EDITOR — Being an avid Daily News reader, I was awestruck by the Late Joshua Nkomo’s letters to the-then prime minister Robert Mugabe, which your paper ran late last year.
Many aspects of that letter, ring very familiar to what we have been experiencing in this once-beautiful country of ours.
To begin with, Nkomo adressed very petinent issues with regards to his relationship with Mugabe and between Zapu and Zanu.
For a moment, I thought I was dreaming.
So, someone in our lifetime, was aware of Zanu PF tricks of diverting blame?
According to Nkomo, there are events that he viewed as being instigated by other people not linked whatsoever to his Zapu party, but still his party was blamed.
This brings an answer as to why it took so long for the Zanu PF government to honour Nkomo. And to be fair, it was not done in true spirit of respect for “Father Zimbabwe”.
When you honour the dead, surely you should not carnvass for the dead person’s children and relatives to give you something in return — nomatter how small.
This is exactly what Zanu PF did, because a minister belonging to their party allegedly begged the people of Bulawayo to see Zanu PF in another light.
Honour for someone is just done in honour of that person, period.
Whether people say, you have done well or not, does not matter.
Whether people applaud you for it or not, it still doesn’t matter, because, you are doing it for the departed.
Even the Bible says, when you give with your right hand, let not the other hand know what you are giving (Matthew 6: 3).
What one can see here is, Zanu PF was just grandstanding and sweet-talking the people of Matabeleland, (Kutaura nenzwi rakazorwa dovi.)
Nkomo must be honoured unconditionally, that is how I see it.
More recently, Zimbabwe has been haunted by bitting economic hardships, food shortages and unemployment hovering above 85 percent.
For the past three or four years, Zimbabweans became optimistic and slowly, the economy was begining to show signs of improvement.
Zanu PF callled for an early election and honestly I think I heard senior party officials and even the president calling the Government of National Unity “A useless creature” or something of the sort.
To them, the two MDC parties they had a power-sharing deal with, were stalling progress.
They came to the people selling what we can now call bottled smoke.
The youths were promised jobs, we were all promised a better Zimbabwe.
Now where are the jobs? Where is this economy going?
And just to show how clueless this government is, we had one of the hardest Christmas in years.
How do we create jobs when companies are closing?
How does this government expect to honour it’s promises to our civil servants?
Reports in some sections of the media are that, a Zanu PF minister wants name changes to institutions and roads in Bulawayo that have any colonial bearing.
Grow up people, we have been independent for a solid 34 years and name changes will not improve the economy at all.
Get over this and strive to come up with policies that improve the lives of the people.
You have been blaming the MDC for stalling progress and now that you have an overwhelming majority in Parliament, show us the way.
And to say that a civil servants’ salary review is being stalled by organisations representing them is another diversion of the truth.
If you have anything as government, just announce it so that we can all know what our “good” government has in store for these special people.
Now that we have been blessed with above average rains, let us not blame drought if our “cell phone” farmers cannot produce enough food for the country.
Zanu PF must stop this blame game and fulfil their promises which they have failed to do for 34 years.
Schools are about to open and imagine how it feels for unemployed graduates who still can’t help their siblings with anything?
I just pray one day, people will wake up and realise, we have been fooled and taken for a ride, by the same old party, using the same old tricks.
Firifiti Ndambayeshweshwe