Reconciliation: a big lie

The committee of vultures captured Zimbabwe a long time ago. They are too busy gorging themselves on whatever remains of this once great nation to know or care about the cry for national healing and reconciliation. The yearning of all Zimbabweans that, of course, excludes Mutasa and the other hyenas at the feeding trough is for a new beginning. The death last week of MDC-M vice president Gibson Sibanda provided just another opportunity to score one more point for genuine national reconciliation and unity without which that much desired fresh start cannot be possible.

There is no doubt that Sibanda deserved national hero status on account of his good works first with the old PF-ZAPU party of Joshua Nkomo and later with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. But more than that, declaring Sibanda a national hero would have been a crucial symbolic gesture to all that Zimbabweans have indeed turned a new page, that the old hostilities are forgotten and bygones will be bygones.

That a group of men and women known in Zanu (PF) as the politburo and who were handpicked into that exclusive club by President Robert Mugabe would sit and without consulting anyone decide to deny national hero status to Sibanda is sad but hardly surprising coming from that pack.

Mutasas claims that the Zanu (PF) politburo is right to decide on whether to confer hero/heroine status on people in the absence of any other body to carry out that function shows so much contempt for the intelligence of Zimbabweans just as his claim that Zanu (PF) and/or its government built the national shrine.

Why should the Zanu (PF) politburo choose national heroes and heroines for us? Why not ask the more representative Parliament or Cabinet to confer this important honour on deserving Zimbabweans? And where did Zanu (PF) get the money to build the Heroes Acre shrine as claimed by Mutasa, if not from taxpayers who do not wear political colours? But to focus on Mutasas infantile claims is to really miss the point.

Zanu (PF) took it upon itself to decide on whether Sibanda should be buried at the national shrine because to Mugabe and his party this whole sad affair was merely yet another golden opportunity to demonstrate to all and sundry who really wields the power in Zimbabwe. It was an opportunity to punish Sibanda one more last time for having dared stand up against corruption, human rights abuses and misrule by Mugabe and his party. The good to come out of it all is that at least it shows that all this talk about national reconciliation and healing is one big lie.