POLITICS-ZIMBABWE:
Greatest Cheers for New College Confined to State Media
Wilson Johwa
Never had the rural outpost of Lupane received so
much attention, not even when it was declared the capital of Zimbabwe's
Matabeleland North province four years ago.
BULAWAYO, Oct 23 (IPS) -
The occasion this time is a ground-breaking ceremony for the proposed
Lupane University, a 65-billion-Zimbabwe-dollar (32 million U.S. dollars)
initiative that will have its first intake next year, even before the
buildings hulk over the site, located 170 kilometres north-west of
Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo.
A high-level 13-member board has been tasked with spearheading the
project which will propel the entire province into the upper reaches of
scholarly excellence.
However, it is possible that the enthusiasm is perhaps a little overdone
in as much as the greatest cheers for the project have been confined to the
official media.
Without question, any veneer of prosperity would be welcome in this
dust-bowl province that also happens to be Zimbabwe's tourism hub, being
home to the Victoria Falls, the giant Hwange National Park and the better
part of the country's safari industry.
But not everyone is convinced that the university will make a big
difference to the rustic lives of villagers.
"While we might like the idea of a university, we'd appreciate more
vocational training facilities and more high schools with 'A level' before
the university," says Gordon Moyo of the pressure group, 'Bulawayo Agenda'.
"It's a good idea really, but a bit far-fetched," says Moyo. "Where are
those students going to come from?"
Lupane University is, thus, the latest grandiose project in Matabeleland,
the southern region that has always felt neglected since the skirmishes of
the early 1980s when innocent men, women and children died or were abused by
a state counter-insurgency operation aimed at flushing out dissidents
elements of a rival party rooted in the region.
Sixteen years after the 1987 Unity Accord that ended hostilities,
Matabeleland still sees itself sitting on the sidelines.
It has struggled to preserve its Ndebele identity in the face of
dominance by the majority Shona-speakers.
Its lingering bitterness against the government unambiguously manifests
itself at election time.
The region remains the only one where the ruling ZANU-PF party cannot
claim a rural support base. In Matabeleland North, the proposed university's
home, all seven Members of Parliament (MPs) belong to the opposition.
Critics see the university project as little more than the ruling party's
way of slipping into people's hearts before the next elections.
Even then, Matabeleland has never had a shortage of mega projects, almost
all of which have unfortunately tended to die before maturity.
"There are always good projects and programmes which come out of
Matabeleland but it came to our attention that these projects are only born
but never given feet to walk, or wings to fly, they die at infancy," Moyo
says.
The region has several "unresolved issues". 'Bulawayo Agenda' will in the
next two months host a conference that will allow political parties,
churches, clubs and other civic groups to take stock.
"We want to bring the leadership in the community to discuss why
programmes which everyone says are good, never come to fruition," Moyo says.
Set for the first week of December, the conference would come immediately
after another consultative programme organised by 'Bulawayo Agenda'.
The latter programme was launched in September and is supported by the
German Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Dubbed the 'Township Series', the programme provides for 29 meetings
throughout the city's working class areas. The aim is to allow citizens the
platform to air their views on any subject.
At the end of the series, copies of a report containing issues raised
will be sent to relevant government ministers, the mayor of the city, MPs
whose constituencies are in the city as well as some humanitarian
organisations.
Moyo says the series was necessitated by worsening conditions in troubled
Zimbabwe.
"We wanted the ordinary citizens to contribute to the resolution of the
crisis," he says. "We realised that those above had run out of ideas and by
giving a platform to the people we wanted to give the authorities the
opportunity to tap into their ideas."
Major grievances arising from the 16 meetings held so far are concerns
about rising poverty, discrimination in the distribution of food aid, high
transport fees and all other prices. Burgeoning local level corruption,
crime and HIV/AIDS have also been recurring issues.
The proposed December meeting will be a much more targeted meeting as it
will seek answers on why Matabeleland initiatives have a history of failure,
notwithstanding the prevailing crisis.
Top on the list of initiatives that have come to nought is the
Matabeleland Zambezi water Project which has been on the cards since 1912.
In the last eight years, a trust was formed to build a series of dams which
would have been connected by pipelines eventually drawing water from the
Zambezi River to as far as Bulawayo, the regional capital.
The Trans-Limpopo Spartial Development Initiative is another much-hyped
project that has died. It was premised on the creation of a development
corridor linking South Africa's Northern Province with Matabeleland, and
ultimately, with the Zambezi Water Project. Opportunities in agriculture,
tourism, transport and mining had been envisaged.
The licensing of a locally-based radio station, that has already acquired
equipment, is yet another touchy issue.
Moyo says also up for discussion is the 'cry by the people of
Matabeleland' for the introduction of a federal system of government that he
says came up during the country's ill-fated constitution-making exercise
three years ago.
In addition, the proposed conference is expected to zero in on the
sensitive issue of compensation for those in Matabeleland who lost loved
ones or were themselves victims of 1980s human rights abuses by the state.
"The government actually promised that compensation was going to come,"
Moyo says. "But up to now nothing has been done."
The "culturally enriching" revival of the Ndebele monarchy is one other
issue set to top the agenda at 'Bulawayo Agenda's' conference. Moyo says
since the 1999 commemoration of Mzilikazi, successive events have been
weakening even though efforts had been made to identify a successor to his
son, Lobhengula.
"We are not saying these issues are only peculiar to Matabeleland," Moyo
says. "Other regions may have their own questions as well."
Conceding that Matabeleland does have scores of unresolved issues is
Joshua Malinga, a member of the ruling ZANU-PF party's supreme organ, the
politburo.
When he was mayor of Bulawayo in the early 1990s, Malinga was one of the
first to speak out fervently on what he said was the marginalisation of the
region. Such talk unnerved his colleagues in ZANU-PF and halted his
political advancement.
He blames the region's lack of progress in resolving its outstanding
issues to the interpretation of the 1987 Unity Accord. He says the agreement
was not meant to be an event but the start of a process empowering the
people of Matabeleland.
Malinga also blames the failure of the people of Matabeleland to rally
behind a common cause.
"But, it may be cultural, it may be traditional, it may be the way we run
our lives, it maybe because we were a monarchy," he says. "There was a king,
everybody obeyed the king and perhaps we are still part of that, but the
king is gone and gone for good." (END/2003)
