The Sunday News
Michael Mhlanga
At 9am on 1 July 1999, announcing the demise of the giant in a live radio and television broadcast, Robert Mugabe, then President of Zimbabwe said:
“I regret to announce to you the passing away early this morning of our beloved compatriot and Vice-President of Zimbabwe, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, at Parirenyatwa Hospital.
For quite some time, the Vice-President had been unwell and had been in and out of hospital. Government made arrangements for him to receive medical attention both in and out of the country, and for quite some time, he was able to be assisted and his condition appeared to improve.
However, early this year, his condition progressively deteriorated, and in fact took a turn for the worse at the beginning of this past month when he had to be admitted and placed under permanent medical attention, first in Bulawayo and later in Harare.
Today, at about 01:30 hours, Nkomo could not hold any longer and finally he succumbed . . .”
A drab atmosphere rapt Zimbabwe, but above everything else, it is those who identified with UMdala Wethu at a closer contiguity of a mutual ethnic background, liberation melee experiences, both triumph and adversities who suppurated the most.
I was young by then, but I still re-picture the plopped out eyes of my father, the scuffling and falling pots in the kitchen by my mother who was cooking and the succeeding gravity across Bulawayo from that morning until his entombment.
Many may argue that Nkomo’s departure drowned the whole nation alike, but I want to assure you that it is not true. Even if he was the Vice-President of the country, he was a father to a family and a family member to those he shared a folkloric identity with.
The raptures of his passing were bled more by those people, and they always feel the agony whenever his name is heaved in disdain.
Dear reader, I write this article after reminiscing on that blue day when Robert Mugabe made that broadcast. The death of Nkomo was a funeral in my home and I was equally shaken, not because I knew a lot about him then, but because I had never seen my father, a man, a soldier for that matter, so visibly torn down, worse by the death of not a family member (at least that I did not know of).
It is that whipped down face of a military man that I imported the effects of Nkomo in my people’s lives such that whenever someone carries his name in vain, I am frustrated beyond measure. Anyway, I choose to be a big and sober man now, I shall control my temper so that I soberly share with you daughters and sons of Mafukufuku ka Mafuyana owafukuza wafulela ngembabazane.
We see them.
Many of them come in expensive cars, wearing designer suits imported from Italy, together with shoes whose soles have never savoured the grout of the poor soil. They are those whose political life is hanging by a thread, scared of a scissors to snip and they fall. They have been rejected by their people and desperation is their second name. They are so hungry that they do not worry being anthropophagi.
Many graves are to their names and they leave a stream of orphans and widows on their way to the top.
We see them yearly and seasonally when something is beginning to miss on their political menu.
They create enemies from their friends. We do not see them again, but we see them again when they are hungry.
They are Steve Dyers’s Thabisos, for they only come back when they are hungry. It is they who in the night scorn and laugh about our suffering and by day act hungry in full stomachs, cheeks gleaming with their pouted oily lips.
They forget that we grow every year and we are not kids anymore. We are not hushed by cheap talk of “daddy will take you on a train”. We are not shushed by reminding us of our departed father. We will not sit and loathe in silence when they make a mockery of us. Tell them, we are sick and tired of being made chumps.
When they stand lanky in those ornate tents, in our stadia, ululated by the countless they imported, they confidently spurt lies, forgetting that the noise is not made by us. Us whom they need.
Our silence when theirs make noise should spell nous to them. Idolising Joshua, reverbing what they think we want to hear. They know not that we do not only listen, but we also question and react.
They utter his name only when they are here in Bulawayo, but claim nationalisation of the icon. If he was national as they claim, why don’t they exclaim his name in Guruve, Mbire, Buhera, and Mandava as well? Are they not part of the national geography? When they don’t speak of him there, is he no longer national?, Ahhh! Selective amnesia, or is it deliberate forgetting! They are sleek, I see.
We forgave them once
We forgave their mendacities about trains faster than the lightning. We forgave them when they said they will build roads that look like food. We forgave them when they fibbed about White Americans giving them the missing $15 billion.
We forgave them when they battered each other at their father’s funeral. We forgave them when they continued to scuffle for inheritance at their House of harvesting nothing.
We forgave them when they scratched and wiped with their constitution. We forgave them when they barricaded the Third Avenue with boulders fighting for a chair. We forgave them when they bused in thieves who stole from our shops. We forgave them because we thought: with a chronic lying disease, they need a cure.
Go and tell them
But tell them. Tell them that we will not forgive them when they say our father’s name in vain. We will not forgive them when they disparage the sceptre, a symbol of power and family permanency.
The lie was a skewer in the face to the family tradition, the clan’s actuality and a national recollection. Tell them, today, tell them tomorrow, and tell every one of them who will think of coming to Bulawayo that whenever they say they are remembering UMdala Wethu, they dismember the name of the National hero, our father, UMdala Wethu, and the chivalrous son of Zimbahwe.
In their misinformed chants of remembering Nkomo they do not see how they dismember his memory.
Deliberately identifying with Nkomo only when you are in Bulawayo is minionising his legacy. When all of you hungry people come and speak of Nkomo whenever you are here, do you take time to think that Bulawayo and its surroundings has more problems than to be constantly reminded of the fateful ‘7/99’. You feed on many people’s tears, how selfish you are.
Whoever told you that to capture votes in the southern part of the country you have to speak of UMdala Wethu lied to you. My grandmother would tell you that “owakuloyayo sowafa” (whoever bewitched you died).
You are caught in a misinformed frenzy. Do not only think about the people when you need their mercy. Do not think of Nkomo only when you come to the City of Amakhosi lamaKhosikazi. He is National as you say. When you deliberately use his name to get our mercy you slur and deride his legacy. You mock the tears and pale faces of our fathers.
It is always the desperate who quote uMdala Wethu when they come to Bulawayo. It was once Morgan Tsvangirai, then Runaida and now it’s this one who claims that he was offered a sceptre. Aaah!!!
A sceptre! Young man, do you know what being given a man’s sceptre means? It means that you are the father of the house, you are the presider of the clan, a whole nation. Were you aware of the insult you padded on Nkomo’s people?
Have shame! We have forgiven your lies a lot, but we won’t forgive you for insulting a tradition, a legacy and a nation.
Have shame! Tell your colleagues that coming to Bulawayo is not a trip to denigrate a legacy by regionalising it. When you decide to identify with Nkomo, do not make him a village champion, speak of him in Muzarabani, celebrate him in Uzumba and share his memory in kwaGutu.
But above all, stop not telling the truth, Pastor. Yekela amalimi ezansi munt’ kaThixo.
Nkomo is an idea, he is beyond the person you read of in your history books.
Nkomo is a pinnacle of our national conscience. Tell your friends.
In the meantime.
Yikho khona lokhu!!!
