By Nomazulu Thata| Listening to the video circulating around, young people all from Mashonaland are openly lamenting Mnangagwa’s recent hate speech on what he knows best:

…rounding people up with cockroaches in their homes. These young people are struggling with Mnangagwa’s statement and appear immensely troubled, trying to understand with all their intellectual might and analytical political capabilities what Mnangagwa must have meant by rounding up people who have cockroaches in their homes. On the other hand, people in Matabeleland did not react to this insult much in comparison to these youths exclusively from the region of Mashonaland who took part in interview (19.03.2020) regarding Mnangagwa’s well known tactics of eliminating dissenting political parties that pose a threat to Zanu PF government. This time around it is MDC-Alliance.

Interestingly these youths who were interviewed continued to refer Mnangagwa’s hate speeches he recently made with his hate-utterances against the peoples of Matabeleland and Midlands in the early 1980s when he served as Minister of Security in Zanu PF government. There is concrete evidence in documents and Zimbabwe newspapers of Mnangagwa calling the peoples of Matabeleland cockroaches during the Gukurahundi atrocities and Mnangagwa cannot deny this by any account; they said. The peoples of Matabeleland have been insulted for so long without a sorry or any semblance of contrition regarding the genocide, rape, displacements of families and loss of livelihoods of the genocide atrocities immediately after independence, so what should shock them now when supposedly a President of the country continues to utter those insults they have been hearing since independence.

“We wonder what mukuru is referring to when he talks about eradicating cockroaches in our homes. Are cockroaches MDC people in this case, MDC like Matabeleland Zapu were first reduced to name-callings as lice and cockroaches to be able to eliminate them Gukurahundi style: The Fifth Brigade killing frenzy.” Another young man who was interviewed said: “Mukuru is failing the people of Zimbabwe, he has no clue how he is going to turn around the economy of this country. The economy is his enemy and not the MDC people. Mnangagwa should fix the economy and not threaten people because of failed economy.”

Since the inception of this great country, the problem in Zimbabwe is the tribal polarization of ethnic groups and races. When Zanu PF went on a killing frenzy in Matabeleland, the peoples of Mashonaland looked on unsympathetic to Gukurahundi killings and rape, and destruction that was taking place in Matabeleland wholly knowledgeable to the public through the social media. One can say with equal truth that to some extent the peoples of Mashonaland were agreeable to what the Mugabe government was doing, murdering Matabeleland people cold blood. The people of Mashonaland were interviewed on several social media calling for the public hanging of Joshua Nkomo as the main source of trouble and leader of dissident’s activities in the region. Nkomo was quick to prophesy that; what is happening to the people of Matabeleland today will one day happen to the peoples of Mashonaland equally. Zanu PF was going to kill maim, rape the peoples of Mashonaland too; he said. We have seen this prophesy on several occasions in history of Zimbabwe.

We remember to this day how radio live shows were conducted by the Zimbabwe government propaganda machines that continued to call all the peoples of Matabeleland dissidents. “Ko dissident chii? Was the question from the radio presenter: The answer that was given, had a price tag with it and was in cash on the spot. “Dissident Mundeere” With the benefit of hindsight, it was like seeing a child playing with fire and one looks on.

With the benefit of hindsight, the peoples of Mashonaland should have known that this kind of rhetoric is not nation-building but self-destructive. Violence begets violence, so they say. This glorification of violence of any kind and magnitude can, in the long run, turn against them the peoples of Mashonaland and this has happened in several occasions. That was the prophesy of Joshua Nkomo back then in the early 1983 – 4; today in 2020 we see this same set of hate speeches used on the peoples of Mashonaland by none either than Zanu PF and by the same thug: perpetrator of genocide in Matabeleland and Midlands between 1983 and 1987, Dambudzo Mnangagwa, second President of the Republic of Zimbabwe.

In the same vein, it should be said that when the Gukurahundi atrocities were taking place in Matabeleland and Midlands, the white Zimbabweans distanced themselves from these atrocities altogether. The was no profound sympathy coming from the white Rhodesians towards the Ndebele peoples who were butchered to death unarmed and unprotected.

The Lancaster Agreement to a good extent protected them from any retribution and they were aware of this clause that Cousin Margaret Thatcher curved for them as protection measure. The white Zimbabweans indeed turned their backs and it was “seeing no evil:” the black-black massacres have nothing to do with the white settlers! are squaring their own inherent grievances of yester year!!

For 20 years Mugabe and Zanu PF were a darling to the peoples of Mashonaland. Until the end of the Millennium, the peoples of Mashonaland regions hero-worshipped Mugabe Zanu PF government to the level of madness. On the other hand, the peoples of Matabeleland did not even benefit from the unity accord of 1987 but remained marginalized to this day. The Zanu PF had no idea about how the government is run and already by mid1990s the country was is debt: foreign and domestic debt because of corruption and failed priorities of Zanu PF. Mugabe mistook himself for a world superpower President by sending his soldiers to the Democratic Republic of Congo to quell Tutsi insurgencies that had nothing to do with the Zimbabwe government. The government was spending one million US a day to maintain the war in the Congo. It escaped Zanu PF and Mugabe that they were a developing country that had no capacity to interfere with problems in other countries and even giving military assistance at the cost of the Zimbabwe treasury.

In the 1990s, Zimbabwe was dependent on the remittances from the British government since 1980, what one could call it, colonial guilt payments. These remittances dried up when Mugabe started purging the white settlers from their farms: Farm invasions took place in the turn of the Millennium because the White settlers inadvertently started to support the newly formed opposition party: MDC. Mugabe was so enraged by this betrayal he never expected from them; he went for them in the style; killings he knew better. So many peoples of Mashonaland died in the farm invasions together with some white farmers who were brutally dispossessed of their farmlands.
Farm invasions were so brutal, people were burnt alive in their huts while sleeping. They were called all sorts of names by the farm invaders: traitors, totem less people. Some were beaten to death; some went to the hospitals with burnt scars, burnt by either the use benzine flames or boiling water. The killings were so gruesome, it is all documented how Mugabe and Zanu PF, when it was confronted with losing power, they would use punitive brutality to anyone regardless of ethnic affiliation and race.

As if it was not enough: Murambatsvina witnessed so many peoples of Shona tribe or ethic group affected by Zanu PF government action that targeted the newly formed opposition MDC party that had won a referendum in year 2000. Some scholar Mamdani’s article on Murambatsvina says: “the number of deaths of people as a result of Murambatsvina could be higher than Gukurahundi atrocities of the 1980s.” Thousands of people (about three quarters of a million people) of all ethnic groups and their livelihoods were made homeless in all towns and cities of Zimbabwe and the brutal government of Zimbabwe cared less.

As if its was not enough: come 2008 harmonised elections. This time around, the people who were murdered were the peoples of Mashonaland exclusively. They were maimed, hacked to death, women were raped in the same style as the Gukurahundi time. All this was long prophesied by Joshua Nkomo. Nkomo said violence begets violence. Violence is a scourge an evil that should never be glorified by any civilized society for whatever reason.

As if it was not enough: come harmonized elections in 2018. Yet again, the people who were shot by the army where people who had nothing to do with demonstrations but happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time. They were all peoples of Mashonaland. In January 2019, when the Trade Union demonstrated against the failing government of Dambudzo Mnangagwa, again 19 people were shot dead. This again happened in Harare and most of those who were randomly killed were peoples from Mashonaland.

When we follow up these historical events marred by discordance at the hands of Zanu PF we do so to put Zanu PF culture of violence and their patterns on the spot. We are saying, this party can even devour its own to remain in power. The people of Mashonaland indeed have learnt hard facts about Zanu PF. This government is as brutal to its own people in as much as it is brutal to the people of Matabeleland. Both these ethnic groups; be it Shona or Ndebele and the white population, we all smell like goats and hence we can be devoured using those methods Zanu PF knows best. We need to ask ourselves serious questions: Where is Comrade Itai Dzamara? Let’s ask ourselves again how Dr. Edgar Madekurozva died in Zambia in the mid-1970s. Comrade Madekurozva was forced to dig his own grave, was thrown inside the grave having been struck by the same pick he dug his own grave with. This is Zanu PF for you.

In retrospect, it is with “great sadness” that this country was won with the use of force. The liberation struggle gave birth to independence. The war was not won outrightly in the battlefields but by negotiations as the Front-Line-States were paying the highest price for their support of the liberation of Zimbabwe and South Africa. I am deliberately using the words: “with great sadness” and by that, I mean when violence is used as a corrective, it will one day come back and hound that society sooner or later. Remember Karma Law!! The liberation struggle was a noble war consciously done to take back what belongs to the blacks by right. However, this very corrective violence used to liberate the countries in southern Africa has manifested itself int other forms of violence: state violence, structural violence and several other societal violence.

What we experience today in is the blazing embers of violence and its manifestations. We see a myriad of influences on violence in our history and is a direct threat to social, economic and political development and has even torn the fabric of our societies in Zimbabwe. Not to mention the destruction of human lives, especially women and children are most vulnerable in societal uncertainties such as ethnic conflicts and civil demonstrations. When a government uses violence as a corrective, like what Zanu PF does, it endorses violence, has always endorsed violence that has permeated in every aspect of our lives becoming a culture.

However, the predictability of violence makes it possible to address it if there was a democratic government in place.