The Changing Politics of Matebeleland since
1980
24 February 2011
by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni - Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of South Africa
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Introduction
I think the best way to understand the present day manifestations and
character of Matebeleland politics is to situate them properly historically and
politically within the broader terrain of the development of the idea of
Zimbabwe and the eventual configuration of the Zimbabwe nation-state. The
changing nature of politics in Matabeleland is largely a response to realities
and perceptions of exclusion, marginalisation and confinement to second class
citizenship of Ndebele-speaking people that began in 1980. The politics that is
emerging from Matebeleland region is that of protest to perceptions and
realities of exclusion, marginalisation and domination. The launch of such
radical formations as the Matebeleland Liberation Front (MLF) last year calling
for complete secession of Matebeleland and Midlands regions from Zimbabwe is the
climax of regional politics of frustration and resentment of domination.
President Robert Mugabe’s recent response to the developments taking place in
the MDC led by Welshman Ncube and his seemingly overt support for Arthur
Mutambara to remain as Deputy Prime Minister and refusal to swear-in Welshman
Ncube as the new Deputy Prime Minister is fuelling perceptions of
Ndebele-speaking leaders being unwanted and excluded from the corridors of
power. It is therefore important to deploy a sober analysis that seeks to
understand the motive forces behind the character of politics in Matabeleland
since the 1980s. While one can get some glimpse of the core grievances from such
forums as newzimbabwe.com and many others, it is equally important to situate
the Matebeleland problems historically.
The idea of Zimbabwe and Matabeleland question
The idea of Zimbabwe is traceable to the 1960s. It emerged as a nationalist
idea and an imagination of the postcolonial nation-state. The idea emerged
within a terrain saturated with various ethno-cultural societies such as the
Matebele Home Society, Monomotapa Offspring Society, Kalanga Cultural Society
and many others-socio-cultural societies that indicated where the people were
coming from and how they were responding to colonial environment and how they
defined themselves identity-wise. The naming of associations indicated a
formative consciousness that was torn-apart between pre-colonial nostalgia and
colonial realities. Zimbabwean nationalism had to spring from this milieu.
The name of the imagined nation had to be indigenous. The Great Zimbabwe
heritage site that is closely associated with the Karanga people (a branch of
Shona as an enlarged identity) provided the name. Michael Mawema, a Karanga is
credited for coming up with the name during his short stint as the interim
president of the National Democratic Party (NDP). But the first political
formation to officially use the name Zimbabwe was the Zimbabwe National Party
(ZNP) an insignificant party that was formed by some Karanga-speaking
politicians that had broken up from NDP. From this outset, a voice from
Matabeleland coming through some members of Matebele Home Society protested
against the choice of the name Zimbabwe for the imagined nation. They reasoned
that it was an ethnic name that was not accommodative of other peoples. They
preferred the name Matopos as inclusive and non-ethnic. Ethnicity was beginning
to be a factor in the imagination of the postcolonial nation-state itself.
African nationalism as the medium of implementation of the idea of Zimbabwe
became deeply interpellated by ethnicity from its birth despite some pretensions
of unity by the early nationalists. At the centre of articulation of nationalism
were such considerations as what the foundation myth of the imagined
nation-state was, and which heroes, symbols and history had to be projected as
an anchorage of the imagined nation. Beginning with the naming, Shona histories,
symbols and heroes were increasingly elevated into anchorages of the imagined
nation. This has partly to do with the fact that a majority of postcolonial
nation-states had to be built and crystallise around the dominant
ethnie. But nationalists had the mammoth task of creatively managing
and balancing such vectors of identity as race, class, ethnicity, region,
gender, and generation as they imagined a unitary postcolonial nation-state. The
difficult question is: Were there real nationalists existing as de-tribalised
actors committed to the imagining and building a stable nation? Was the label
nationalist not only a respected one that masked tribalism? Did we not have
lip-service nationalists who only assumed nationalist identities in front of
crowds and then withdrew to their primal tribal identity soon after? These are
important questions that beg for responses.
The 1963 split in the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) that gave birth
to a Shona dominated Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) remains one
important event that indicated how tribalism and ethnicity were deeply embedded
within nationalism. However hard those who were involved in this split deny the
prominence of tribalism and ethnicity as a factor behind the split the
subsequent events spoke loudly about the role of ethnicity in spoiling the birth
of a nation. The immediate post-split ZAPU-ZANU faction fights in Harare, Gweru,
Bulawayo and other sites took clear tribal and ethnic dimensions. Later splits
including the one that resulted in the formation of the Front for the Liberation
of Zimbabwe (Frolizi) and others also indicated how ethnicity was playing havoc
within nationalist politics. The same is true of postcolonial split that rocked
the MDC in 2005. Even factions within ZANU-PF indicate the reverberation of
regional, kinship, clannish, ethnic and tribal alignments. In short, the
liberation struggle became a terrain of re-tribalisation of nationalism with
particular ethnic groups positioning themselves to lead and dominate the
imagined postcolonial nation. Even a seemingly unitary Shona identity unravelled
as the Karanga fought to eliminate the Manyika and the Zezuru fought for
ascendance over the Karanga. Along the way lives were lost due to what Masipula
Sithole termed ‘struggles within the struggle.’
The sum of all is that the Zimbabwe nation-state that was born in 1980 was a
product of a deeply tribalised nationalism. The nationalists who spearheaded the
liberation struggle dreamt in both nationalist and tribal languages and terms.
The nation-state was therefore born with a terrible ethnic-tribal birth-mark. As
put by Eldred Masunungure, Zimbabwe as a state came into being in 1980 but
Zimbabwe as a nation did not. There was outright and unapologetic building of
the state as a ‘Zanufied’ and ‘Shonalized’ political formation where other
political actors like PF-ZAPU that drew most of its support from Matabeleland
and Midlands regions had no dignified space and Ndebele-speaking people were an
inconvenience that had to be dealt with. This mentality was clear from music,
symbols, heroes and national celebrations of independence.
Zimbabwe and the Matebeleland question
As noted above Zimbabwe was born out of an armed liberation war spearheaded
by ethnically fragmented leadership, fought by equally ethnically fragmented
freedom fighters and supported by masses that were socialised into tribal
politics. It was against this background that ZANU-PF electoral victory in 1980
was celebrated as not only a victory of a liberation movement over settler
colonialism but also as victory of Shona political elite over Ndebele political
elites in PF-ZAPU. While ZANU-PF built their political legitimacy on their
nationalist liberation war credentials, they also openly connected the party,
the state, and the nation to Shona historical symbols.
This set the stage for an ethnic showdown between the triumphant Shona and
the defeated Ndebele that became openly violent in 1982. On this issue, Norma
Kriger noted that from the very day of achievement of independence, the
triumphant Shona-dominated ZANU-PF leadership displayed a unique desire to build
a ‘party-nation’ and a ‘party-state’ that excluded other political formations,
crafted around and backed by ZANU-PF’s war-time military wing (ZANLA) and Shona
historical experiences. Specific party slogans, party symbols, party songs, and
party regalia of the liberation war time continued to be used at national
ceremonies like Independence and Heroes Days. It was amidst this fanfare and
celebratory mood that Shona triumphalism unfolded against Ndebele particularism
reeling under a feeling of defeat.
Through music and dance, the triumphalism of ZANU-PF over PF-ZAPU was openly
displayed and conveyed to everybody as though the liberation struggle was a
duality between the Shona dominated ZANU-PF and the Ndebele dominated PF-ZAPU. A
decidedly partial history of the liberation war and a decidedly partial
imagination of the state and the nation ensued backed by an openly biased
historical master-narrative of the struggle for independence. The typical
example of that history was David Martin and Phyllis Johnson’s The Struggle
for Zimbabwe: Chimurenga War freely distributed throughout the country into
every school and college. This book became the official history of ZANU-PF and
ZANLA, celebrating their centrality in the struggle while at the same time
sidelining the contribution of PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA.
The triumphant ZANU-PF politicians immediately used the state controlled
media to cast PF-ZAPU, its leader Joshua Nkomo, and its military wing (ZIPRA),
as no heroic liberators, as no committed nation-builders, but as a threat to the
country’s hard won independence. Historians like T. Ranger, N. Bhebe, and E.
Sibanda have tried to add the Matabeleland narratives into the story of
nationalism through Matabeleland focused research in recent years. This academic
compensation has not been accompanied by a clear drive for political and
economic inclusion of Ndebele people into the mainstream of post-colonial
Zimbabwe save for the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987. Up to now Shona history,
Shona symbols, and rituals still underpin state ideology at the exclusion of the
Ndebele. Even such minor issues such as which news bulletin comes first on ZTV
is permeated and driven by imperatives of Shona-Ndebele power imbalances. News
in the Shona language must always come first. But in democratic countries like
South Africa where there are eleven recognised official languages there is no
rigid format of which news in which language comes first.
The central state of Zimbabwe sanctioned deployment of military and
ethnicised violence against the Ndebele in the period between 1982 and 1987
within this background. What happened deserves some close analysis because it
reveals the behaviour of the central state and how it handled what was
considered a form of dissidence of the Ndebele speaking people. The key feature
of this period was the attempt by ZANU-PF to crush PF-ZAPU that had constituted
itself as the strongest opposition in the country. PF-ZAPU and Joshua Nkomo were
‘provincialised’ and stripped of their nationalist liberation credentials to the
extent that Nkomo was openly disparaged as the king of the Ndebele and a father
of dissidents.
The open exclusionary state practices took the form of preferential treatment
of ex-ZANLA as a victorious force, use of exclusionary language by the political
leadership of Zimbabwe, and exclusion of Ndebele history and symbols from the
imagination of the new nation. These issues combined to create what eventually
became known as the dissident situation in Matabeleland. ZANU-PF desperately
needed such a situation to justify its crackdown on PF-ZAPU and its military
wing using state power.
Violent handling of ‘dissidents’: Gukurahundi and the Ndebele
Eliakim Sibanda has noted that ‘The crisis in Matabeleland started in the
army.’ This means that any analysis of how the Shona dominated central state
dealt with the Ndebele-speaking people as dissidents must take into account the
complexities of a tale not only of politicised ethnicity and abuse of state
power, but also a story of problematic integration of ex-ZANLA, ex-ZIPRA and
ex-Rhodesian forces into the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA). It is also a tale of
problematic nation-building that was exclusivist as well as part of elite
politics of competition for power and nationalist vendettas. As early as
November 1980, the integration of forces was hit by its first crisis when ZIPRA
and ZANLA forces fought against each other in Assembly Points (APs). This
ZIPRA-ZANLA fights spread to eNtumbane, Ntabazinduna, Connemara, Chitungwidza,
and Silalabuhwa.
The underlying cause of all these violent clashes had to do with a
combination of inflammatory political speeches by ZANU-PF leaders, open
discrimination of ZIPRA, open favouritism of ZANLA, and abuse of PF-ZAPU leaders
to whom ZIPRA was loyal. Kriger noted that ZANU-PF began to behave as though
Zimbabwe was a one party state-’In other areas, too, ZANU (PF)’s grass-roots
supporters and its national leadership exhibited a one-party mentality.’ The
ZANU-PF slogans were openly provocative and disparaging of PF-ZAPU, the person
of Joshua Nkomo and the liberation credentials of ZIPRA. This led Josiah
Chinamano, a deputy president of PF-ZAPU to warn that these slogans would incite
the anger of armed ZIPRA forces without any political platform from which to
answer back except through their guns.
Indeed the continued exclusion of ZIPRA, PF-ZAPU, and the entire leadership
of this party from the imagination of the new nation, the attempt to belittle
their contribution to the liberation war and the monopolisation of the media by
ZANU-PF made the people of Matabeleland and ZIPRA agitated, restless and unsure
of their security in Zimbabwe. On the other hand, ZANU-PF was bent on
eliminating PF-ZAPU and its leadership as they considered it an obstacle to the
agenda and drive for the one-party state in Zimbabwe. This agenda was loaded
into numerous speeches by ZANU-PF leaders that included Enos Nkala who openly
stated that PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA were not heroes-’They contributed in their own
small way and we have given them a share proportional to their contributions.’
Following the first clashes between ZIPRA and ZANLA, Edgar Tekere, another
ZANU-PF leader openly sided with ZANLA and blamed ZIPRA. He stated that ‘We did
not need his army in the war, so why are they making a nuisance of themselves
now?’ To him, ZIPRA and Rhodesian forces were not to be integrated into the new
national army-’the government must work seriously and quickly for the abolition
of ZIPRA and Rhodesian armed forces.’
A feeling of being unwanted developed not only among ZIPRA forces but also
among the people of Matabeleland both loyal to Joshua Nkomo and PF-ZAPU. As the
ZIPRA found themselves being accused of disloyalty, some began to desert from
ZNA with their arms back to the liberation-wartime bush operational areas. Some
were escaping torture and witch-hunts that were masterminded by ZANU-PF and
ZANLA. ZIPRA found themselves in a very unenviable position within the ZNA. One
ex-ZIPRA colonel had this to say:
Say you’re a platoon commander. You find you can’t take decisions. Someone
beneath you becomes the kind of proxy commander. I was a colonel, mostly in
charge of training at Llewellyn. Two officers committed a crime. They got into a
hospital ward and wanted to rape female patients. These guys were reported to me
as the senior commander. I remanded them for court martial. But because I was
the senior person ordering a court martial-I a ZIPRA-those men were immediately
promoted to majors and the whole case ended there. We were there as senior
officers but we had no power. All the powers were given to ZANLAs. A ZANLA is
more powerful than a colonel.
The violent clashes between the ZIPRA and ZANLA, the desertion of some
ex-ZIPRA from the national army, the exploitation of the antagonistic situation
by apartheid South Africa via Super ZAPU and the ‘discovery’ of arms caches in
PF-ZAPU owned farms around Bulawayo gave government the pretext to use state
power to crush PF-ZAPU. ZANU-PF wanted to gain control in the south-western part
of the country and to consolidate its power. As noted by Brian Eric Abrams,
ZANU-PF and the state ‘developed a clear message, sharp media campaign and a
multi-layered military response to achieve its highly focused political goals.’
Within this ZANU-PF political agenda, PF-ZAPU was a party that sponsored
dissidents, Joshua Nkomo was the father of dissidents, every young Ndebele man
was a potential dissident, all ex-ZIPRA including those serving in the army were
dissidents, and the entire population of Matabeleland constituted a dissident
community. State sanctioned, military-style and ethnicised violence was
unleashed on all Ndebele-speaking people between 1982 and 1987. The
storm-troopers in this violence were a combination of a select, Shona-speaking
Fifth Brigade, specially trained by Koreans in cruelty and torture of its
victims, ZANU-PF Youth Brigade, ZANU-PF Women’s League and other regular forces.
The time of violence is remembered as Gukurahundi atrocities. The
military Brigade that carried out the atrocities is remembered as
Gukurahundi. Gukurahundi is a Shona name for early rains that
wash away chaff of the previous season. The chaff to be washed away was this
time the Ndebele-speaking people.
The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and the Legal Resources
Foundation (LRF)’s Report, Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace: A
Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980-1989,
provides crucial details of how a military operation orchestrated through Fifth
Brigade (Gukurahundi) became a bizarre combination of random killing of every
Ndebele-speaker, hunting and killing of every PF-ZAPU supporter, raping of
Ndebele women and girls, as well as abduction, torture, and forcing every
Ndebele-speaker to switch to Shona language and then support ZANU-PF. What
started as a mission to stamp out dissidents became from start to finish an
ethnicized crusade to make the Ndebele account for the nineteenth century raids
on the Shona, and a purely anti-Ndebele campaign that deliberately conflated
Joshua Nkomo, PF-ZAPU, ex-ZIPRA and every Ndebele-speaking person into a
dissident, dissident collaborator, dissident sympathiser and sponsor. This was a
situation where the state itself became tribalist with ethnicity being openly
used as an instrument to eliminate a rival ethnic group.
The Fifth Brigade-a military unit outfit answerable to the then Prime
Minister Mugabe that was said to be politically compliant to ZANU-PF political
philosophy was only withdrawn from Matabeleland and the Midlands in 1987
following the signing of the Unity Accord. Before the Accord, the Fifth Brigade
committed serious atrocities characterised by brutal and indiscriminate state
sanctioned violence targeting Ndebele speaking communities. The carnage started
in 1982 and ended in 1987 claiming the lives of over 20 000 civilians.
The impact and meaning of Gukurahundi in Matebeleland
More than any other violent episode in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the
Gukurahundi episode reconstructed and reinforced Ndebele identity
resulting in deep polarisation of the Zimbabwe nation. Bjorn Lindgren noted that
the atrocities carried out by the Fifth Brigade, heightened the victims’
awareness of being Ndebele at the cost of being Zimbabwean.
While this violence was meant to destroy Ndebele particularism as a threat to
Shona triumphalism, its consequences were the reverse. The openly ethnic nature
of the violence pushed the Ndebele into an even greater awareness of their
differences with the Shona. Lingren, wrote that ‘people in Matabeleland
responded by accusing Mugabe, the government and the ‘Shona’ in general of
killing the Ndebele.’ Besides the Fifth Brigade atrocities instilling fear in
Matabeleland and the Midlands, it heightened the victims’ awareness of being
Ndebele and a sense of not being part of Zimbabwe.
The Unity Accord signed between PF-ZAPU and ZANU-PF on 22 December 1987
amounted to nothing less than a surrender document where the PF-ZAPU politicians
threw in the towel and allowed PF-ZAPU to be swallowed by ZANU-PF. The only
positive result was that atrocities stopped. Beyond that, the Accord became just
a form of nationalist leaders accommodating each other across ethnic division
but leaving the people still divided. It was very far from being a comprehensive
conflict resolution mechanism. Bitterness and the memory of having lost family
members, relatives and friends remained engulfing those areas where the Fifth
Brigade and the dissidents operated. This was confirmed by oral interviews that
I carried out in 2002 in Bulawayo and Gweru relating to how the Ndebele
perceived the military in Zimbabwe. Every interviewee remembered the military in
the context of how the Fifth Brigade killed innocent people.
Ndebele particularism emerged out of this violence highly politicised and
wounded posing a danger to the pretences of a unitary nation-state of Zimbabwe.
In the first place, radical Ndebele counter-hegemonic ethno-nationalism
manifested itself in the form of radical Ndebele cultural nationalism and
secondly in the form of radical Ndebele-oriented pressure groups that openly
questioned the dominance of the Shona in employment in general, senior civil
service, security and education as well as open neglect of economic development
of Matebeleland and the Midlands regions. Some radical Ndebele-speaking people
began to question the value and benefit of associating themselves with the whole
idea of a unitary Zimbabwe state that was openly used to oppress and kill them.
This spirit manifested itself more openly in the formation of such radical
Ndebele pressure groups as Vukani Mahlabezulu, Imbovane Yamahlabezulu, ZAPU
2000 as well as Mthwakazi Action Group on Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
in Matabeleland and Midlands and Mthwakazi People’s Congress
(MPC).
Vukani Mahlabezulu modelled itself as a radical cultural
organisation focused more on revival of particularistic features of Ndebele
culture and its main proponent was a novelist and academic, Mthandazo Ndema
Ngwenya. He lost life in a mysterious car accident on the Bulawayo-Harare Road
in 1991 together with another Ndebele-speaking academic known as Themba
Nkabinde. Imbovane Yamahlabezulu was a radical pressure group that
opened debates on the sensitive issue of the Fifth Brigade, putting pressure on
the ZANU-PF government to be taken to account for the atrocities. The pressure
group organised rallies and meetings where such political figures as Enos Nkala
and others like Joseph Msika were invited to explain to the people as to who
gave the instructions for the atrocities. ZAPU 2000 was a belated
attempt to revive ZAPU following the death of Joshua Nkomo in July 1999. Its
focus was a repudiation of the Unity Accord which was interpreted as a surrender
document that did not benefit the ordinary people of Matabeleland who suffered
the consequences of ethnic violence. It attacked the former ZAPU elite for
selling out the people of Matabeleland for personal interests.
Mthwakazi Action Group on Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Matebeleland
and Midlands and Mthwakazi People’s Congress were a Diaspora
phenomenon. They campaigned for the atrocities committed by the Fifth Brigade to
be internationally recognised as genocide and for those people including Mugabe
to be prosecuted for this action. They also sought the establishment of an
autonomous United Mthwakazi Republic (UMR) as the only way for the Ndebele
people to realise self-determination.
The embers of the Matabeleland problem also pulsated around the death of
Joshua Nkomo in July 1999. Despite having joined ZANU-PF in 1987, Joshua Nkomo
was still revered in Matabeleland as umdala wethu (our old man). Joshua
Nkomo occupied a special place within Ndebele particularism and was persecuted
for being a Ndebele leader for a long time. Nkomo himself provides details of
his persecution by ZANU-PF in his autobiography. During his burial at the Heroes
Acre in Harare, a big delegation from Matabeleland and the Midlands regions came
to pay their last respects. What distinguished the Matabeleland delegation was
the persistent song-uNkomo wethu somlandela, yenu Nkomo wethu (We will
follow our Nkomo where ever he goes). This was an old PF-ZAPU song of liberation
that encapsulated the loyalty and confidence of ZAPU supporters in Joshua
Nkomo’s leadership.
In a purely hegemonic style, ZANU-PF competed with the people of Matabeleland
over ownership of Joshua Nkomo. Robert Mugabe took advantage of his death to
express some lukewarm regrets about the atrocities committed by the Fifth
Brigade for the first time. He assured the people of Matabeleland that the Unity
Accord would be respected. For the first time, Mugabe described the Fifth
Brigade atrocities as having happened during ‘a moment of madness.’ Besides
coming nearer to apologising for the atrocities, Mugabe posthumously, granted
Nkomo the long contested title of ‘Father Zimbabwe,’ arguing that Nkomo was a
national model and a supra-nationalist that embodied all the cultures of the
country. The editorial column of the Zimbabwe News, an official organ
of ZANU-PF carried the following title: ‘Farewell Dear Father’ and the editorial
partly read:
The death of Cde. Joshua Nkomo must give birth to national dedication to
those ideals that made him a national hero. To act otherwise would be betrayal
of not only Cde. Joshua Nkomo, but all those in whose footsteps he walked such
as Ambuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, uMzilikazi kaMatshobana, and Lobengula the
Great.
For the first time, the founders of the Ndebele state, Mzilikazi and
Lobhengula were listed together with Shona national heroes, in a desperate
attempt by ZANU-PF to keep the people of Matabeleland within the fold of their
party and within the Shona imagined nation and state.
In the midst of all this, the younger generation of Matabeleland politicians
like the president of Imbovane Yamahlabezulu, the late Mr. Bekithemba
John Sibindi, responded by repudiating the Unity Accord that was emphasised by
Mugabe and calling for an apology from Mugabe and compensation for the people of
Matabeleland. The young generation of political activists in Matabeleland became
even more sceptical of territorial nationalism as represented by ZANU-PF in the
absence of Nkomo. The common perception that had developed in Matebeleland was
that ZANU-PF is a tribal party that survived on tribalism and served the
interests of one ethnic group. This is how some people put it:
ZANU-PF is a party that is founded on splitting Zimbabwe into tribal
groupings, i.e. Shona and Ndebele, whereby Shonas must provide national
leadership. ZANU-PF, usually referred to as ‘The Party,’ has always had in their
leadership deck Shonas taking up key leadership positions with a lacing of
Ndebele apologists making up the leadership elite numbers. The party had to
enlist the services of Ndebele apologists to paint a picture of a government of
national unity following the inconsequential ‘Unity Accord’ signed in December
1987. The Ndebele apologists were to behave like gagged guests at this
party-’make no key decisions and above all don’t raise questions about the
development of the other half of the country.
The violence of the 1980s continued to be a major issue in Matabeleland. Its
embers influenced politicians like Jonathan Moyo to design a Gukurahundi
National Memorial Bill that he sought to table in Zimbabwe Parliament as
part of a closure on the atrocities that left the country divided on ethnic
lines. Justifying the need for a Gukurahundi National Memorial Bill,
Jonathan Moyo noted that:
It remains indubitable that the wounds associated with the dark
Gukurahundi period are still open and the scars still visible to the
detriment of national cohesion, national unity. These open wounds and visible
scars have diminished the prospects of enabling Zimbabweans to act with a common
purpose and with shared aspirations on the basis of a common heritage regardless
of ethnic origin.
While some contemporary analysts think that Moyo was just using the
atrocities to gain support in Matabeleland, the fact remained that the
Gukurahundi atrocities have remained open for political mileage. The action of
Moyo provoked some Matabeleland political gladiators like John Nkomo, Dumiso
Dabengwa, and Joseph Msika from the old PF-ZAPU to also make comments on
Gukurahundi for the first time since their party was swallowed by ZANU-PF in
1987. This salience of the Matabeleland problem has led Khanyisela Moyo, a
Zimbabwean lawyer to state that: ‘In my opinion, the Matabele question is
critical and cannot be cursorily thrust aside. It should be subjected to an
intellectual and candid debate.’ Since 2000, the embers of the Matabeleland
problems became more prominent in the Diaspora than inside Zimbabwe. This was
partly due to the fact that the Zimbabwe crisis that unfolded in 1997 had forced
millions of people into the Diaspora and partly because of the lack of
democratic spaces in Zimbabwe to practise alternative politics to ZANU-PF’s one
party mentality.
Diaspora, Matebeleland question and cyberspace
As Zimbabwe descended deeper into crisis punctuated by violence and
displacement, many people migrated to Botswana, South Africa, Britain and other
far away countries. Some of the displaced individuals and groups from
Matebeleland once in the Diaspora began to make sense of the crisis in Zimbabwe
and their fate as a minority group. Unlimited access to the cyberspace enabled
some young Matebele people to articulate aspects of the Matebeleland question
without fear or favour. Radical irredentist and secessionist ideas emerged in
the Diaspora and were articulated within the cyberspace. This culminated in the
creation of a ‘virtual nation’ known as the United Mthwakazi Republic
(UMR), complete with its own national flag and other ritualistic trappings
of a real national formation such as radio station.
Ndebele speaking people were among the first crop of Zimbabweans to migrate
out of Zimbabwe even before the collapse of the national economy in 2000.
Gukurahundi violence forced some Ndebele speaking people to take
refugee at Dukwe Camp in Botswana in the 1980s. Some were forced to take asylum
in such countries as the United Kingdom, Canada and USA. Thus by 2000, there was
already a sizeable number of what one can term ‘pre-2000 Ndebele Diasporic
community.’ This Diasporic community was composed mainly by PF-ZAPU activists
and ex-ZIPRA combatants who were targeted by the Fifth Brigade. By 1983, even
the ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo was driven into exile in Britain. This earlier crop
of Ndebele Diaspora particularly in the United Kingdom were better
institutionalised and organised, having carried with them a strong sense of
PF-ZAPU identity and Matabeleland nationalism. Some of these earlier groups have
remained die-hard ZAPU at heart even in the absence of PF-ZAPU. They
consistently tried to revive ZAPU as they did not recognize the legitimacy of
the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987 that enabled ZANU-PF to swallow
PF-ZAPU.
As the Diaspora Ndebele emerged from a highly ethnicised environment in
Zimbabwe one can easily understand why their politics soon took ethnic forms.
The United Mthwakazi Republic (UMR), complete with a flag and a radio station
emerged in the United Kingdom. If one opens the website, it becomes clear that
this organisation was born out of grievance and resentment of Shona
triumphalism, leading the Ndebele in the Diaspora to define all the problems
affecting the people of Matabeleland in ethnic terms. Gukurahundi
atrocities provided the background against which cyber politics of
secession of Matabeleland and the Midlands from Zimbabwe formed itself. This is
combined with mobilization and appropriation of the proud memory of pre-colonial
Ndebele history as well as the recent sad memories of the Fifth Brigade
atrocities. A separate history was claimed together with the appropriation of
Joshua Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA as the property and heritage of the Ndebele.
Mthwakazi proponents declared that:
For our part, for our present generation, this Zimbabwe, and any attempts to
maintain it in any guise in future as a state that includes uMthwakazi, is as
false as it is silly. It is only part of the grand illusion of the whole
Zimbabwe project created in 1980…What we have is their Zimbabwe, of Shonas, and
a fledging state for uMthwakazi which we have called UMR.
One other key contour of Ndebele Diaspora identity was that those that were
in South Africa were finding it very easy to claim Zulu as well as Xhosa
identities. This was due to similarities in language and some elements of common
history and common clan names. It became very difficult for South African police
to distinguish these Ndebele people from South Africans of Nguni origin
particularly. Others, who came from areas like Beitbridge and the southern part
of Gwanda, integrated themselves easily with the Venda and Suthu speaking
communities, again because of close linguistic factors.
Internally ethnicity continued to cause trouble within political parties with
ripple effects on the Diaspora. The split of the MDC into two factions in 2005
immediately polarised supporters of MDC outside the country with many
Ndebele-speaking ones opting for the MDC that was led by Welshman Ncube. This
split affected MDC structures in Britain and South Africa. What became known as
the Welshman Ncube faction was considered to be a Ndebele faction. The
Tsvangirai faction was cast as a Shona faction. This was despite the fact that
both factions retained both Ndebele and Shona supporters and leaders. Bringing
in Arthur Mutambara as a compromise leader of the Bulawayo-based faction did not
prevent its being defined in ethnic terms as a Ndebele faction.
What is not clear though is how the radical Diaspora Ndebele secessionist
politics is impinging on internal Matabeleland politics. Within Matebeleland
there has been a strong support for MDC-T since 2000. The smaller MDC also made
significant inroads into some constituencies during the 2008 harmonised
elections. But ZANU-PF was rejected. The consistent Matebeleland vote for the
opposition is commonly interpreted as a protest vote against ZANU-PF that
authorised the Gukurahundi atrocities. Those voting for the opposition seem to
still believe in territorial nationalism and that with the introduction of
democracy and human rights, there is still possibility of peaceful coexistence
of ethnicities and races.
But gradually the radical Ndebele Diaspora politics is also impinging on
internal regional politics. Such organizations as the pressure group called
Ibhetshu LikaZulu have imbibed radical secessionist ideas to the extent of
trying to make separate celebrations of those people they considered to be
heroes from the region during the Heroes Holidays. In 2009, Ibhetshu LikaZulu
even celebrated such controversial figures as Gwesela and Gayigusu who were
always in the press in the 1980s as notorious dissidents as a Matebele
heroes.
A close look at the politics of Matebeleland, reveals that a number of
community activists and political leaders including the late Governor of
Matebeleland North Welshman Mabhena and former ZANU-PF Politburo member Joshua
Malinga, have complained about Matebeleland’s marginalization since 1980. The
Ndebele people’s complaints about exclusion from the nation-state and domination
by the numerically preponderant Shonas have been ignored by the central state.
As a result, the people of Matebeleland not only continue to feel like second
class citizens of Zimbabwe but also continue to seek alternative ways of
redressing their political and economic grievances, with the younger generations
increasingly calling for violence and secession to redress their plight. Their
feelings of discontentment and frustration with the national politics of the day
have been equally shared by the older generation of leaders.
Matebeleland has also been in the forefront of pushing the agenda of
devolution of power in the recent constitutional outreach programme. But what is
clear is that Matebeleland has successfully banished ZANU-PF from the region
through consistent voting for the opposition since 2000. But ZANU-PF has
consistently tried to use the Unity Accord as their bait to lure the people of
Matabeleland into voting for it forgetting that this unity reminded the Ndebele
of how they were brutalised and forced into being members of ZANU-PF after the
death of thousands of Ndebele-speaking civilians. Joshua Nkomo’s legacy and his
support for national unity were also used by ZANU-PF in its attempts to win
votes in Matabeleland. But ZANU-PF has not been successful.
But a number of political activities have taken place in recent years in
Matebeleland which indicate the increasing political assertiveness of the
Ndebele-speaking people, particularly taking the form of resistance to imposed
ideas from Harare. They quickly saw through how Nkomo’s legacy was being
instrumentally used to capture the Matebeleland constituency. The recent walking
out of the Unity Accord by some high-ranking Matabeleland politicians and the
re-emergence of ZAPU in 2009 under the leadership of Dumiso Dabengwa, has
however added a new dimension and, consequently, there is an observable process
of re-aligning in the politics of ‘re-capturing’ Matebeleland.
The recent repudiation of the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987 by some
high-ranking ZANU PF leaders from Matabeleland, such as Thenjiwe Lesabe, Cyril
Ndebele and Dumiso Dabengwa, and their re-launching of ZAPU in 2009, is not only
a big vote of no confidence in ZANU PF’s nation-building project but also a
reflection of Matebeleland’s continual cry for recognition. The relaunched ZAPU
under the leadership of Dabengwa seeks to reclaim its pre-1963 national
resonance and representativity which it claims ZANU-PF has destroyed through
ethnicisation and racialisation of national politics and development.
Current Matabeleland politics and forthcoming elections
Currently Matabeleland is showing increasingly ethnic and regional dynamics
with ZAPU having been revived and positioning itself to claim its Matebeleland
and Midlands support-base from both MDC political formations. At another level,
ZAPU under the veteran nationalist Dumiso Dabengwa is trying to claim its
pre-1963 national political resonance while at the same time trying to regain
its Matebeleland constituency. ZAPU’s publicity secretary Methuseli Moyo has
been dishing out mixed signals-at one level articulating purely Matebeleland
regional issues and on the other projecting ZAPU as an authentic liberation
movement with strong national credentials poised to replace ZANU-PF from
power.
The Matebeleland region is currently issuing mixed and complex political
signals. These range from a new repertoire of secessionist and irredentist
politics, to electoral unpredictability. The revival of ZAPU and re-organisation
of the MDC under the leadership of Professor Welshman Ncube who, unlike Arthur
Mutambara, is considered a politician from the Matebeleland and Midlands
regions, have the potential to contribute to the intensification of electoral
competition come new elections. There is even possibility of a new regional
coalition being formed including ZAPU and MDC aimed at maximizing electoral
success in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions. Already, some ZAPU officials
have begun imploring the officials of the smaller faction of the Movement for
Democratic Change to ‘surrender the cross’ and join ZAPU before the forthcoming
elections. Some civil society groups have also implored the two parties to unite
so that they could enter the elections as a strong regional force.
There is an incipient ‘political scramble’ for Matebeleland from different
political gladiators with MDC-T fighting to retain its electoral dominance that
it has enjoyed since the split of 2005. Some ZANU PF party heavyweights from the
Matabeleland region whose political grip has waned over the years, have also
made known their intentions to contest and recapture parliamentary seats in the
region in the forthcoming elections. More than any region in the country, this
has raised the spectre of bruising plebiscitary battles. But there are some
young Ndebele-speaking political activists who lump MDC-T together with ZANU-PF
as political formations representing those regions inhabited by dominant
Shona-speaking people rather than Matebeleland. To these young activists, the
people of Matebeleland are just being used to propel MDC-T into power and once
that is done Matabeleland would be forgotten and its marginalization will
continue.
But ZANU-PF too has not given up on making inroads into Matebeleland using
those former ZAPU members who decided to remain in ZANU-PF at the time Dabengwa
revived ZAPU. The politics that has developed around the statue of Nkomo is
revealing. It is also widely believed that the recent Nkomo statue debacle is
part of the continuum of the efforts to recapture Matebeleland using Nkomo’s
legacy and through the symbolism of Nkomo as a form of appeasement. The statue
project was however hit by bad political weather taking the form of opposition
from the surviving Nkomo family members and other members of the Matebeleland
region tired of being recipients of ideas imposed from Harare.
Beginning with the refusal by Welshman Mabhena to be buried at the Heroes
Acre, there is increasing snubbing of directives from ZANU-PF and Harare. When
the other veteran nationalist Thenjiwe Lesabe died, ZANU-PF avoided another snub
by not considering her for heroine status, with Didymus Mutasa of ZANU-PF saying
‘we could not confer on her the national heroine, which was rightful status,
because she was not consistent when she joined ZAPU led by Dabengwa.’ Lesabe had
made it clear before her death that she did not want to be buried at Heroes
Acre. But a third ‘snub’ came soon after. Cornius Nhloko hailing from Silobela
in the Midlands and a former Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA)
intelligence chief died at the age of 63 during the same week of Lesabe’s death.
ZANU-PF conferred him a national hero status but his family indicated that
Nhloko had made it clear that he did not want to be buried at Heroes Acre. These
‘snubs’ reinforce the widespread criticism that National Heroes Acre has
essentially become a ZANU-PF burial ground rather than a national shrine.
The popular view is that the much talked about ‘forthcoming elections’ that
President Mugabe said will be held in 2011, will be the possible decider of the
decade-long presidential challenge between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and
President Robert Mugabe. The Matabeleland strand clearly promises to be brewing
an election within an election. It could as well be the deciding region, either
through its use as a decoy by some parties and/or the division of votes among
multiple parties scrambling for regional support. Matebeleland dynamics are as
equally important to watch as the national focus on the Mugabe-Tsvangirai
duet.
The Matebeleland question has continued to be felt throughout all aspects of
national politics, and opposition parties like MDC and Mavambo have all
struggled to deal with the issue. The MDC split of 2005, for instance, largely
evolved around the question of Matebeleland and how to handle issues of regional
and ethnic representation within the party. Similarly, the split in Mavambo
after its modest performance in the 2008 elections also had a lot to do with
issues of Ndebele people’s ethnic and regional representation within the party
and how the party’s policies dealt with issues of Matebeleland’s historic
marginalization.
The Matebeleland question has continued to loom large in the MDC-T’s current
internal politics, and the party has increasingly come under fire from its
Matebeleland supporters for its alleged insensitivity to the problems of the
region and its failure to come out with clear policies on ethnic power balancing
as well as a concise justice and reconciliation framework that adequately deals
with the Gukurahundi legacy. At the same time, there has also continued
to be simmering ethnic and regional struggles within the Welshman Ncube-led MDC
over how to handle the Matebeleland question. All these problems, in a way,
indicate serious challenges in current approaches towards resolving the
Matebeleland question.
Conclusion
Nowhere throughout Zimbabwe have feelings of exclusion and marginalization
been felt more strongly than in Matebeleland. Since 1980, the ‘Matebeleland
Question’ has continued to project dynamics that speak to the unexplored
legacies of hegemonic politics and violence as modes of governance,
decentralization and devolution of power, linguistic and cultural diversity, and
perceptions and realities of regional marginalization. The failure by the
central state to address all these issues satisfactorily has evoked different
responses from the people on the ground. The responses have included intensified
calls for devolution of power, regional and ethnic fundamentalism as well as
secessionism. Today, Matebeleland has become a theatre of renewed and frenzied
political interest and the centre of a potentially seismic shift. As captured by
The Standard of 15 January 2011: ‘If developments over the past
year are anything to go by, there is every reason to expect the region to play a
leading role in influencing the political direction in Zimbabwe.’
But what is this Matebeleland question? It can be best described as a
multifaceted one. It is historical and political. It is old and new. It is a
national question. Its roots are traceable to the pre-colonial, colonial and
postcolonial periods. It is deeply lodged within the development of the idea of
Zimbabwe itself. It is about nation-building and authentic subjects of the
nation. It is about who is considered a Zimbabwean and who is not. It is about
inclusion of ethnicities into a single nation. It is a challenge to
ethno-nationalism. It is about the style of governance and inclusive
citizenship. It is about fair exercise of power and tolerance of diversity. As
such, its resolution is inevitably about rethinking nation-building, citizenship
and belonging as well as sharing of resources and power configuration. To
resolve it, there is need to re-visit the idea of Zimbabwe and to democratize
it. ZANU-PF messed it up since its emergence in 1963. Its resolution needs
genuine nationalists, not lip-service ones. It reveals the failures of
nation-building. It indicates the limits of coercion as a lever of
nation-building. It points to the limits of ethno-nationalism that masquerades
as territorial nationalism. It cannot therefore be resolved simply by elections
as elections have proven to be more of an ethnic census.
Full references to all sources cited in this paper are available on
our website.
For further information, please contact Selvan Chetty - Deputy
Director, Solidarity Peace Trust
Email: selvan@solidaritypeacetrust.org
Tel: +27 (39) 682 5869
Fax: +27 (39) 682
5869
Address:
Suite 4
3rd Floor
MB Centre
49 Aiken Street
Port Shepstone
4240
Kwazulu-Natal South Coast
Photo: AP
