MPC President sends message ahead of launch
Monday, 15 September 2008 19:33

The President of Mthwakazi Peoples Convention (MPC, Ndabenhle Shamase, has delivered a message ahead of the organisations launch. MPC is an organisation which calls for the secession of Mthwakazi from Zimbabwe.
Message from MPC President
In the next few weeks we will be officially launching and announcing to the world uMthwakazi’s political struggle for independence. These will be a series of public events straddling the globe.
This is a time for MPC to connect formally with the body politic of Mthwakazi. A time for MPC to take over and occupy the political space our political adversaries have occupied and exploited by default for all these years. It is also a time for Mthwakazi to formally take over and own MPC and the political process of independence that MPC is spearheading.
It has been a journey. It still is a journey.
The road ahead is long and tortuous and littered with risks. But we must travel it, and travel it with courage and fortitude. As the saying goes, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. We must draw strength and courage from our forebears who confronted and conquered adversity in a foreboding world that makes ours look like a picnic. Our forebears did not give up when the going was tough. They got tougher. They persevered and established the nation of Mthwakazi we are proud to be today.
Mthwakazi, we are being called upon to do the same today. There are no easy answers or clear paths to follow but together, individually and collectively, we can find the answers, clear the difficult paths and chart a way forward. Let us make our history our torch. How far we go in future will depend on how much of our history we are prepared to take along with us.
We must remember this. What drove our ancestors forward was not fear of what they were running away from, but the promise of what lay ahead. Similarly today, what should drive us today must not be anger, fear or hatred about how we have been treated under Zimbabwe rule but the great promise that lies with us re-establishing ourselves as who we are, who we have always been and who we aspire to be.
Our unfolding journey is therefore not just a journey of risks.
It is primarily a process of creating opportunity and multiplying our chances.
By its very nature, this process is and must be a collective effort from all Mthwakazians. To paraphrase former US president, JF Kennedy, this is not the time to ask what uMthwakazi can do for you but what you can do for Mthwakazi. There is no miracle. This is a process we will have to drive and sacrifice for; it is about plans we will have to put in place and deliberate acts we will have to engage in, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully, but which, sometimes combined with luck and coincidence, but cumulatively, will propel us forward.
In this process, we need to know and understand where we are starting from and where we are going.
First, we are under systematic oppression. We therefore need to break off from the shackles of political oppression fettering us as a start. Our political adversary is an adversary who has already struck pre-emptively. It is an adversary full of political tricks, such as we have seen with the so-called 1987 Unity Accord and the so-called agreement recently signed between Zanu-PF and the MDC, which has kept our adversary in power and prolonged uMthwakazi’s bondage. We will underestimate or take such an adversary for granted at our own peril.
Second, we need to understand the processes by which we will break the shackles of oppression. To this end, we have already stated that our preferred method is the political route.
Lastly, our destination is full independence and sovereignty of Mthwakazians under a free and independent UMR. However, independence is not an end in itself. Our true aim, ultimately, and armed with the political vehicle of UMR, must be to uplift the lot of our people in all spheres of life and give them pride of place as an independent nation among other independent nations of the world. Unless we escape Zimbabwe rule, we cannot modernise or progress.
Mthwakazi; political events and experiences, whether good or tragic, are lessons or warnings. They must make us, not break us. They must shape us, not turn us into victims. Playing victim in modern politics is the ultimate political crime of doing nothing and moaning. It is a sure way of delivering oneself into bondage. To borrow an analogy from the Bible, the oppression of the Israelites by Pharoah in Egypt did not break the Israelites. Instead, it made them. Today, Israel is a beacon of democracy and military prowess in a hostile Middle East world.
This history of Israel is a template of our own.
In similar fashion, Gukurahundi and all the oppression it facilitated, should not break us but make us. Also, we must not read our history under Zimbabwe rule with rancour. We must embrace it as a wake-up call that brought us from the brink of assured disaster and gave us a second chance. Were it not for Gukurahundi, we would by now have long been politically buried, and with our enthusiastic and blind participation at that!
We will ignore Gukurahundi and fail to act politically as a result of it, at our own peril.
MPC has refused to do nothing.
We have committed ourselves not only to doing something but, ultimately, to delivering independence to our people within the shortest time possible and with minimum suffering to the people of Zimbabwe and Mthwakazi.
True, we are facing the mighty power of the state, and yes, a state in the hands of an evil regime and a system that has been built primarily to oppress and keep uMthwakazi in bondage. But have not all oppressed peoples dug themselves out of such political holes by their own bootstraps? Until we stop asking why US and begin asking why NOT us, we will not move in unison, in step. We will play victim when we should seize the initiative and chart our own political destiny.
But Gukurahundi cannot be the driver for independence. Gukurahundi was only the stimulus, the wake-up call. It reminded us that we are not part of Zimbabwe and that those who crafted the Zimbabwe Project and all its other arms, want us eliminated and driven from Zimbabwe, permanently. The driver for our independence is who we are, the nation and people that we are; the nation of Mthwakazi. In this sense, we have the right, like all nations of the world, to determine what we want to be.
MPC is acting.
In a few weeks time when we publicly launch uMthwakazi’s political struggle, we will have entered a point of no return. We want to leave no Mthwakazian behind.
From then on, as Mthwakazians, we must march together, in step, as if in military parade until we achieve our singular goal of independence. For now, that is the goal. Thereafter, as an independent state and people, we will contest for power, argue and quarrel in our own way. We will build the political and constitutional formula to do so. For now, let us stand or fall together, just as our ancestors did and just as we did when confronted with Gukurahundi, and have ever done since.
As a people, we have all it takes, not just to resist and fight tyranny but to be who we are. We have demonstrated it; there is no ambiguity about it. Let us push the process of liberation forward, this time, formally and openly.
We must stay the course, fight the political fight and negotiate robustly when it is time to do so.
I said from inception of MPC, that during my tenure as President of MPC I want to lead a nation of living and not dead heroes. I remain committed to that ideal. I undertake to exercise good political judgement and to have the courage to hold back when things are staked against us and appear a coward, but I will also exercise audacity and daring when the political pay-offs favour us. I owe a duty to Mthwakazi to be politically responsible.
Mthwakazi, I wish to make a further point in relation to the point above.
It is not necessary for any Mthwakazian to be assaulted by Zanu-PF or MDC political thugs, for our cause to be authentic or for any of our people to be called cadres. Indeed, we have said from the beginning that it is a worthless cause for any Mthwakazian to die or be killed in the name of Zanu-PF or MDC. We still stand by that point.
Ours is a cause that requires no labels because it is a cause that uMthwakazi owns. It is a cause underwritten by truth and legitimacy. It requires nothing external or manufactured to legitimise it. Because we are fighting it in the name of and for Mthwakazi we see a collective duty on us all to prevent avoidable harm falling on any of our people. Scars inflicted by our political adversary will not in and of themselves grant greater legitimacy to one Mthwakazian over another. Let those who label, label us together. But we will reward and acknowledge true and deserving heroism earned in the service of Mthwakazi and in furtherance of our cause.
Mthwakazi; I therefore see our political struggle as also primarily entailing the safety and security of our people, as individuals and as a collective. I don’t intend to fall foul of that responsibility.
Mthwakazi; uMthwakazi has a character. The hallmarks of that character are bravery, fairness, justice and ubuntu. We cannot and must not lose our character in the heat of political battle. We have been wronged but that does not mean we must, in the process of righting the wrong, wrong others.
I will therefore urge all Mthwakazians to make this political fight our fight, a Mthwakazi fight. We must not adopt the dirty tactics of our political adversary we all know so well; the world will not know the difference. Let us also refuse to be shaped and given a character by our political enemy, a character that is not only alien to us, but is also the total antithesis of all the values we believe in and stand for as Mthwakazi.
Only a Mthwakazi fight will define us and set us apart as Mthwakazi. Only a Mthwakazian fight will win us a truly Mthwakazi independence and not just another independence by another newly-independent African country. This is our time to show-case to the world what our UMR will be.
Mthwakazi; our political struggle represents an age.
We are making and defining history. The African continent is a sad and tragic story. Africa needs and is ready for renewal, renewal from within, not against the external world as we have been led to believe so far. Africa is ready to challenge sameness and discard barriers that have made Africa stagnate and regress during Africa’s years of independence from colonialism. The experience of Mthwakazi under Zimbabwe rule is not unique. Many nations and peoples across the African continent are suffering under the political yoke of internal colonialism imposed by oppressive African regimes. It was never going to go on forever.
We have been thrust in the middle of that unfolding history. We cannot be in denial.
The anti-colonial mantra, long the rallying cry for oppressive dictatorships of all sorts in Africa, is a tired road that no longer fools anyone. And no one has done a worse disservice to that warped mantra than Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Progressive Africa has awakened to the challenge. We must therefore not be afraid to traverse that road as Mthwakazi. We are not alone. Let us walk it with confidence and with the full assurance that we are pointing the correct way for the rest of Africa.
Mthwakazi, the politics of protest voting will surely sink us but the politics of positive action will not just deliver us from political bondage but deliver uMthwakazi’s independence. We are now in the heart of politics of change, not just in present-day Zimbabwe, but politics of change in Africa as a whole.
I want to conclude my address with a quote from US Senator, Bobby Kennedy, given at a speech at the University of Cape Town in 1996. He said, and I quote:
“Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends off a tiny ripple of hope. And, crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
It is my argument that we cannot fail to see uMthwakazi’s drive for independence in this way and hope to achieve anything meaningful. As long uMthwakazi and other oppressed people in Africa are surrounded by oppressors, our independence will be hollow. Hollow like the independence uMthwakazi thought we had got in 1980.
Mthwakazi; we cannot but take a wide view of this struggle. Our age demands it.
Mthwakazi; we are on the right side of history and history is on our side.
Let us not let ourselves down when the initiative is all ours, and in the process, the rest of a progressive Africa that wishes us well and is prepared to support and stand with us through thick and thin.
I thank you.
Ndabenhle Sibane Shamase
MPC President
From:
The Office of the President
They long declared war against amandebele ka mthwakazi but we dont seem to understand it.after gukurandu they have changed their tactics of killing abantu baka mthwakazi.they are denying our children places in state colleges, iuniversities and jobs in our own cities.they are ion power and they enjoy seeing ndebele women beg for jobs and selling their bodies to shona men to get favours and jobs.
abantu bakithi have become slaves of the shona.We have a long way to go as long as we still want to talk and do nothing.people want action not words.First i think we should opt for autonomy rather than cessession.Once we have autonomy we can work our way upwards.during the rhodesian rule, we had complete independence as abaka mthwakazi.
we had outr own radio and tv station which was then taken over by ZANU in 1980.Madoda asekeleni ukukhuluma and start acting.what happened during the 60s, our leaders stopped talking and sought weapons to fight ther enemy and we are in the same situation now.