(Issues/ indaba matters that pertains to Mthwakazi and Matabeleland people. Izehlakalo eizthinta okumayelana lakithi eMaNdebeleni koNyamakayipheli! Est 05-02-2007! Celebrated our tenth birthday in May 2017. Siyabonga kini lonke Zulu lendaba!
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday denied ever uttering inflammatory statements that could have stoked tensions during the Gukurahundi era, but the denial could yet trigger questions on his role during the 1980s killings.
Mnangagwa said statements attributed to him that dissidents were cockroaches that needed DDT was to exterminate them were total fabrications and that he had never uttered those words.
Mnangagwa was responding to an article in the Southern Eye that quoted David Coltart’s autobiography, saying his lawyers were perusing the book before “considering appropriate action to be taken to address the false and malicious statements”.
However, in newspaper articles that are likely to further embarrass the Vice-President, the Chronicle of March 5, 1983 reported Mnangagwa uttering those exact words.
“Likening the dissidents to cockroaches and bugs, the minister (Mnangagwa) said the bandit menace had reached such epidemic proportion that the government had to bring in DDT (Five Brigade) to get rid of the bandits,” the Chronicle quoted the Vice-President saying at a rally Victoria Falls.
Then Mnangagwa was the Minister of State Security.
The article said the government had two options to deal decisively with the dissidents, with the first being to burn down all the villages “infested with the dissidents and the other was in the Five Brigade. The government chose the latter”.
Mnangagwa has not challenged the statements in the past after they were published in Breaking the silence, a report that lifted the lid on the Gukurahundi killings.
There is outrage in southern parts of Zimbabwe over reports that a former Air Force of Zimbabwe propaganda band composer is seeking to remix and release a Gukurahundi song.
There is outrage in southern parts of Zimbabwe over reports that a former Air Force of Zimbabwe propaganda band composer is seeking to remix and release a Gukurahundi song.
Concerned citizens have petitioned Media, Information and Publicity minister Webster Shamu, in desperate attempts to have the song Amai vaDhikondo be banned from the national airwaves, saying plans to unleash it on the nation came at a time when the nation is trying to heal the wounds of past atrocities.
Rephius Tachi, who composed the song while working under the former 5 Brigade commander, Perence Shiri, is reported to be planning the release in a new 8 track compilation. “It is so outrageous it has to be stopped and condemned by all peace loving Zimbabweans,” said Thamsanqa Zhou, who is spearheading a campaign to stop the song being released.
Amai vaDhikondo was a theme song used by the 5 Brigade during the Gukurahundi massacres in the Midlands and Matabeleland in the 1980s. Victims were forced to sing the song before and during the killings. Independent estimates are that some 20 000 innocent civilian supporters of ZAPU, an opposition party in Zimbabwe were killed at the time.
”For those of us, who are direct and indirect victims of the Gukurahundi, it is shocking that a song that arouses emotions and traumatic memories can be allowed any airplay when all should be focusing on national healing. On behalf of those who hold strong feelings about human rights in Zimbabwe and the Gukurahundi in particular, I urge the Ministry of Media and the Organs for National Healing to order that the song must never be released again.”
“Tachi and the Air Force needs to also apologise to the victims of Gukurahundi for releasing the song in the first place fully aware of what that song symbolised to innocent victims of the Gukurahundi,” reads part of Zhou petition.
President Robert Mugabe and the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo forged a Unity Accord in 1987, which culminated in the end of the political disturbances in the two provinces of Matabeleland and some parts of the Midlands.
Although short of offering an outright apology over the atrocities committed by state security agents in the two provinces, Mugabe has admitted the crimes were due to a regretted period of madness.
Meanwhile Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa caused a storm on Wednesday night when he claimed that Mugabe was not responsible for the Gukurahundi massacres. Chinamasa made the shocking remark at a meeting that had been organised by the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CZiC) to discuss the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Bill.
“I am surprised that we are simplifying complex issues. Let’s take Gukurahundi, once you start a conflict it feeds on itself, it achieves and assumes a life of its own. So the thrust should be to prevent, once it has happened, my dear colleagues and brothers and sisters, once it has happened there is no one, anymore who can be responsible for what happens.
“It has happened in our colonial period, it has happened even before the colonial times. if there is a crisis there is no way anyone can turn to be in control, so words like president commandeered this or that are just reckless statements. No one ordered the killing of anyone it was a national crisis,” said Chinamasa to huge growls of disapproval from the audience which was made up of civic society players, political party activists and police detectives who meticulous took notes.
Chinamasa is the latest in a long line of Zanu (PF) ministers who have sought to trivialise and absolve Mugabe from the Gukurahundi massacres.
Irene Petras, the Director of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human rights (ZLHR), urged Zimbabweans to embrace the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Bill because it will help prevent future violence in the country.
“We have to celebrate the human rights commission; we have a number of other commissions that have failed. We also know the Media Commission even the Electoral Commission, the Human Rights Commission is a brand new body which holds promise because it hasn’t had any other baggage like what those other constitutional commissions has,” said Petras.
“We need to make sure that we put pressure so that the commission is properly resourced and is independent. We should not be sidelined by some of the issues that might cause us to reject the human rights commission which can help prevent future conflict in our country when it comes to elections. There is a crisis in this country and the crisis we have is the crisis of impunity.”
Some members of the civic society feel the cut-off date of February 2009 is not ideal because this means letting perpetrators of the Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina and 2008 post electoral violence off the hook.
Okay Machisa, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition chairperson, said the instigators of violence in the country were known and they should simply be arrested and that has nothing to do with the human rights commission.“The people of Zimbabwe will not forget the crimes of the past, the power of the people is amazing, you can’t forget the people. The perpetrators of violence are known, why should they not be arrested, why should we wait for the human rights commission bill to pass. People want justice these people must just be arrested,” said Machisa.
Douglas Mwonzora, the MDC spokesperson said: “We must have an instrument that deals with the future and the past. We know that human rights abuses in this country are not ending, that’s why we are saying let’s deal with human rights abuses now and in the future. Those who committed murder in 1980, 2008 are still guilty of murder.”
Nqobani Moyo, the smaller MDC party’s spokesperson, told the meeting that it was difficult to have the commission investigating human rights crimes in retrospect because the architects of the crimes are still in power.
“You cannot put in place a law that is supposed to investigate the people who are holding the keys of power,” said Moyo. “Let’s be practical and be sincere to our past and our future it was impossible to apply the law going backwards now. Let’s secure the past and fight the fight for the future.” Radio VOP
The 19 were informed of their fate at a Provincial Co-ordinating Committee meeting which was characterised by violent skirmishes at the end of the meeting with party youths wanting to manhandle the suspended lot accusing them of selling out to the Dr Joice Mujuru-led Zimbabwe People First.
Besides Senator Masuku others suspended were members of the National Consultative Assembly Molly Mpofu, Fidelia Maphosa, Oppah Ncube and Eliphas Tshuma.
Others were Christopher Sibanda, (Provincial Secretary for Information), Charles Ndlovu (Secretary for Environment and Tourism), Mlungisi Moyo, (Secretary for Indigenisation) and Rejoice Sibanda (Deputy Provincial chairlady Women’s league).
Additional party members who were also shown the exit door are Rose Kandiero (Secretary for Gender), Kevin Mudzidziwa,(Secretary for Economic Affairs), Miriam Moyo (Secretary for Legal Affairs), Siwinile Ncube (Secretary for Education), Garikai Zonde (Deputy Secretary for Economic Affairs Youth League), Victor Mpofu (Secretary for Transport), Caleb Sengu (Deputy Secretary for Education), Douglas Gangaidze, Shorai Sende and Blackwell Bulukutu.
After the suspensions were announced Mpofu was overheard challenging a member of the party’s youth league to come outside the party’s provincial headquarters.
“Buya lapha Maqhawe (Sibanda) akulalutho ongangenza lona wena mntwana (come here Maqhawe there is nothing you can do to me you boy),” she said as other party youths were charging towards her and other suspended members.
Confirming the suspensions, the provincial chairperson, Dennis Ndlovu said this was not a war or a move to target certain individuals within the party but was a means of cleaning the party from within and defending it from anything that could threaten its unity.
He said there was a possibility that the figure of suspended members would either increase or decrease as they were still trying to establish the people who attended the war veterans meeting in Entumbane.
“As a province we are not targeting anybody but people are targeting themselves. As party members we should be in a position to defend the party, therefore as a provincial chairperson I can’t just sit back while my own members attend an illegal meeting addressed by someone who was expelled by the party. We are not blaming them for attending but we are saying that if they were sincere they should have defended the party at that said meeting,” said Ndlovu.
On the suspension of Senator Masuku, Ndlovu said while she was a member of the National Consultative Assembly she was still a member of the province hence they still could suspend her, the only difference being that the final verdict would come from the party’s national disciplinary committee.
“No one is bigger than the party, if you do something that we feel is against the principles then you are subject to appear before a disciplinary committee, a crime is a crime hence Cde Masuku cannot be exempted. What will happen now is that starting Monday (tomorrow) we will start the disciplinary proceedings because we do not want to drag this issue for a long period.
“Those on the list can then have a chance to defend themselves and it is now up to them to prove whether or not they were part of the meeting or not, if they were then I am sorry but we cannot allow ourselves to associate with such people,” said the provincial chairperson.
He called on the province to be patient as they tried to build the party and ensure that they grow their membership. In the said meeting that was held in the city recently, Mutsvangwa invited former war veterans’ leader Sibanda who used the invitation to urge war veterans “not to be used”. Sunday New
Reminiscing last week about the good old days, we brought to mind a plethora of exciting memories of Bulawayo. For instance, do you remember the Palm Grove which then became the Mayfair opposite the City Hall in Fife Street ? And of course those Grey Street Cowboys will recall with fond memories the Trocadero which is where Hopleys is now, those irrepressible Harley freaks
used to race from the Bon Journee to the Trocadero via the High Court I believe.
Bulawayo produced a variety of rather famous personages out of the Grey Street Cowboys - remember Gary Hocking, John Love, John Muldoon and Graham Bishop, some still alive and kicking ( with quite as much gusto I believe) still right here in dear old Bullies. One of the most endearing landmarks of Bulawayo used to be the wretched humps over the storm water drains in the roads. They were wonderful ramps for those same Grey Street cowboys.
Now the name The Casbah will conjure up all sorts of memories I am sure and do you remember the original Granada with old Senor Louis Corbi in constant attendance, which was next to Bakers Inn on Grey and 8th Avenue. And of course do you remember the Calabash Steak House opposite the Bulawayo Centre run by the Dawson family and the Hub which was the first self-service restaurant in the basement below the Carlton Hotel in Abercorn Street where Edgars is now.
Of course there was the favourite coffee shop The Coffee Pot in Kirrie Building which is now known as Bambanani Centre I believe! And there was another tea shop - The Kingfisher which was where Textbook Sales is now in 8th Avenue between Abercorn and Main Streets.
In those days the trains used to chug virtually right though the city streets with the old railway line still visible. It went through the town, down behind Coghlan School , past Wrights Nurseries and BAC, along Park Road and then out on the Salisbury Road. Of course The Grand Hotel was the centre of nocturnal activities with that magnificent sprung dance floor in the MacMurray Hall, but there was another sprung dance floor in the Empire Theatre which is where Bulawayo Health Centre is now in Fort Street and Ninth Avenue and of course there is still a fabulous sprung dance floor at the Rio Hotel which used to, if my memory serves me correctly, be called the Round House!!
The Glass Castle was on the Falls road and that was a favourite venue for dancing and dining. Still in that area, (and here I am relying on the memory of a well known Bulawayo stalwart Clive the mayor of Matsheumhlope) was Lakeside, a favourite Sunday haunt of us all. One could hire rowing boats, or even a power boat from the Kabot family, row to the little island and have a picnic or enjoy the little tea room which served tea and cream scones.
The Hillside Dams also boasted rowing boats and in the olden days the tea room was at the upper dam near the pier. Of course a favourite Sunday recreation spot was Windermere out on the Falls road where one could picnic on the banks of the Umgusa River . One's mind also goes back to landmarks of the "good old days", landmarks like Rhodes Statue which frowned down at one from the centre of the junction at 8th Avenue and Main Street, I believe poor old Cecil is presently lying face down rusting at the back of the museum. Charles Coghlan also graced one of the intersections but none of us (shame on us) could remember which one! Whilst we could all remember where the Gatling Gun stood, proud and fierce outside Asbestos House (now the Art Gallery ) in Main Street , aiming straight down Selborne Avenue from which direction the marauding hordes were expected to attack!
Now I am sure anyone who is old and wrinkly will remember the world famous Matopos Hotel. Legendary because during the Second World War (so my mother told me I hasten to add) the RAF and all service men and women used to congregate here in their droves. One can still see their names written on one of the old crumbling walls. The course of the road was changed to eliminate the famously dangerous hill which overlooked the Matopos Dam, where you used to "lose your tummy " as you went over the brow of the hill!
Most of our cinemas and theatres sadly or happily, depending upon one's bent, are now churches, but we had a wonderful evening, Marie, Clive and I, suitably doused with fine wines, remembering our magnificent past. The Princess Theatre used to be a Roller Skating Rink, The Palace Theatre in Abercorn and Tenth avenue was where Cliff Richard and the Shadows appeared live in Bulawayo and where Elvis Presley's first film was shown - Love Me Tender.
Where the Pizzaghetti is now in Eleventh Avenue and Wilson Street was a boarding house called City Chambers and right opposite that was Gifford Technical School , and do you remember Dorothy and Leo Silver who used to do wonderful photographic portraits. I mean we used to pay a tickey to go to the Bioscope as it was called. My best was on Saturday morning at the Palace Cinema in Abercorn Street where we used to slide up and down the carpeted aisles and swop comics - Beano, dandy, Ritchie Rich and Little Dot!
The girls would also swop "scraps " or what modern children call "swops" which were delightful tiny colourful pictures, some with glitter, I liked those little angels who used to sit on clouds with their chins in their hands !!
Of course I write this epistle with my heart in my mouth that someone might take me to task for errata, but I am safe in the sad certainty that my dearest teacher from Form One at Eveline High School - Paddy Vickery - has now sadly left custodianship of our history and gone to stay with her son somewhere far away.
Remember the Snake Park? Well you might, Marie did and she is a spring chicken compared with the rest of us, that was where the Academy of Music stands today! And do you remember that we used to have two Dairy Dens with that magnificent soft serve ice cream. One is now called the Eskimo Hut but it is in the same location near the Trade Fair, the other used to be down near Verity Amm, Coronation Cottages, in that general area.
The names of Chemists came to mind - Penhales, Smart and Copley, Stobart and Wixley and Bowden's Pharmacy and on another tack completely (no pun intended), there were the famous bars, the Exchange Bar, The Skittle Inn, the Warnborough Night Club, the Carlton Hotel where Truworths is today, the dreaded Stork Club in tenth Avenue Fort Street, the BESL Club in Sixth Avenue and Main Street and the Steering Wheel in the Grand Hotel. Do you remember the famous Bernstein brothers who had a band there and even that stripper with the red hair Rusty someone? And do you remember the Zambesi Cocktail bar?
The Coca Cola Factory was at one time believe it or not, right in the centre of town on Grey Street and 8th Avenue and the Arenel Sweet factory was also right in the centre of town where you could walk past and smell the toffee and the liquorice balls (?) cooking.
Other famous landmarks were the City Hall toilets which are underground on the corner of Fife Street and 8th Avenue , these were spotlessly clean and one was allowed in to spend a whole "Penny". Queens Court was a well known Boarding House for genteel folk and it was on the wall of the Queens Court that the first limpet mine heralding dissent and unrest, was attached and exploded in the seventies.
But we are really going back now when we remember the Pie Carts - Fritz Pickard was the owner of one, they used to be like little caravans with sides that flapped down and one would sit on high stools and eat a delicious variety of goodies like steak rolls and egg and bacon sandwiches. They would be parked right where Jairos Jiri is now in Grey Street and Selborne Avenue. The Sky View Drive In Cinema was of course very dear to us oldies.
All of our babies were born in the Lady Rodwell Maternity home or if you lived in Gwelo, as Heather The Mayoress of Ilanda did, there was the Birchenough Nursing Home. Remember Sister Cuthbertson, Sister Walker and Sister Hickey from the Rodwell? And once those babies were born we would congregate at the Princess Margaret Rose Clinic in Borrow Street where the babes were inoculated and weighed weekly.
Boarders at Townsend and Eveline High schools will remember on Fridays there were weekly deliveries of the much longed for Tuck Boxes from the Railway Coop or Meikles or Haddons filled with items that were tasty delicious and good to eat! And once the boarders left school they went to Fenella Redrup Hostel in Rhodes Street and Sixth Avenue where they were supposed to be back in hostel at the disgustingly late hour of 10 pm!
Sanders was one of the leading department stores with formidable shops assistants who would make sure that they measured every inch of you before allowing you to purchase one of their Maidenform Bras (I dreamed I sailed down the Nile in My Maidenform) and Sanders had the very first Elevator in Bulawayo with the liveried BellHop who would announce in his dismal voice - First Floor Ladies lingerie, schoolwear, undergarments, sportswear!!
And then of course there were those fascinating tubes in Sanders where the shop assistant would put your money and your invoice in and they would shoot up to the accounts department and the change would shoot down the chute and be back in a flash with a receipt! Remember McCullogh and Bothwell, Zippers, Penny's Market where you could actually purchase goods for a penny (and there was a penny embedded in the doorway) and Morrisons exclusive dresses imported from Britain . My Mum bought me the most exquisite dress from Morrisons for our school leavers' dance and it cost a whole ten pounds.
Another of my favourite shops was novelties where you could buy stink bombs and those delightful comics "School Friend" and Girls Own" as well as tiny little real porcelain Walt Disney characters. I had a whole collection of little china dogs from The Lady and The Tramp series which I collected carefully and slowly with my two and six pence weekly pocket money.
All the kids loved Sweetland in Abercorn Street where you could buy fine slices of real coconut dipped in caramel! Still with the shops there was The Economy Bazaar in Camperdown House next to Bancroft Neil which is still there today. Bancrofts kept all Economy Bazaars fireworks in their basement and that same shop burnt down in a glorious blaze in 1961 thanks to those very fireworks.
Still with the old shops there was Alick Stuart on Abercorn and Tenth which was everybody's favourite sports store, Terblanche with that enormous painting on the wall done by Mr May. Goldwasser sold TVs opposite Woolworths. Meikles used to be where their car park is now until some wag burnt it down in 1961. Old man Nimr from Nimr and Chapman dug the first well in Bulawayo where the worm sellers sit outside the City Hall and there were shops like E.W. Tarry, Hollanders, Knight Brothers, the Pioneer Bottle Store and Bowden and Strever.
Bulawayo 's best dressed men went to Stanley 's opposite Haddons where they bought Van Heusen Shirts. They had the word " Stanley 's" etched in brass in the pavement and there were Eric Davis and Jimmy White to make sure one was always fashionably attired. There was a caravan park where Ilanda Gardens are now and Marie tells me in confidence that the Townsend girls would bunk out and hide in the bush there !!
We had lots to do in those days, Speedway was held on Friday nights (or was it Stock Car racing) at the Trade Fair Arena.. The Trade Fair itself was a not to be missed occasion where one bought a hat especially for Trade Fair week to be worn at the Official Opening where Tony Ellman Brown, Clifford Dupont, Senator 'Sam Whaley , Zoe Shearer and Ian Smith were to be hob nobbed with and the event of the year was the Trade Fair Ball !! And for those less inclined to hob nob, there was the battle of The Bands held at the Trade Fair Amphitheatre, the Collection, Short Circuit Guavas, Lincoln, Friendly Persuasion etc
Ah Yes..............those were the Good Old Days !!! Annmarie Grant wrote this article for the Morning Mirror Mags Kriel (circa 2005)
President Jacob Zuma on Thursday raised the prospect of shifting the goalposts in terms of land claims, raising hopes for the Ndebele people to claim some of the land that King Mzilikazi used to own in South Africa. History tells us that between 1827 and 1832, Mzilikazi built himself three military strongholds just north of present day Pretoria which was his land. The largest was Kungwini, situated at the foot of the Wonderboom Mountains on the Apies River. Another was Dinaneni, north of the Hartbeespoort Dam, while the third was Hlahlandlela in the territory of the Fokeng near Rustenburg. By 1829, the total Matabele population numbered about 70, 000.
Zuma re-opened the debate on whether the cut-off date for claims should be 1913 when legislation paving the way for black people to be dispossessed of their land was passed.
"I believe, as a son of a black man, being black, being on my own as always, that you need to shift that cut-off date, but you need to find a reasonable way of addressing the issue, within the Constitution, within the law…," Zuma said as he veered off his prepared annual speech to the National House of Traditional Leaders in Parliament.
The President raised the question of whether the appropriate cut-off date for land claims should not be the 1800's.
"Was a decision to make 1913 the cut-off date correct? Perhaps yes, but was the land taken in 1913?" Zuma asked.
"I believe in percentage wise, the land taken after 1913 is very small, very insignificant than the land that was taken…particularly in 18-something – that's when the biggest chunk of land was taken."
Zuma said currently the land claims process was skewed against South Africa's black populace.
"The very law we have today to claim is lopsided against the black people," he said.
"It's very difficult to prove this land belonged to your ancestors. It is very easy for a land owner to say you don't own the land."
Zuma said land dispossession lay at the heart of the problems of poverty, inequality and unemployment facing millions of South Africans.
"We are dying because of poverty. There are many things that happen to us. Talk to your black intelligentsia to do research and think and innovate how do we deal with this question so we can address poverty. No need to be shy about it," Zuma told the leaders from the country's royal and traditional houses. Online sources.
A SYNOPSIS. By Thabo Mbeki February 22, 2016 Historically, with regard to the Zimbabwe liberation struggle, the ANC had good relations with ZAPU and none with ZANU when it broke away from ZAPU. This was a product of a continuous process in Zimbabwe which had started with the establishment of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress in that country and the membership in the South African ANC of Zimbabwe students and workers while they were studying and working in South Africa. ANC relations with ZANU Despite this history, in 1978 ZANU sent a delegation from Mozambique to Lusaka, led by the late former Vice President of Zimbabwe, Simon Muzenda, to meet the ANC. The delegation had come to propose that the ANC should send Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres to Mozambique to join the units of ZANLA, the ZANU military wing, which were operating along the Limpopo River. The delegation suggested that this would give MK the possibility to infiltrate its cadres and materiel into and through the then Northern Transvaal. Though the political leadership of the ANC warmly supported this proposal, the MK leadership opposed it on the basis that there were already MK cadres embedded in units of ZIPRA, the military wing of ZAPU, which were also operating along the Limpopo. These might end up fighting their comrades in the ZANLA units as there were occasional skirmishes between ZIPRA and ZANLA. Consequently we did not take up the ZANU offer. However we interacted warmly with the ZANU delegates at the 1979 Commonwealth Conference in Lusaka which decided on the Lancaster Conference on Zimbabwe. ANC relations with the Zimbabwe Government On the very day that Zimbabwe achieved its independence in 1980, the President of the ANC, the late O.R. Tambo, met then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe in Salisbury, later Harare, to discuss the possibility of the ANC opening an office in Harare and using Zimbabwe as a base to carry out underground political and military work in South Africa. Prime Minister Mugabe suggested that the ANC should assess whether it could operate from Zimbabwe, given that the new Zimbabwe administration would include many people it would inherit from the Smith regime. These included General Peter Walls who led the Zimbabwe Defence Force and Mr Ken Flower who headed the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). A few weeks thereafter, President Tambo informed Prime Minister Mugabe that we had conducted our on-the-spot assessment within Zimbabwe and thought that we could indeed operate from Zimbabwe despite the presence in various Zimbabwe state organs of people inherited from the Smith regime. Prime Minister Mugabe immediately agreed that we could then operate in Zimbabwe as President Tambo had proposed. I was therefore directed to interact with then Minister of Security, and now Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, to work out all the details for our ‘underground’ work and open representation in Zimbabwe, which was done. The late Chris Hani was then put in charge of our ‘underground’ operations in Zimbabwe, while the late Joe Gqabi, who was later murdered in Harare by agents of the apartheid regime, served as our public Chief Representative, with Geraldine Fraser, now Fraser-Moleketi, as one of his assistants. Zimbabwe land reform and South Africa In 1990 as we began our negotiations to end the system of apartheid, the then Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, engaged President Mugabe to persuade him that the Government of Zimbabwe should not proceed with any programme to implement a radical land reform, given that the Lancaster House Constitutional 10-year prohibition of this had expired. Chief Anyaoku and the Commonwealth Secretariat feared that any radical land redistribution in Zimbabwe at that stage would frighten white South Africa and thus significantly complicate our own process of negotiations. President Mugabe and the Zimbabwe Government agreed to Chief Anyaoku’s suggestion and therefore delayed for almost a decade the needed agrarian reform, which had been a central objective of the political and armed struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe. ANC intervention in Zimbabwe All the foregoing resulted in the establishment of firm fraternal relations between the ANC and now ZANU-PF, which created the possibility for the two organisations to interact with each other openly and frankly. During these years of our interaction and working together with President Mugabe, the Government of Zimbabwe and ZANU-PF, we came to understand that all these were committed to such objectives as improving the lives of the people of Zimbabwe, defending the independence of our countries and advancing Pan Africanist goals. We supported all these objectives. However their achievement required that as a country Zimbabwe should remain a democratic and peaceful country with a growing economy of shared wealth, and a country which would continue to do everything possible to eradicate the legacy of colonialism. When the ANC felt that problems were arising with regard to these objectives, it did what nobody else in the world had done. It prepared and shared a document with ZANU-PF which was a comprehensive critique of developments in Zimbabwe, with suggestions about what ZANU-PF should do to correct what was wrong. Done in 2001, the document was entitled “How Will Zimbabwe Defeat Its Enemies!” It dealt with a whole variety of issues, including the political and economic. Though the then planned ANC/ZANU-PF meeting to discuss the document did not take place, ZANU-PF never raised any objection to the fact that the ANC prepared the document to assist Zimbabwe to overcome some of its challenges. We probably made a mistake when we did not insist that this meeting should be held. The South African Government and the Zimbabwe land question When the war veterans and others began to occupy white-owned farms, we intervened first of all with Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998 to encourage the UK Government to honour the commitment that had been made at Lancaster House in 1979 to give the Government of Zimbabwe the financial means to carry out the required land redistribution in a non-confrontati onal manner. This led to the September 1998 International Donors' Conference on Land Reform and Resettlement held in Harare, which the British Government attended, but whose very positive decisions were not implemented, thanks to the negative attitude adopted by the very same British Government. Unfortunately, contrary to what the Conservative Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major had agreed, Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for International Development, Claire Short, repudiated the commitment to honour the undertaking made at Lancaster House. In a November 1997 letter to Zimbabwe Minister of Agriculture and Land, Kumbirai Kangai, she wrote: “I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know, we were colonised not colonisers.” In a February 22, 2015 article in The Telegraph, the Conservative Party Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, commented about the parlous state of Zimbabwe and said: “But it is vital to recognise that Zimbabwe was not always like this, and did not have to be like this…And Britain played a shameful part in the disaster. Readers will remember the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, by which Margaret Thatcher granted independence to Rhodesia…So it was crucial that the Lancaster House Agreement protected the interests of these white farmers. They could, of course, be bought out, but their land could not be simply seized. There had to be a “willing buyer, willing seller”. The British government agreed to fund the arrangement, compensating the former colonial farmers for land that they gave up… And then in 1997, along came Tony Blair and New Labour, and in a fit of avowed anti-colonialist fervour they unilaterally scrapped the arrangement…It was Labour’s betrayal of the Lancaster House Agreement – driven by political correctness and cowardice – that gave Mugabe the pretext for the despotic (land) confiscations by which he has rewarded his supporters.” Later, Prime Minister Blair told me that the British Governments he led never formally took this decision to repudiate the Lancaster House Agreement and regretted that in the end, his Government had to accept it because Claire Short had succeeded to convince the UK public that it was indeed Government policy! Further to help resolve the conflict on the land question, at some point we also got commitments from three (3) other Governments to finance land acquisition by the Zimbabwe Government which would then distribute the land to those who had started to occupy some farms. The Zimbabwe Government welcomed this initiative. At the suggestion of the then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, the UNDP assumed the responsibility to work with the Zimbabwe Government to implement this land acquisition and redistribution. Unfortunately the UNDP acted in a manner which led to the failure of this initiative. The South African Government and Zimbabwe politics Our Government started to work more intensely with the opposition MDC after the 2000 Zimbabwe Constitutional Referendum, which rejected the Constitution that had been put to the nation by the Government. The MDC approached us to help secure the agreement of ZANU-PF to amend the extant Constitution by including in it various matters, many of which had been included in the Constitution which had been rejected. From then onwards we did our best to encourage ZANU-PF and the MDC to work together to find solutions to the constitutional, political, economic, security and social challenges which faced Zimbabwe. It was exactly this same approach we took which resulted in the conclusion in 2008 of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) by the Zimbabwe political parties. Though we acted as a Facilitator, the fact of the matter is that the GPA was negotiated and elaborated by the three Zimbabwe Political Parties which had been democratically chosen by the people in the 2008 elections. No part of the Agreement was imposed on the Parties by the Facilitator. This approach was informed by our unwavering determination to respect the right of the people of Zimbabwe to determine their future, firmly opposed to any foreign, including South African, intervention to impose solutions on the people of Zimbabwe. Writing in the privately-owned Zimbabwe Independent on September 25 last year, Wilbert Mukori said: “The best chance the nation has had to end Mugabe’s dictatorship was by far during the Government of National Unity (GNU) when all the nation had to do was implement the raft of democratic reforms already agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA). “However, MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and other opposition parties, who were tasked with implementing the reforms, sold out and joined Mugabe’s gravy train. So after four or five years of the GNU, no meaningful reforms were implemented…The people of Zimbabwe failed to recognise the importance of the 2008 GPA reforms and so they did not pressure GNU leaders to implement the reforms.” Regime change in Zimbabwe There were others in the world, led particularly by the UK, who opposed our approach of encouraging the Zimbabweans to decide their future. These preferred regime change – the forcible removal of President Mugabe and his replacement by people approved by the UK and its allies. This is what explained the sustained campaign to condemn us for conducting the so-called ‘quiet diplomacy’. What was wrong with ‘quiet diplomacy’, which led to the adoption of the GPA discussed by Mukori, was that it defended the right of the people of Zimbabwe to determine their future, as opposed to the desire by some in the West to carry out regime change in Zimbabwe and impose their will on the country! In the period preceding the 2002 Zimbabwe Elections, the UK and the US in particular were very keen to effect this regime change and failing which to impose various conditions to shorten the period of any Mugabe Presidency. Our then Minister of Intelligence, Lindiwe Sisulu, had to make a number of trips to London and Washington to engage the UK and US governments on their plans for Zimbabwe, with strict instructions from our Government to resist all plans to impose anything on the people of Zimbabwe, including by military means. Accordingly it was not from hearsay or third parties that we acquired the knowledge about Western plans to overthrow President Mugabe, but directly from what they communicated to a representative of our Government. In its 11 November, 2007 edition, the UK newspaper, the Independent on Sunday, reported that during its interview of Lord Guthrie, former Chief of Defence Staff of the UK armed forces, it learnt that “Astonishingly, the subjects discussed (with Prime Minister Tony Blair) included invading Zimbabwe, “which people were always trying to get me (Guthrie) to look at. My advice was, ‘Hold hard, you’ll make it worse.’” According to John Kampfner in his book, “Blair’s Wars”, Blair once told Claire Short that “if it were down to me, I’d do Zimbabwe as well – that is send troops.” In his Memoir “A Journey”, Blair explained that the reason he could not “get rid of Mugabe” which he “would have loved to” was because “it wasn’t practical (since…the surrounding African nations maintained a lingering support for him and would have opposed any action strenuously)." South Africa and the Zimbabwe elections The 2002 elections in Zimbabwe were observed by two South African Observer Missions among others. One of these was a multi-party Mission deployed by our Parliament, not Government. The second was composed of people seconded by civil society organisations. The Government contributed to this latter Mission by appointing Ambassador Sam Motsuenyane as its leader. With no intervention by Government, these two Observer Missions, like all others, determined that the declared outcome of the elections reflected the will of the people of Zimbabwe. The same thing happened with regard to the 2008 elections which resulted in the MDC (Tsvangirai) gaining 100 House of Assembly seats as opposed to 99 for ZANU-PF and 10 for MDC (Mutambara). None of the two leading Presidential candidates, Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, got the required 50%+1 to emerge as the outright winner. The second round of the Presidential election was marked by a lot of violence, resulting in the withdrawal of Tsvangirai. Our view was that the level of violence had made it impossible for the people of Zimbabwe freely to exercise their right to choose their President. I therefore met President Mugabe in Bulawayo to propose that the election should be called off and conducted afresh in conditions of the total absence of any violence. President Mugabe did not accept our suggestion, arguing that the action we were proposing would be in violation of the Constitution. During the 2013 Harmonised Elections, ZANU-PF won 196 of the House of Assembly seats as opposed to 70 for the MDC (Tsvangirai), and President Mugabe was elected during the first round. All the Observer Missions which actually observed these elections agreed that the announced results ‘reflected the will of the people of Zimbabwe’. Over the years ZAPU, ZANU and, later, ZANU-PF saw it as part of their responsibility to contribute to the victory of our struggle against the apartheid regime and system and the building of the democratic South Africa, and acted accordingly. The ANC took the same position with regard to the struggles of the people of Zimbabwe to defeat colonialism and reconstruct the new Zimbabwe, and acted accordingly. Throughout these years we defended the right of the people of Zimbabwe to determine their destiny, including deciding on who should govern the country. This included resisting all efforts to impose other people’s solutions on Zimbabwe, which, if this had succeeded, would have served as a precursor for a similar intervention in our country! Consciously we took the position that democratic South Africa should at all costs avoid acting as a new home-grown African imperial power which would have given itself the right unilaterally to
The 19 were informed of their fate at a Provincial Co-ordinating Committee meeting which was characterised by violent skirmishes at the end of the meeting with party youths wanting to manhandle the suspended lot accusing them of selling out to the Dr Joice Mujuru-led Zimbabwe People First.
