A CIVIC organisation Ibhetshu LikaZulu has blasted Zanu PF spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa for blaming Bulawayo mayor David Coltart over lack of development in Zimbabwe’s second largest city.
Ibhetshu LikaZulu said the criticism was meant to discredit Coltart, who is working hard to bring Bulawayo back to its glory days.
Mutsvangwa recently placed the blame for Bulawayo’s stalled development squarely on the shoulders of Coltart, accusing him of prioritising a political agenda over economic progress. In a statement, Ibhetshu LikaZulu secretary-general Mbuso Fuzwayo said the deindustrialisation of Bulawayo was not a product of Coltart’s ceremonial office.
“Chris Mutsvangwa’s attempt to make mayor David Coltart the scapegoat for Zanu PF’s catastrophic failures is laughable. The deindustrialisation of Bulawayo is not a product of Coltart’s ceremonial office or any local government authority. It is the direct result of Zanu PF’s chronic misgovernance, unchecked corruption and contempt for regional development,” Fuzwayo said.
He said the Zanu PF government was struggling to complete the Zambezi Water Project, stripping assets of viable companies, allowing the collapse of the textile sector by flooding the market with cheap and substandard Chinese imports and presiding over the economic ruin of what was once southern Africa’s industrial hub.
“These are facts, not opinions. Zanu PF owns this destruction — it must not now seek scapegoats among those trying to revive a broken city,” he said.
“Mutsvangwa must not mistake his overrated Rambo war credentials and militant posturing for wisdom. Zimbabwe has evolved. The people are wiser and even the most disenfranchised on the streets know that Bulawayo’s problems — and, indeed, Zimbabwe’s national crisis — stem from the heart of Zanu PF.
“This is a party that has mutilated the Constitution, usurped procurement processes to loot national resources and centralised power to feed an insatiable appetite for primitive accumulation.”
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He said Mutsvangwa’s statement that the meeting between Coltart and Ndebele king Bulelani was part of a plot to create a separate Matabeleland State was not only malicious, but also a dangerous distortion of both historical truth and present-day reality.
“The Ndebele Kingdom was a sovereign nation that fell in 1893 after a protracted war against colonial invasion. It was not defeated in ideology, spirit or identity.
“Sadly, while the rest of the nation celebrated the dawn of independence in 1980, the Ndebele nation was ‘liberated’ only to become a province — and worse, the target of genocide by the new black government.
“Zanu PF, in its infancy, unleashed the Gukurahundi atrocities on our people, killing over 20 000 civilians in an attempt to exterminate the Ndebele identity and legacy.”
Fuzwayo said after Gukurahundi, Zanu PF continued its agenda through systematic political, social and cultural marginalisation — a war by other means.
He said the ruling party inherited a country built on colonial borders, adding that it was, and still is, its responsibility to unite the people and build a just, inclusive and democratic society, which it had failed disastrously to do.
“Let it be clearly stated that King Bulelani Lobengula is the leader of the Ndebele nation — not by the permission of Chris Mutsvangwa, Zanu PF or any contemporary political actor, but by historical rights and the lived cultural reality of the people. No smear campaign or propaganda will erase that,’’ he said
According to Fuzwayo, recognition of the king is not about secession but about cultural identity, justice and the right of a people to remember, honour and organise around their heritage.
