The Sunday News
Opinion Cont Mhlanga
IF the reversal of the acquisition of Maleme Ranch announced by VP Phelekezela Mphoko last Sunday was an isolated incident in the region, I would have celebrated hands up with the locals at Maleme, but alas it is not. I will only celebrate fully when the Public Service arrogance that is centralised in
Harare by our fellow Zimbabweans is completely reversed and cleansed out of Matabeleland.
Is the VP Phelekezela Mphoko the man to do it?
Zimbabwe’s Public Service arrogance when dealing with Matabeleland is so thick in the air you can feel it when walking the streets or valleys of the region.
How can someone sitting in some high luxurious office in Harare offer a person who is not from the region some farm in Matabeleland without even bothering to go to the farm and getting a full assessment of the land and community in question?
Both the offerer and the offered have never been to the ground and for them it’s a cool and normal way of public administration because they run everybody’s life from Harare. They are Zimbabwe! This attitude must stop. Siyayizonda!
Just last week in my rural village, the headman just arrived with someone he called a Chinese investor and introduced him to young people at our village community centre at Mqoqi. The investor waved a letter at one of the youths running the kiosk informing them that he had been authorised by someone in Harare to come to Kusile Rural District Council, who in turn sent him to our youth centre to cut down a huge tree for his timber samples. This tree was the image of the youth centre used for all sorts of community functions, meetings and gatherings. The village head was not informed nor were the community members informed.
This is the deep level of national administrative arrogance that has become part of Zimbabwe’s way of governance of Matabeleland. Yes the community is up in arms but the 75-year-old tree is gone with someone from China leaving nothing for the youth centre and community.
Going to my village I use the Victoria Falls Road and because it is in Matabeleland all its revenues from its two tollgates are milked everyday and taken to Harare never to return to clear tall grass and trees along that highway.
It takes a season for grass to grow to 1,5m but it takes two to three years for a tree to grow to the same height. Drive along the Victoria Falls Road after reading this article and you will see 1,5m tall tree bushes, half a metre from the tar.
What was a highway is now a thick forest and drivers pay at tollgates to drive in this highway to hell, yet the money is moved by arrogant public service administrators and managers to Harare.
Ask them to publish in this paper how much cash they collect on this road annually and see if it is not enough to buy $5 grass slashers and pay villagers to clear the grass and bushes along the highway. Of course they will not publish it because of their arrogance. They are Hararians and they have no reason to respect people from Matabeleland.
VP Mphoko this has to stop. Linto siyayizonda!
Those in Harare have made it a taboo to give institutional managers based in Matabeleland any operational budgets. Their argument is why give local managers any budgets? To them Matabeleland does not need any developing. Managers at Mhlahlandlela are just stooges who are not allowed by those in Harare to have cash to spend in developing Matabeleland.
They are just runners for the big arrogant chaps in Harare. VP Mphoko this has to change.
Every kilometre you can find up to five police roadblocks and just listen to the official police language at these roadblocks and watch the arrogance. Those in Harare don’t even care whom they deploy to Matabeleland.
In primary schools it’s the same story.
Even in chicken advertising. Haah, VP Mphoko satsha! I know you are the leader of national healing and let me be frank; there is going to be no national healing in Matabeleland unless you totally cleanse Zimbabwe’s public service of this attitude and arrogance.
If as Africans we fail to protect church land after what the churches did for our people’s education and health sector in this country since 1858 in Nyathi, Matabeleland, to this day, then we qualify ourselves to be called “ungrateful black ka…..”.
We must protect church land and its positive activities. We must also protect our national minorities and these include our white Zimbabwean citizens by birth. Their grandparents and parents were born here like all of us and they are all one of us.
They should not be marginalised and disfranchised of their property and livelihood based on the colour of their skin and sins of their forefathers. Show me anyone whose forefathers did not sin against anyone in this country.
A few years ago the ruling party, Zanu-PF, had a wonderful slogan: “People First”. This is the party whose government is responsible for the acquisition of land and the people first slogan must be put to use in public service. Consult the local people first before making any decisions that affect their lives.
Let me end by saying that it is very problematic for indigenous Zimbabweans to be seen to be grabbing land from each other with dramatic stand offs such as the one we have just witnessed at Maleme Ranch.
Let’s avoid such at all costs.
