By Everjoice Sibanda
Sometimes you can measure the seriousness of a political party by the quality of its leadership and so you can imagine when ZAPU Europe elected the publicity hungry Barbara Nyagomo as Vice Chair, that basically made some of us conclude that this was a collection of political clowns in the UK.
Nyagomo for the many readers in Zimbabwe who will obviously have never heard of her was the woman who tried to become famous by accusing Girl Child Network founder Betty Makoni of misusing money which her own GCN organisation helped to raise for a girl from Zimbabwe who had a tumour that needed operating in the UK.
Unfortunately for Nyagomo, an alert media picked up on the fact she had fallen out with Betty Makoni, after demanding payment for services rendered as a volunteer. When Makoni rightfully refused to pay her, Nyagomo allegedly used her facebook page to make the accusations of misuse of money.
Many in the Diaspora know Nyagomo as an annoying self-important woman who wants to be involved in everything from fly-by night charities, facebook campaigns and now politics. She even has a Facebook fan page where she expects people to like her, just for what exactly, beats me.
The day she was elected ZAPU Europe Vice Chair, the Zimdiaspora.com website had the outrageous headline ‘Influential, powerful Barbara Nyagomo joins ZAPU’. Of course no serious attempt was made to explain why she is ‘influential’ or even ‘powerful’.
The only flimsy explanation we got was ‘The news of Nyagomo’s joining ZAPU would send shockwaves within ZANU-PF and MDC camps owing to her multitude of followers on internet. When she launched the One Million Organisation, within a few weeks she had more than 10 000 members in her register.’
Is this what is meant to send shockwaves to Zanu PF and the MDC camps, seriously? Whether Admore Tshuma or Peter Nyoni wrote that article, I don’t know, but they need to decide whether they are journalists or ZAPU activists?
Which brings me to another of these self-important people who are said to have sent shockwaves by joining ZAPU and that is UK based ‘lawyer’ Lloyd Msipa. Not long ago he was writing articles in the defence of Zanu PF policies and now he has gone through a ‘Lazarus moment’ and changed to ZAPU.
You see this is the problem with ZAPU as far as I am concerned. Yes there will be people seeking genuine change, but the bulk of these people are seeking a place at the feeding trough. You have people who are not led by principles in their decision making but the exploitation of opportunities to get power and make money.
Dumiso Dabengwa who now leads the party has spent more time in Zanu PF than ZAPU. He has jumped ship only because he has been losing consecutive parliamentary elections to the MDC in his chosen Nkulumane constituency in Bulawayo. This is the politics of frustration and Zimbabweans will not buy into it.
The MDC regional offices in Herbert Chitepo street in Bulawayo were several years ago burnt down at the instigation of Dabengwa when he was still in Zanu PF. Dabengwa even supervised the torture of abducted MDC activists at Magnet House (CIO headquarters in Bulawayo). As Home Affairs Minister he never once spoke out about the violence and torture used by his party to win elections.
This is the same guy who now wants our vote?
Everjoice Sibanda writes from the UK