Mr President, I hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits.
Before delving into the bone of contention let us spare our thoughts for all the casualties of the recent barbaric xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
Sir, allow me to introduce myself as Masola wa Dabudabu.
I am Kalanga and I hail from the obscure Dabudabu homestead in Mzwanyane village under Chief Mpini Ndiweni.
I hold no claim to any fame apart from clinging on my father’s achievements. My late father, Julius Masola, was as an elected MP for Matabeleland South (African Members of Parliament of Southern Rhodesia and Rhodesia).
Apologies if my late father’s flirtation with the Federal Parliament is bloodcurdling for a revolutionary of your stature. I suspect anyone who had a symbiotic relationship with colonial appendages does not get sympathy from you.
As atonement for my ignoble birth, I joined Zapu in exile at a very tender age. Such was the trend then for Plumtree teenagers.
Mr President, I am sure you are aware that frontline districts such as Plumtree, Beitbridge, Hurungwe, Chipinge, Mudzi, Nyanga, Gwanda and Rushinga among others were fertile grounds for liberation struggle recruits and as such they bore the brunt during reprisal operations by Rhodesian forces.
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Mr highly-educated President, assuming your education was not solely on violence, you should have a sense of the issues I want to raise with you.
I am sure you still remember your remarks that tore into the reputation of Kalanga people. During a Sadc meeting in Harare, you blatantly blamed Kalangas for being both victims and contributors in the recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa. You insinuated that Kalangas have an unhealthy relationship with education hence their propensity for menial jobs and a proven proclivity for crime.
Mr President, no one disputes that most Kalangas from Plumtree and Kezi have traditionally flocked to Johannesburg for better opportunities. It is true that this trend started way back before your 1980 debut as Prime Minister.
The trend has not been perpetuated by a deficiency in education, but by the economic nothingness that Zimbabwe has become. Proximity of the Kalanga areas to the border also compounds the trend.
Mr President, I discern lack of statesmanship in your claim that Kalanga people flock to South Africa due to lack of education.
We say successive governments have been negligent with yours being the most culpable considering the length of time you have been in power.
I ask rhetorically, what have you done as Head of State to help the Kalangas to stop their fascination with border-jumping? Sir, your government with highly-educated officials lacks the technical knowhow to solve the country’s economic problems. The economy is ruined leading to a Zimbabwean Diaspora of Israelite proportions during Biblical times. Kalangas used to flock to South Africa without their Zezuru cousins following and there were insignificant xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
The attacks started manifesting when the rest of Zimbabwe invaded South Africa at the peak of the economic meltdown in 2008.
The appearance of highly educated Zezurus, in Johannesburg who joined brains with some Nigerians to practise confidence trickery changed the ballgame.
Mr President, Kalangas are mainly a meek and warm-hearted people.
Indeed like any other linguistic community in Zimbabwe, they have various capabilities and limitations.
The tribe boasts of doctors of this and that speciality, renowned educators and teachers, people who featured prominently during the war of liberation, there are people with talent, engineers, technicians and artisans.
Within Kalanga communities are thinkers, analysts, strategists and people with vision.
Mr President, there is no denying that in any large population group there will be dimwits, criminals, thieves, murderers, muggers and nincompoops.
You will have to grudgingly agree with me that we do find such a mix within Zezuru, Korekore, Ndau, Manyika, Tsonga and Karanga communities.
I have had personal encounters with fools, imbeciles and ignoramuses in Shona dominated areas.
In the eleven solid years I spent criss-crossing Masvingo province and peripheral areas of adjacent provinces I saw the unschooled and those averse to education.
I saw people who desperately clung to Zanu PF’s wicked benevolence.
Everywhere there was a bit of good and a bit of bad; polygamy, prostitution, robbery, crime, upper tops, derelict schools and subsistence agriculture.
There was wholesale unemployment everywhere. Way before economic stagnation, I saw desperation in arid Mwenezi where every young man who could not make it in Zanu PF’s salaried structures went to South Africa.
I used to make regular forays into Harare and places like Mbare hardly exuded any air of a highly educated population.
Mr President, I hope now you get the vibes that it is not lack of education that has led to the mass migration of Kalanga people to the promising lights of Gauteng. Lack of opportunities is forcing people to seek salvation elsewhere.
Indeed the Kalangas have led the way in this expedition and others are now following en masse.
The malaise of immigrants swarming into South Africa from the rest of the African continent should be blamed on governments of the states of origin.
In the case of Zimbabweans who flock to South Africa it is brutally unfair for you Mr President to blame the Kalangas for the ensuing xenophobia attacks.
With due respect Sir, blame lies in your failure to provide sufficiently for all your people.
Mr President, your impressive academic record counts for naught if it cannot provide guidance in solving the country’s problems.
Mr President, a father who fails to provide for his children should not criticise them as illiterate, uneducated and dishonourable retards for taking up demeaning job offers from wealthy neighbours.
