COMMUNITIES POINT CHAIRMAN’S NEW YEAR MESSAGE: JULIUS SAI MUTYAMBIZI-DEWA
I join others who have sent New Year messages to all of us. Yes, as the year turns again, we have the unique opportunity to look back and face the future. Like every citizen of every country in the world we have hope for the future, yes because we have this belief in ourselves that continues to tell of procrastination where indeed we have to believe that our country will do better. In my line of work I have had the opportunity to meet with many people and many nationalities. One thing I can say about Zimbabweans is the resilience and resourcefulness. We therefore have every reason to continue believing that this resilience and resourcefulness will one day, yes a day into the future, be rewarded. Just like every other Zimbabwean I continue to hope that our payday will not be in the distant future, we hope that the future we envisage is in our generation and that the payday will come with befitting reward and we will be able to leave our children a legacy of respect and dignity. Yet we also have to regard the past in total, not only as a year but as a decade for indeed 2011 will herald the start of a new decade.
Background
I am persuaded to look back at the years gone by and what our country has become. At the turn of the century I was 26years old and a pioneering leader of the then new opposition the Movement for Democratic Change in Chitungwiza Province. I was unmarried and without a child, things have since changed. If anyone who was with the party at that time will be honest enough, politics was unchatted territory and although I personally wished my party well I never thought we would grow to become such a formidable force. In 1999, we had participated in Local Government elections and although we had wanted to win the leadership decided that the party regalia not be used and that candidates were to register as independents rather than MDC. That was a clever decision taken as our candidates risked losing and we correctly feared the fallout from losing. We reasoned that in the past opposition political parties who participated in elections at their inception tended to lose heavily to ZANU PF and once that happened there was no remedial action that could resurrect them. That had been the fate of United Parties and Forum Party of Zimbabwe. So the deficit that we had had to be covered by party cadres and as it turned out the party did not even have financial resources to sponsor its candidates. I ended up sponsoring more than 6 candidates in Chitungwiza alone and a comrade Alexio Musundire [Chairman of Chitungwiza Province MDC led by PM Morgan Tsvangirai] did a wonderful job financing the activities of the party. Worse still not only did we have a financial deficit but we also did not have the personnel. Trust me, MDC, the party that has today become very popular was struggling to fill its portfolios. I was a member of both Chitungwiza Province and Zengeza Constituency and to an extent St Mary's Constituency [I had helped found the three and wouldn't want to see their collapse] not because we were power hungry but there just wasn't any personnel.
To compound the problems the situation in Harare was even worse, with MDC struggling to fill positions there. The Provincial Chairman there was Makuyana who hailed from Chitungwiza and he had wanted me to be the Secretary of the province but I just could not there was too much in my plate but one of our comrades from Chitungwiza Denford Muchenje was also a member of Harare. It was a "no takers MDC". Against that background the performance of the party in the 2000 General Elections surprised many. I am not going to be talking about MDC here, I am going to be talking about Zimbabwe, and Communities Point's role in the past and going forward. Yet the reason why I have talked about MDC is in line with what then became of our country in the past decade and so far I have been able to dispel one of the widely held myths of an MDC that was funded by white capital and that was fuelled by western philosophies. By the way I forgot to say we lost in the local government elections of 1999 winning only 2 wards in Seke, Chipiyo and Chipungu and lost all the other 22 wards then contested.
Post referendum
Yet given all that ZANU PF still managed paranoia after the February Referendum and started a campaign of terror that would forever change the course of politics in Zimbabwe. War Veterans largely led by Joseph Chinotimba started to occupy farms and even ZANU PF leaders and the ZRP voiced concern. Vice President Msika, John Nkomo, Dumiso Dabengwa and ZRP Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri all condemned the violent occupations and ordered war veterans off the farms. Chenjerai Hunzvi, then the National Chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association refused to budge and said that they would only take orders from their patron President Robert Mugabe who was on tour. When the President finally came back to the country he condoned the violent farm invasions and called them peaceful demonstrations and said that no member of the ZRP would be deployed on the farms to stop. ZANU PF had 117 MPs of the elected 120 seats and had they genuinely wanted to take the land without paying a single penny there was nothing that would have stopped them from legislating in that direction rather than take the country on a violent path. The ZANU PF propaganda machinery then started playing part of a clip in which Morgan Tsvangirai is filmed receiving cheques from white Zimbabwean commercial farmers. In that clip in fact Morgan Tsvangirai warns the farmers: "Now you have said we are together, we have to be together because in the past what has stopped you from attending our sports and our independence celebrations?" which to me does not tell of traitor because traitors or puppets wouldn't have told cheque bearing funders that they have not been co-operative enough in the past. I don't know how MDC has failed to use this as a counter to the attacks they receive from ZANU PF but events in the past decade proceeded on the wrong premise that a servile Tsvangirai accepted white bribes in exchange for his soul.
We saw a lot of violence then-after. Even as people such as Chenjerai Hunzvi and Border Gezi, protagonists of election violence during the campaign period publicly denounced violence and called for national healing after the June 2000 Parliamentary Elections, the culture of violence continued unabated. We went to address a rally in Mhondoro around that time, but the way we did it was as if we were an Advance Party or a Reconnaissance Mission in a war zone because it had to be clandestine yet it was an innocent political mission.
As the politics grew bad the economy too did and the fallout was high flight in every resources; capital, human resources, Zimbabwe just lost and a generation was left behind that knew nothing but hate. Those who left Zimbabwe settled in other countries and for all purposes most of them became second class citizens. The 2002 Presidential Elections was mismanaged and the decision by the Government to close election observers to the EU and other western countries, though a legitimate sovereign decision as the west simply does not have the automatic right to monitor elections, it increased the suspicion and for some strange reason the Government of Zimbabwe made the mistake of closing the international community in the 2005 elections. The Director of ZESN Rindai Chifunde, the local network that observed those elections was quoted as saying the elections had been free and fair and there were no huge incidents of violence. Had the international community been allowed to observe those elections probably ZANU PF would have been given the international recognition it required. The mother of all mistakes was the continued perpetuation of the violence by the government in Operation Murambatsvina.
That culture of violence was seen in 2007 when repression was used against political and civic leaders with the 2007 public assault and humiliation of Morgan Tsvangirayi, Tendai Biti and Lovemore Madhuku and the barbaric assaults on defenceless women such as Sekai Holland, Lucia Matibenga, Grace Kwinjeh, Jane Williams, Magodonga and others being a permanent scar on our collective consciences. Needless to say the wanton destruction and unwarranted deaths in 2008 still testify this endless barbarism being perpetuated mainly by or for the benefit of one party ZANU PF.
The GNU
There can be no doubt that the GNU has managed to stabilise things in Zimbabwe both economically and politically. Yet we should remember that Zimbabwe is not growing both economically and politically but we are recovering, so bad had the economy become that even a half percentage growth in our GDP is an act of genius by the person in charge. And there are certain issues that are yet to be settled which make elections in Zimbabwe unpalatable. The environment remains not conducive for elections and. we personally seek the advent of a new era and that will be heralded by a new constitution in the first place.
Doing things differently
Zimbabwe must learn to do things differently. At Communities Point I have introduced a campaign that we called No Reconciliation Without Justice. This was promulgated by the acceptance by the team of that campaign and where others have tended to talk about the post-2008 Elections Violence we have been adamant that any real and meaningful accountability has to start with the injustices and atrocities that were committed during the UDI era by Ian Smith. We rejected that such issues be negated and we rejected that Gukurahundi should be swept under the carpet. We did not join others who said the Rhodesia Era Army Commander Peter Walls was a good soldier. We believe Peter Walls and Ian Smith died war criminals and we still maintain that is so as they also acted against 2 important United Nations Security Council Resolutions. I have personally been called a "kaffir" [and to think we were in 2010] for that but I have the resilience to continue. ZANU PF calls me names and UDI protagonists call me names together with some of my own colleagues in MDC so I personally take those as badges of honour. We have to believe in justice as the basis of our true freedom and the trial medium for every wrongs that were committed in Zimbabwe will put the country on a true path to recovery. The general guilt of every white person for atrocities committed on blacks in Zimbabwe is a myth, the general guilt of every soldier for Gukurahundi is a myth, the general guilt of ZANU PF and War Veterans for atrocities against farmers and members of the MDC and other opponents of ZANU PF is a myth. Yet we remain locked in uncertainties and refusing ourselves a fresh start. People need to know what they forgave in 1980, people need to know what "constitutes acts of madness" that happened in the 1980s in Matabeleland and people need to know who assaulted Tsvangirai, Holland, Kwinjeh, Biti, Madhuku, Matibenga etc and who killed Machiridza, Ndira, Nabanyama etc. There has to be a closure on everything and we have failed to do so. We are not guaranteeing a safe future and we cannot safely say Zimbabwe is not under threat of a civil war. Those who died left behind relatives and orphans and as long as they don't know what happened, our country is tension filled and it is a time bomb just waiting to explode.
As we approach 2011, a new decade, I urge us to approach it with a new way of thinking. On behalf of Communities Point I urge Transparency, Accountability, Trust, Respect and Equality. "Perseverance plus Come On!"
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Contacts: mutyambizidewa@yahoo.co.uk or 07529705413 or 07401182271
