Who are the real tribalists?

Who are the real tribalists?

• Geoffrey Nyarota: Making political capital out of a national tragedy

• Kuthula Matshazi: It's not fiction, Ndebeles are marginalised

• Khanyisela Moyo: Ndebele minority needs constitutional protection

• Sam Sipepa Nkomo: A case for provincialisation in Zimbabwe

• Kevin Eagle and Gregory Stanton: Genocide in Zimbabwe

• Lance Guma: Mkhwananzi's mix of sense and non-sense

• George Mkhwananzi: Ndebeles and Zimbabwe national leadership

• Lance Guma: Lessons drenched in blood

• Black murder, white murder

• Dumisani Zifa Ndlovu: 'Mnangagwa has Matabele blood on his hands'

• Mnangagwa, Dabengwa clash over Mat massacres

• Mugabe faces class lawsuit over massacres

• Honour of journalist who first exposed Mat killings

By Jonathan Maphenduka
(This article was published under name Jonathan Moyo in the Financial Gazette's print version)

IT is difficult when one is a member of a country divided by tribes to be dispassionate when dealing with issues of tribalism.

A dispassionate disposition is not a gift that belongs to every scribe, with journalists often hard put to observe this cardinal law of the fourth estate.
People often make sarcastic statements at the expense of each to conceal their tribal motivation.

They often find themselves unable to resist the urge to pass subtle tribal messages, even those in positions of authority and great influence.

I will try to be as much dispassionate as is humanely possible under the circumstances.

There is a popular but fallacious belief that the people of the region of Matabeleland are tribalists because Joshua Nkomo was reduced by tribal forces to represent one tribe, as opposed to a national unit.

It follows, therefore, according to this school of thought, that his followers became a tribal clique, if one may borrow a tired cliché.

Those who by tribally motivated calculations assert a tribal ascendancy in the political arena conveniently forget recorded history about the role he and his followers played beyond tribal lines, and often indulge in downright deception.
It is a popular pastime to attack him and his tribe to keep together the motley of allied tribes in their own group.

They are not only content to do that, but have also been known to dramatise tragedies in our history, like the legend that Nguni people in past generations drowned their Shona victims in the Chirodziva Pool in the Chinhoyi Cave, to fan tribal hatred.

That no one has protested the Chirodziva drama on national television for years is an indictment of the perpetrators. They choose to omit mention of the Gukurahundi atrocities in Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces, where Ndebele-speaking people could be found.

This historical background is necessary to understand and appreciate the true facts of what will follow in this narration.

These same people, in their rank hypocrisy, forget that these tactics help only to fan tribal hatred where people should use their tongues to promote nation-building.

I must not aberrate away from the topic that Nkomo allegedly represented a tribe and that he left a legacy to be carried forward, when the true fact is that the other tribes in the embryonic nationalist movement in the 1960s deserted him, ostensibly to find a better leader.

This act alone destroyed for all time the only national movement that had united the people of Zimbabwe beyond our wildest dreams.

The current professors of national unity, with all the goodwill in the world, can never hope to achieve and reach heights in nation-building that Nkomo had reached before the other tribes in the movement, impelled by a deeply rooted desire to build tribal castles, stormed out.

But the myth that Nkomo became a tribal leader while Robert Mugabe and his tribal co-conspirators became leaders of a national movement must be exploded in the interest of national survival.

Also, the popular fallacy that the people of Matabeleland abandoned their national outlook when tribalists from other ethnic groups reduced him to the level of tribal leader cannot be backed up by facts, and history must be read in its correct context.

This demands the study of both the Ndebeles’ contribution to African nationalism in Zimbabwe and their post-independence role in the exercise of national cohesion.

Those who care to examine this history will find overwhelming evidence of true facts that contradict the labels of tribalism among the people of the region.
Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) should be the first to set the record right.

Those who delivered all but two constituencies to the MDC in 2000 are now being accused of being tribalists for questioning Tsvangirai`s flagrant disregard of the party’s constitution because he is assured of support from most of the MDC membership.

This is an extremely dangerous development in a party that professes to uphold constitutional rule. That this attitude is buttressed by tribalism is beyond any doubt.

Long before Nkomo died in 1999 , his followers in ZANU PF had long begun a process of withdrawing their wholehearted support from him and the party because of a unity accord they saw as a betrayal of their best interest in the aftermath of the atrocities in the region and the Midlands in 1980.

This withdrawal was clearly demonstrated in their apathy in all elections that followed the accord.

The gradual withdrawal reached its climax when they threw their lot behind the MDC, led by Tsvangirai, in the first election after Nkomo’s death.

That the people gave their support to a total stranger from another region of the country speaks volumes.

A year earlier they had joined their compatriots from other regions in rejecting, unwisely we are told, the government’s constitutional proposals.

Another important point to remember is the fact that the people shunned Paul Siwela’s ZAPU, formed to capitalise on the vacuum left by PF ZAPU’s “swallowing” by ZANU PF.

If the charges of tribalism on their part are based on fact, why did they shun Siwela’s party and, instead, voted for the MDC and continue doing so up to this day?

This whole question of tribalism, after all, is well-documented for posterity in the history nationalism in Zimbabwe, which goes far beyond the emergence of the MDC.

It became a reality of political life in 1963 with the formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), a breakaway movement from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) .

ZANU’s first leader, Ndabaningi Sithole, later became a victim of the same tribally motivated conspiracies that Nkomo had earlier experienced.

It has been claimed that the founding of ZANU was dictated by a need to find a better leader to take the country to independence, and not by tribalism.

But did the better leader have to be found by destroying a national movement that had united our people like no other organisation can ever hope to unite them?

And if Sithole was a better leader than Nkomo, what did he do to deserve expulsion and replacement by a man of another tribe?

All manner of reasons have been advanced, except tribalism.

The breakaway from ZAPU was the first shattering episode in our national dreams.

The next was the announcement by Mugabe, on the eve of the first independence elections in 1980, that the patriotic front partners were to fight elections separately.

Although Nkomo’s ZAPU was later invited to join a government of national unity, this arrangement lasted only two years before Nkomo and his party were given marching orders, to face accusations of involvement in subversive activities.

So much for the label of tribalism against the people of Matabeleland.
This article was originally published in the Financial Gazette
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