existent in most parts of Mathebeleland, that has to do with central government that is selective in dealing with community development projects. This is perhaps what Mr. Trevor Ncube would be putting on board, issues that marginalize the region as well as putting across to the people of Mathebeleland what ideas what projects could be targeted to uplift the region, helping to help ourselves. The media will be able to differentiate in its correspondence where solutions to the region should be concerted by many to bring tangible developments on the ground.

Let me not waste time you're and come to the crunch of my writing you this letter. I am a regular reader of Trevor Ncube Mail & Guardian. His newspapers make a very good reading and in most case they are factual, certainly not tabloids. Yes his media coverage is sometimes selective; you rightly ask pertinent questions why his media coverage is mostly focused on personalities of selected regions of Zimbabwe. As the owner of AMH he could have his own prerogative; where and who to put emphasis on in his publishing for business sake.

Mr. Gumbo is; how many Mthwakazi groups do we have in Mathebeleland? Why there are several different groups and parties not unite to one entity or two and fight for what we feel we are lacking in our region. Don't you think Mthwakazi is defragmented, I personally do not know the difference between one with the other. Most people in Bulawayo I have managed to talk to will concur that leadership differences in Mthwakazi groups are threshed out outside Mathebeleland without the knowledge of the people you want to represent with their most pertinent grievances. It could be that Trevor Ncube is also finding it challenging to really take on board which of the groups or political parties to support, let's not forget that media houses have their sympathies and in some cases "not" really none partisan as we would like to believe their advertisements.  

I will agree with Trevor Ncube if his reporters ignored the visit made by some King from South Africa to Bulawayo not so long ago. The audacity of the whole King (forget his name) tells the men from Mathebeleland to be polygamous, have many women so that they have many children. This message is not only stupid but backward. We women in Mathebeleland are fighting abject poverty that was created by Gugurahundi atrocities, women whose husbands are working in South Africa are barely managing with the children they already have but we are told to be in polygamous institutions and still have more children! In most parts of Mathebeleland our men folk left for South Africa because there was no work for them in today's Zimbabwe. Surely South Africa is a life-line for most villagers in both Mathebeleland North and South even Bulawayo.

The whole King is wholly ignorant about the plight of Ndebele women. Just one example, is he aware of the fact that to give birth in hospitals there are birth fees to be paid, if not they don't pay, there are corridors in hospitals where young women are detained until they paid the birth fees? If we cannot manage the very children we have, how are going to manage even many more we are told to have? It is easy to make a child yes, it is how to maintain a child when it is conceived (few health services, no pre natal clinics available to all) until it is born and then come the great work of bring the child up with merger resources. Does the whole King know that most girls miss out school in some parts of Mathebeleland North and South even Bulawayo, education is out of reach of many families because of poverty, pure poverty.

 How are we going to empower our children especially girls with empowerment projects to meet global obligations if they continue to receive conflicting messages coming from regional figure-heads? Mathebeleland is not an island but part of the global development. Does the whole King know that we have challenges of drought and availability of water? ElNino is prevalent especially in Mathebeleland and most families depend on hand-outs from developed countries.

I will agree with Trevor Ncube if his reporters did not take on their media coverage the pleas for the restoration of Mathebeleland. The people of Mathebeleland were not asked if they wanted the restoration of Mthwakazi. What the people of Mathebeleland mandated in the constitution was the devolution of power, that each province gets its autonomy to run its affairs separate from the central government. It is not fair to the people of Mathebeleland to push restoration down their throats without any consultations through a referendum: do we want a restoration or not?  

Trevor Ncube will say no to his reporters if they report traditional events in Bulawayo where girls are supposed to dance with their upper bodies undressed for all to see, some wholesale p*rnography for free. The reviving of u Mhlanga in Bulawayo impedes all development regarding girl-children and young women empowerment. We have rape cases whose fault is put paid on girls wearing mini-skirts and mini-dresses. How do you on one hand legitimize open-breasts-dances- u Mhlanga and on the other hand delegitimize wearing of mini-skirts? Now if the girls are exposing those body parts that define sexual enticement, a recipe for rape, it is indeed a vicious circle of violence against young girls and young women. Those Mhlanga dances long past their sale by date. We women will ask for a ban of such dances that reduce women to subjects of sex under the pretext of cultural and traditional expressions of Ndebele people in the coming dispensation. Young women and girls cannot be objects of sex in 2016

I will agree with Trevor Ncube if he told his reporters to drop altogether the news about some Mthwakazi leaders who approached King Zwelithini Khumalo in Zululand for protection. We the people of Mathebeleland are supposed to get protection from whom? Are we not intelligent enough, professional enough to fight marginalization of Mathebeleland on our own without any outside assistance? This very King of Zululand has no executive powers to effect change in Zimbabwe. He is a traditional figure-head, a benefit receiver; he cannot sustain his kraal without monthly receipts benefits from the ANC government, whose party he despised during the liberation era

Are the people of Mathebeleland going to be subjects of the ‘King Zwelithini, all of a sudden? The purpose of King Mzilikazi's   leaving Zululand altogether, has it be threshed through so that we can accept to be subjects of him? Have we been asked if we wanted to be subjects of the King of Zululand? Is Mathebeleland going to be a protectorate of Zululand? I have never talked to Ncube but I can imagine if he said nope to such coverage.

Trevor Ncube knows how tainted King Zwelithini is regarding Xenophobia utterances the King made carelessly because he thinks he is above the law. King Zwelithini is a controversial persona. His utterances that ignited xenophobic disturbances in Kwazulu Natal and Durban areas were very nasty, if he was a person of integrity he would be ashamed of what he did and said because lives were lost in those xenophobic killings. "We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and go back to their countries." That was King Zwelithini verbatim.

Not long ago, King Zwelithini Khumalo openly despised the ANC government, preferred the Apartheid government he thought was good for all the peoples of South Africa. On the 8th of December 2015, "the official King of Zululand has announced that the country was economically militarily and socially better under white Afrikaner rule and that history will judge blacks as only having destroyed everything that they had inherited from the white government"

Here is a King who is out of touch with global developments. ANC government may not be delivering the fruits of independence; there is no basis to make comparisons to apartheid regime. This is evident that the King benefited during the Apartheid era for his stand against ANC and other liberation movements, he never supported the struggle for independence for once. It is for this reason that he is sadly politically bankrupt when it comes to Africa current affairs. His hate-speeches and calling "other" lice and ticks should be condemned by all well-meaning peoples of this Earth.  And this is the King we are supposed to be subjects to. King Mzilikazi will turn in his grave just by this move they have done behind our backs. It would appear as if such moves are personally rewarding than seeking genuine answers for the people of Mathebeleland. The answers to the challenges facing Mathebeleland are in Zimbabwe, period.

We seek the devolution of power to all provinces in Zimbabwe so that Mthwakazi can manage its own affairs separate from the central government that has marginalized us. The constitution is clear about this, the devolution is enshrined in the new constitution were the people of this region unanimously agreed to devolution. However we (I say we, because I have consulted a number of people) feel when Mthwakazi groups speaks on our behalf we should be consulted first. I do not exonerate AMH for selectively concentrating on other regions than Mathebeleland. We need to do more as people from Mathebeleland, the raisons de'etre why Mathebeleland is marginalized is generally accepted by all in the region, even Mrs. Teresa Makoni was shocked about evidence of marginalization all over to see, when she visited Mathebeleland North not so long ago.

We have projects at place and we wish to empower our growing girls and young women so that we are lot left behind in national and global developments. We shall ask Trevor Ncube to do more and be more vocal in his media coverage to uplift isizwe sika Mthwakazi, the people of Mathebeleland. His media coverage is indeed to some extend selective. We know too that it is his prerogative to cover what he thinks is good for his business.

It's high time traditional Kings and other traditional leaders had education as criteria to qualify to be of traditional authority. Most of these traditional leaders lack educations and enlightenment to manage their authority for the good of all their "Subjects."

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