Bulawayo residents must boycott VP Mphoko meeting

By Nomazulu Thata

Dear Mthwakazi ka Nadaba, ONdlela Zimhlophe :Bulawayo omuhle, othandekayo,

Ma rezindents ese eku Bulawayo, ndinokumbira ma serious: lets boycott this meeting!

Bantu bakithi, please do not be fooled by the nomination of Phelekezela Mphoko as VP and claims he represents abantu baka Mthwakazi othandekayo.

He has invited you to come and shake hands in two distinct places in Bulawayo City: Davis Hall at 11:00 am and 16:00 pm on Saturday the 24^th of January. He will be at Masotsha Secondary School, Magwegwe North at 9:00 am and Mpopoma African Methodist Church (Topiya) at 2:00 pm on Sunday.

The former CIO Phelekezela Mphoko will be shaking his hands full of blood with you, the blood he shed with the Zanu’s CIO in the early Gukurahundi atrocities of the 1980s. Please make sure you do not go to symbolize a none event with this fugitive.

The former CIO’s CV is silent about the time he spent in the systematic killings of the people of Matebeleland and Midlands in the early independence years.

It is for this reason that because he was actively a CIO agent: he has been handsomely remunerated to be the VP and force fed on us to accept the bare insult from the Zanu regime. Is there still anything worse than this insult? The people of Mathebeleland and Midlands have to bear this all the time and in silence of fear.

This person came to the VP position to eat with his family, he has empty plans for our people, he never had plans for us ever since independence. He is a praise singer of Robert Mugabe and his genocide architects.

Please Mthwakazi othandekayo, we have suffered enough of death squads during Gugurahundi genocide, marginalization in every form of development in Matebeleland and Midlands, insults from this government of Zanu PF.

Let’s not accept crumbs falling from Mphoko’s table. We cannot take these insults anymore. Alone his position as VP is a direct insult to the people of Matebeleland and Midlands.

Just in case you have forgotten dear Bulawayo residents: this is what happened to the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands at the hands of CIO, and Mphoko was part of that killer machinery: CIO.

They burnt victims alive, forcing villagers to dig their own graves and bury them alive, trucking and burying victims alive in mine shafts, the use of any object to break the victims skull, parading victims and shooting them before a forced audience, which is then butchered in similar fashion in turn Lining victims in a single line, one behind the other facing one direction, and firing gunshots at the back of one victim’s head so that victims are killed simultaneously with a single bullet, torturing victims brutally and slowly until they died, forcing victims to lie down on their backs staring into the sun and denying them water and food, Amputating victims hands and legs with axes and other bayonets to see how the fetus of a Ndebele so-called dissident looked like in its mother’s womb and then watching these women bleed to death., starving of victims of food and water until they died in various notorious detention camps and also under the imposed chilling curfew which closed down shops and restricted virtually all movement.

Kidnappings and disappearances where people were taken from their homes from the streets, from schools and offices, from buses and trains and, also taken while grazing their livestock in the forests, and from many other places and were never seen alive or dead again, gang raping of women and girls was the order of the day.

I have received threats from the VP in the form of an email, telling me I peddled liars against him. I am telling him that I do not fear his threats at all. I will continue to speak for those dead citizens and relatives of mine until justice is done to them and all those who died in genocide acts all have decent burials.

Here is my reply to threats he sent by email;

“Mr. Mphoko, I have read all my contributions I sent to the social media, I have found none that suggests I peddled liars about you. Are you sure you understand the word “liars?” My articles have been critiquing already what is said in the media. To say I lied, is shallow indeed.

When you said “Mugabe is a fountain of wisdom, my first reaction was, where did that wisdom come from, a man who orchestrated genocide and more than 20,000 people from Mathebeleland and Midlands perished. He killed again in year 2000 in the notorious farm invasions, so many people perished.

There was a notorious code: Murambatsvina that left 570,000 people of all races homeless and thousands of people died in that operation. Where did that fountain of wisdom come from such a brutal killer?

When he realized that he was losing the elections in 2008, he unleashed violence and thousands of people of all tribes lost lives in the code, mavotera papi? Now you tell us we are not supposed to ask where the wisdom of Mugabe should have come from. According to you I am already peddling liars just by asking pertinent questions.

“Now you have taken over the development in Mathebeleland, I gave you the benefit of the doubt how you are going to take Bulawayo to dizzy heights. Was it wrong to say that? You are telling us the first project will be to make Mathebeleland South a “Banana Republic,” I am not supposed to question who does benefit from that and how many are going to benefit from the banana project. Are banana projects a priority for all the dire straits Mathebeleland is currently facing?”

“Stop intimidating me Mr. Mphoko. I can never get intimidated. I can get killed, CIO is a killer organization but fear is redundant in me. All I need to do is to think how those citizens died under Zanu machinery during the Gugurahundi atrocities, then fear goes away completely.

It is certainly the tactics of the CIO to threaten and intimidate people and cow them to submission. If my parents were afraid they would not have fought the Smith regime and win the independence at last. Remember, too, how many times my mother went to prison, Central High Prison in Chikurubi.

She came out unbowed, she was a brave woman. I am saying, by those values and principles of bravery that my mother exemplified, I got very much inspired by her courage. Hence I will fight for the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands who perished in the Gugurahundi brutal killings of the 1980 – 1987. They are silent voices who are crying for a decent burial, their bones are in shallow graves and mine shafts.”

“It is a slap on our faces to have you there in Mathebeleland as VP. You need to know that we have been slapped several times the past 20 months: the elections of 2013, who would vote for Zanu in Mathebeleland and Midlands.

“We are slapped again by Robert Mugabe’s wife by coming to Mathebeleland to insult us and we are supposed to be silent about it, come on you are not serious. You were in the struggle Mr. Mphoko you know we deserve better than the wasted 34 year of incompetent Zanu leadership. It should never be the politics of the stomach all the time. There are ethics to uphold too.”

I ask you the people of all ethnic groups and races in Bulawayo to boycott these meetings with Mr. Mphoko this coming weekend. You have realized now that be it Shona or Ndebele, we have now suffered in equal measure. There is nothing to lose if you boycotted to shake hands with him at the same time think about the people who perished because of the CIO operations including Mphoko as one of them CIOs.

The last respect that we still have lets hold on to it and give this man a message that we cannot continue to sustain his stomach, we cannot be a bashing block that just keep on turning the second chick for another clap. Do not allow him to use and abuse us the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands any longer.

Enough is enough! Next time we meet in the streets of Bulawayo dancing toi toi, the language they will understand!

Nomazulu Thata