Matabeleland’s consenting slaves

Slaves who think they are free condemn themselves and generations after them to a whole life of enslavement. Our Matabele brothers who feel free, satisfied and equal within Zimbabwean systems are free to feel so but they should stop their pathetic attempts at sharing their complacency with the rest of the ordinary Matabele citizens who feel the brunt of ZANU PF orchestrated oppression.

Chains of enslavement cannot be rid of by renaming them bracelets, they need to be broken! An occasional stage-managed ride by a slave in a slave master’s horse carriage is neither a sign of the weakening authority of the slave master nor the pending freedom of a slave. A favoured slave is still a slave; a slave who has lost insight of his slave status is not necessarily free.

Freedom means the total removal of all obstacles that stop communities from living their lives in the way they choose; no sane Matabele can genuinely claim to be free in the contemporary Zimbabwe right now.

Matabeleland is no less colonised today than it was before the end of British colonialism in April 1980. We remain marginalised from decision-making processes and by extension real power; we are in fact no closer today to decisions that impact our lives than we ever were during the colonial era.

How long it takes to change our circumstances is purely in our hands; we can choose to turn the other cheek or we can opt to push the limits beyond the absurdities of the tribalism and linked marginalisation in Zimbabwe.

In fighting oppression, Matabeles need to be politically astute and clear in what they want to achieve. It has taken years, but many in Matabeleland have now come to the realisation that Matabeleland bears nothing further than controlled impact in the Zimbabwean mainstream politics carefully choreographed in Harare.

What has maintained ZANU PF’s hold in the region has been the mistaken belief that we could wrestle power from Mashonaland when our focus should be the creation of structures and processes that stimulate and maintain a genuine local power base.

The Matabeleland complacency that has sustained the ZANU PF grip on the region needs to be challenged. Transmitting ZANU PF power is not Matabeleland power or control. Only political creativity will remove us from oppression while vigilance should ensure we keep our focus and secure our freedom.

Choosing our battles wisely will be important; instead of high investment, low returns fight for control of Zimbabwean politics, let us increase capital in making mainstream politics obsolete in Matabeleland; our focus should be on empowering social and political education that presents the past in a comprehensible format to the average person and place everyone in an informed position to query the history being taught in formal education.

Education is an invaluable tool at our disposal to build a high information constituency; we need to deny space to an education system that only conforms to the ethnic Shona biases. Let us actively support local educational infrastructure, content, and take control of what and how our children’s learning and education are shaped.

Freedom is not a privilege but a right. A ‘liberated slave’ is not a free man for as long as his measure of success remains his oppressor. Let us not be fooled by a content non-representative minority of Matabele beneficiaries of a corruptible Zimbabwean system; Matabeleland problems within Zimbabwe are down to discriminatory systems and not local attitude.