A former ZPRA and government minister, Moses Mzila Ndlovu, has claimed that Zanu PF is propagating misleading narratives about the ANC’s status in Zimbabwe throughout its war against apartheid.
Ndlovu said that Zanu PF is funding “half-baked” historians to spread lies about the ruling party’s relationship with the ANC in order to “mischievously mislead the public.”
“There is no doubt that Zanu PF wants to reap undeserved political dividends that would enable them to appropriate a hooded fictitious liberator image in the eyes of South Africans and accordingly carve political spheres of influence within the ANC and its government so as to push it towards opportunistic radicalism, which by nature is anarchist to the extreme,” he told CITE in an interview.
Ndlovu, former Co-Minister of National Healing and Integration during the Government and National Unity, said his observations are based from his experiences as a former ZPRA fighter who became an active member in the ANC-UMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) clandestine activities in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 1992.
The former minister said the fake narratives peddled by Zanu PF were done with the hope that they will appeal to Africans in the continent and in the diaspora.
However, Ndlovu said history shows that Zanu PF and its sister parties have created fertile ground for neocolonialism in post-independence Zimbabwe not only by omission but by commission as well.
“Zanu PF is now working to export this colonial mutation from colonialism to neocolonialism to former liberation movements now in power in southern Africa as if they are the custodians of the history of the struggle against imperial injustices,” he said.
Ndlovu lamented Zanu PF’s corruption, its unwillingness to account for Gukurahundi while the perpetrators were let off the hook and lack of respect for the constitution is absolute disregard for the rule of law.
“Zanu PF’s interference in the operations of the institutions of governance and its creation of a Shona denominated state in a country with twelve other ethnic groups, all collectively created space for neocolonialism,” he said, remarking how the ruling party “stole an election if it realised it cannot win.”
The former minister traced this behaviour to the “imperialist sponsored radicalism they failed to achieve in ZAPU.”
“They ejected themselves to push the agenda of imperialism and opted to become dissidents in 1963. That they were appointed by Margaret Thatcher to rule Zimbabwe in 1980 does not change the fact that they are a group of dissidents. Many research scholars including Timothy Scarnecchia of Kent University, allude to three times Zanu PF benefited from imperialist powers from 1963 to 1983 and beyond, in an article on diplomatic relations during the hot-cold-war and how Gukurahundi was rationalised,” Ndlovu explained.
He further claimed that opportunism has been Zanu PF’s flagship since its formation and how Zanu PF has “played a role worse” than the colonial regimes in subverting the liberation promise in Zimbabwe.
“Zanu wears masks of revolutionary champions of anti-apartheid and cries more than the bereaved. They claim to have assisted the ANC by delivering arms of war to the borders between South Africa and Zimbabwe using the Zimbabwe National Army vehicles in broad daylight while they on the other handheld sellout bilaterally productive regular meetings with Apartheid Security Forces leaders whose hands were dripping with the blood of killed freedom fighters in that country.”
“We recall the murders of Solomon Mahlangu in 1979 by hanging, the butchering of lawyer Griffiths Mxenge in 1982. Thousands more perished at the hands of apartheid police, some at the same time Zanu massacred innocent civilians in Matabeleland.”
Ndlovu described these killings as a “betrayal of black people oppressed by whites who Zanu PF leaders drank tea and had dinners with.”
“Zanu’s murky collaboration with apartheid forces to curtail MK activities in Zimbabwe came out of the numerous meetings on the basis that they were never war time friends with the ANC. It is common knowledge which must be appropriately placed in the public domain for everyone to see.”
The former minister said Zanu PF was seeking to project a fake image about its ties with ANC in order to conceal their “shocking acts of political prostitution when they hopped into bed with the apartheid regime soon after Zimbabwe’s independence.”
“It is also to conceal their sellout partnering with America and Britain to sabotage cold war Soviet Union and Cuban influence in southern Africa by committing a yet to be punished horrendous crime of massacring innocent and unarmed civilian people of Matabeleland,” Ndlovu added.
According to Ndlovu, tyranny and anarchy cannot suddenly become celebrated heroism.
“Zanu was always working to defeat the ends of a revolution, to derail genuine freedom in Zimbabwe and by extension in South Africa, which they still do to this day. Zimbabwe is in the hands of looters who have no love for it but kill everyone they accuse of not loving the country enough,” he said.
“Zanu PF was never part of the authentic six liberation movements of southern Africa. Sponsoring halfbaked historians to peddle falsehoods in order to mislead the public with concocted and fake narratives will only work some of the time but not all the time.”
