Respect and preservation of people’s dignity must be central to political systems, and respect for communities’ cultural norms and values is core to representative democratic practice, yet communities in Matabeleland have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented within mainstream socio-political platforms, and these wrong images go on to form policy by which we are governed.
We argue in this blog that the major hindrance to local empowerment are our influential men and women who in their pursuit for power and influence over service to their communities in Matabeleland constantly seek validation from Harare authorities.
In our communities we have individuals and groups who are obsessed with staying in good books with the predominantly ethnic Shona leadership in mainstream politics and will do anything not to upset the status quo.
People cannot be fooled any longer, there is local appreciation that a vibrant, goal-oriented Matabeleland is more important for our empowerment than one that waits around for Harare to validate its existence.
Learning from our past mistakes is important if we are to address the issue of misrepresentation in mainstream politics; first, in a representative democracy, communities must take control of processes to choose local representatives; second stay away from hero worshipping and celebrity politicians; and third, let us not only dream but plan and act or opportunists will run in front to represent their personal power interests over public interests to authorities.
Evidence suggests that some influential personalities within the Matabeleland socio-political sphere are also the biggest threat to the empowerment of the region. These are individuals often with good intentions for their communities but who also see greater opportunities for themselves in the current system, hence they are not particularly keen to changes in the status quo as the rest of community desires.
Already there is a conflict of interest between what the public needs from politics and what these individuals want. Matabeleland desires to maintain its socio-cultural diversity and not be submerged in a political construct that defines them as minor, and meaning nonessential.
Local influence is exploited to assume authority to represent the public, but what happens is that they actively suppress the real message from the same public to Zimbabwean authorities and in the process restrict political messaging to items acceptable to mainstream politics.
Here we are talking of genuinely talented individuals who will use their skills to organise community activities, use their extensive contacts to raise funds for local projects and get things done, but at a high cost to Matabeleland society. While they work very hard, they do so within a very narrow scope ensuring they do not step on the toes of mainstream politics’ interests.
Good as their actions may appear, they do not always come from a good heart, but there are ulterior motives to accrue more power and recognition for themselves, and that requires validation from Harare; their actions are not guided by principle and ethics; but they will do whatever it takes to achieve their goal.
Calling these individuals saboteurs sounds an accurate categorisation because all they do is wilfully take political action that damages morale and undermine the Matabeleland society’s broader interests.
These individuals will use their abundance of resources in organisational skills and influence acquired via many means including through their various good works to infiltrate local positions of authority and then assume the leading role in mediating between the people and state institutions; because they fully understand where power lies and that they stand to lose more from upsetting the state than the communities, they adopt an apologetic stance in which they severely tone down, to an extent of disabling, the real voice of the people in their presentation to the state.
Frequently these individuals present as morally upright, patriotic and market a nationalist tone and behaviour to the people; known or unknown to them, they are a vital resource for the state in that they help suppress the dissenting voice to ensure the local population does not ruffle state feathers but maintains a well-defined course laid down by the government not as desired and driven by local needs; they act as objective people but will unduly criticise and mischaracterise genuine public pushbacks to apparent injustices.
They would like us to think the system in Zimbabwe is broken and must be fixed when the truth is that the system is working as intended and must be destroyed.
Whenever our people have challenged systematic tribalism that has seen imposition of foreign ethnic Shona leaders in Matabeleland communities these influential people would be the first to denounce such action as tribalist and unpatriotic, but ignore the overtly unjust, divisive tribal supremacy tendencies inherent in the mainstream politics leadership; they object to any localisation approach to use of resources falsely labelling it discrimination and unnecessary.
Money and influence must not determine who represents communities but the ability to serve and deliver our message without fear to authorities. We want brave messengers who will deliver an unadulterated public message to the government from the people. A good businessperson will not make an automatic good political leader because the goals of a business are not the same as the goals of governance. While the goal of a business is to maximise profit for a small group of people, the goal of government is to maximise citizen welfare.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 