The recent events regarding the invasion of Mthwakazi’s important spiritual Njele shrine in Matopo by the so called ZANLA war veterans under the leadership of 25 Shona chiefs from Mugabe’s country is symptomatic of a delusional and misplaced sense of entitlement to anything Mthwakazi by the Shona. The Mthwakazi people are rightfully enraged by these public acts of disrespecting their culture and indeed a demonstration of the lack of ubuntu on the part of our African Shona brothers and sisters. While these people have attempted to show that they have no respect for Mthwakazi people and their culture and customs, they have invariably demonstrated that they have no respect for themselves as Shona people. They are equally demonstrating that they do not deserve any respect from other fellow Africans.
The bedrock or platform for this dangerous form of misplaced entitlement to abuse and disrespect Mthwakazi people at will started with a misplaced entitlement to rape, beat, arrest, displace and physically eliminate Mthwakazi people using the North Korean trained 5th Brigade in the 80s under the instruction of the then Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Over 20 000 people were killed in the 80s due to this misplaced entitlement to rape, beat, arrest, displace and kill them in their thousands. Thousands now live in neighbouring countries and some in western countries due to this misplaced and dangerous sense of entitlement by the Shona to abuse and ethnically cleanse Mthwakazi people in a bid to create a purely Shona state post the existence of Rhodesia.
This misplaced and dangerous form of entitlement to abuse Mthwakazi also extended to an attempt to liquidate Mthwakazi’s languages by forcing every Mthwakazi person left behind in Mthwakazi after the Gukurahundi genocide to speak in the Shona language. Since the 80s there has been a concerted effort to deploy civil servants including teachers and government officials to Mthwakazi who only spoke Shona, a strategy that has always been aimed at forcing Mthwakazi people to speak Shona, not out of their own choice but out of the need to get services that they are rightfully entitled to.
It has been a trend since 1980 that those Mthwakazi people who fail to speak in Shona have always been denied their right to health, education, documents, business opportunities and other services that they rightfully deserve. This misplaced and dangerous sense of entitlement on the part of the Shona to practice tribal hegemony and to force everyone to speak in Shona has led to every ordinary Shona man and Shona woman to expect every Mthwakazi person to speak in Shona as well as a misplaced and mischievous sense of an entitlement to be spoken to in no other language other than Shona in Mthwakazi.
We have observed with great amazement that this misplaced sense of entitlement to abuse Mthwakazi people has also been supported by a very mischievous and concerted effort to distort the authentic presentation of the history of that colonialist created country. Mthwakazi has been bombarded with distorted and fabricated history narrative that says that the 1st war of rebellion in that colonialist created country was carried out in 1896. This war is popularly referred to as the 1st Chimurenga by Zanu PF, ZANLA, MDC-T and its supporters as well as the Shona media mouthpieces. But we all know that the first war that was waged against the imperialist forces under the leadership of Cecil John Rhodes was waged in Mthwakazi in 1893. This is a war that is not recognised and publicly celebrated in that country. We know for a fact that the 1896 war was the 2nd war to be waged against that country by both the Mthwakazi people and the Shona people after King Lobengula had prodded the Shona people into resistance against the colonialists.
It must be noted that the Shona had been colonized by the whites in 1890 and that it took them 6 years to be able to participate in a rebellion war against the colonizers and yet they cry foul that our great and illustrious King sold our Mthwakazi country and their Mashonaland country to the whites. It is their expectation that King Lobengula should have sent his impis to Mashonaland to resist the colonialist invasion of their country in 1890 without them daring to throw a mere stone to the settlers. The settlers raised their flag in Mashonaland in 1890 without any form of resistance from our brothers and sisters. How then King Lobengula sold their country to the whites still amazes many people from Mthwakazi. It is part and parcel of the Shona people externalising their weaknesses as a people to resist invasion to the Mthwakazi people and ducking any form of responsibility for letting the settlers walk into their country without any form of resistance. Mthwakazi people should continue to punch holes in such warped and twisted historical narratives that are being narrated as the authentic history of the post Rhodesian Shona state.
The war of liberation that swept the white settler regime of Ian Douglas Smith out of power was internationalized by a Mthwakazi son, Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo long before Robert Gabriel Mugabe came into nationalist politics. We also know for a fact that the demand for land redistribution in that colonialist created country was started by the Mthwakazi Inqama settlers in Matopo between 1995 and 1998. This genuine demand for land redistribution was later bastardized and corrupted by the Shona and its government through its violent land reclamation exercise led by the ZANLA infamous war veteran Joseph Chinotimba.
The dangerous and misplaced entitlement to abuse Nkomo and his great work was to be demonstrated in the 80’s when he was called the Father of dissidents and a cobra whose head needed to be hunted down and crushed. Nkomo’s status in politics had to be destroyed by all means necessary and those who shared the same ethnic index as his were to be murdered for being Mthwakazi. They were entitled to do so because this was their country, so goes the narrative!
This misplaced and dangerous form of Shona entitlement to the great history of that country allows Zanu PF, the former ZANLA forces, MDC-T and the ordinary Shona man and woman to distort and abuse history to try and punch above their bulimia nervosa weight in terms of the authentic narration of the great history of that colonialist created country. It presents the Shona nation as a victorious nation that fought gallantly to liberate Mugabe’s Mashonaland country and Nkomo’s Mthwakazi country in 1980. The authentic historical narrative of that colonialist created country tells a different historical story to that propagated by Zanu PF and MDC-T. It does punch a lot of holes into the self-inflated Shona historical narrative.
The other dangerous and mischievous sense of entitlement to abuse Mthwakazi and grab all that belongs to Mthwakazi has been carried out during the chaotic and violent land reclamation exercise from white farmers to supposedly all black Africans in that country. While the propaganda machinery was focused on the white person as the enemy of the state during the land reclamation exercise, just like it was once violently focused on the Mthwakazi people as the enemy of the colonialist created state in the 80s, it must be noted that the Mthwakazi people never stopped being perceived as the enemy of post Rhodesian state. The land dispossessions that were directed at the white farmer were equally directed at the Mthwakazi people as part of this grossly misplaced sense of entitlement to Mthwakazi and her resources including land.
Thousands of Shona people flocked to Mthwakazi and grabbed Mthwakazi land and her resources as part of the fulfilment of their dangerous and misplaced entitlement to Mthwakazi at the expense of her people. A number of Mthwakazi’s farms and rich animal conservancies in Hwange areas were grabbed by the Shona elite at the expense of Mthwakazi. Timber in parts of Nkayi and Lupane is being harvested by the Shona at the expense of Mthwakazi all because they have this misplaced and dangerous sense of entitlement to exploit Mthwakazi’s resources at her own expense.
All this misplaced and dangerous sense of entitlement to all things Mthwakazian has been incremental and recently manifested itself in the continuous invasion and the defiling of Mthwakazi holy sites such as the Njelele shrine found in Matopo Hills. The dangerous and misplaced Shona narrative says that Mthwakazi belongs to the Shona. There is this senseless and hollow claim that the Shona are the original inhabitants of Mthwakazi and Mashonaland while evidence points to the contrary. It is this claim that fuels this misplaced and dangerous entitlement to the holy shrines of Mthwakazi such as the Njelele shrine found in the Matopo Hills.
It is no secret that the San people, abaThwa are the original inhabitants of Mthwakazi and Mashonaland. The San people are still found in Tsholotsho areas of Mthwakazi and some in Botswana, having been violently displaced by the Shona during their migration to Southern Africa from the Great Lakes region in central Africa. The San people’s artistic expressions are still found in Matopo Hills painted out on huge rocks and boulders found there. We are yet to discover such artistic expressions on the rocks and boulders of the Matopo Hills that can make the Shona claim to this site credible. It is therefore disingenuous for the Shona people to fuel and feed their sense of entitlement to Mthwakazi on the basis of a mischievous claim of being the original owners of Mthwakazi.
The long and short of it is the indisputable fact that the current owners of Mthwakazi and Mashonaland are in essence all settlers save the San people found in Tsholotsho. The Shona person is a settler just like the white person next to him is a settler. The Mthwakazi person is a settler just like the next Shona person to him is a settler. A settler is a settler! Period! The people with a just claim to the Njelele shrine and a just cause to invade the shrine are the San people and not the Shona!
But then what feeds and fuels these claims and the dangerous and misplaced form of entitlement on the part of the Shona to a great history that they do not possess and to a misplaced sense of entitlement to the land and the shrines in Mthwakazi? What makes this nation have a dangerous and misplaced entitlement to rape, beat, arrest and kill Mthwakazi at will without an expectation of a response from Mthwakazi? Are the people of Mthwakazi guilty of nurturing this dangerous and misplaced form of entitlement on the part of the Shona to do as they please to them without any form of reaction? Could another reason be that the Shona nation is ravaged by poor self-esteem and psychological inferiority and hence these machinations to behave in this ill-disciplined and un-African way? They seem to have a penchant for anarchy and chaos. How long is Mthwakazi going to go along and nurture this dangerous and misplaced form of entitlement by the Shona to rape, arrest, beat, kill, disrespect Mthwakazi’s culture and customs, grab her land and exploit her resources without a reaction?
The time has come for Mthwakazi to regroup and resist as well as challenge all these forms of abuse and exploitation by the Shona system. The resistance should however begin with resisting and challenging our own puppets of the system headquartered in Harare. These puppets are in the shape and form of Prof. Jonathan Moyo, Lovemore Moyo, Simon Khaya Moyo, Gorden Moyo, Thabitha Khumalo, Thokozani Khuphe, John Nkomo, Cain Mathema and all those agents bent on cleaning the boots of their masters day in and day out at the expense of Mthwakazi. It is the very reason that I always argue that Zanu PF and MDC-T are the dangerous political entities that are built on the anti-Mthwakazi template and whose plans are to subjugate and exploit Mthwakazi for eternity!
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai, the leader of MDC-T is as dangerous to Mthwakazi as the leader of Zanu PF and president of the post Rhodesian state, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Our Mthwakazi elements found in Zanu PF are as dangerous to Mthwakazi as the Mthwakazi elements found in MDC-T.
Story by Khumbulani Moyo.
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