MPC's Response to a false accusation on newzim.com Forum

MPC STATEMENT

MPC wishes to protest and condemn in the strongest terms a posting made by a New Zimbabwe forumite, Ratidzoo, on the online newspaper’s forum titled: “The face of a terrorist – MPC President!!!” in reference to MPC President, Mr Ndaba Mkwananzi.

We condemn the posting as malicious character assassination, hurtful and harmful of our President’s reputation. The attack is also unfounded and without justification whatsoever. Mr Mkwananzi is well-known in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. There are many who will feel hurt and offended alongside him as a result of this baseless attack. This attack is serious and threatening and MPC receives it with the seriousness it deserves.

MPC wishes to put it on record that no one has killed in the name of our President or MPC nor will anyone in the future. The speaking record is different and well-known. We re-state it here, just in case others have a short memory.Matebeleland and the Midlands bled in the name of a supposed superior tribe. That genocide remains unacknowledged and unaddressed. The MDC, too, has had casualties to the system. We also don’t fail to put it on record that the MDC has not been entirely blameless in this regard to some bad things that have happened in its name since 2000. We also state that to this day, the system uses starvation, water and other insidious means as political weapons against uMthwakazi. When people such as Ratidzoo are conveniently blind to such speaking facts or twist the truth, it is the reason MPC has risen as a political movement.
Our cause, which is in the public domain, including all the faces of MPC officials and that of our President, can never, even remotely, be associated with activities of terrorists or a terrorist organization. In his launch message for our new website, Mr Mkwananzi, spoke of the assassination of truth in Zimbabwe and the need to recover it as a political cause for any new political dispensation. This latest and unfounded attack on our President underlines the urgency for the MPC agenda to succeed, and succeed soon.There are also serious political and personal ramifications for this malicious attack which in our peculiar experience as Mthwakazi under Zimbabwe rule, we can never be blind to. For the moment we leave aside the legal implications of this attack.It is now well-known that labelling (de-humanization and de-personalization), incitement and other insidious acts, are the precursor to genocide and other serious human rights violations such as crimes against humanity, broadly defined.
In Mthwakazi’s own experience, which forumite Ratidzo knows full well about, the precursor to Gukurahundi was the labelling of uMthwakazi as ‘dissidents, ‘cockroaches’, ‘chuff’ (where the name ‘Gukurahundi was coined from), ‘snakes’ (cobra in the house) etc. Overnight, Joshua Nkomo became known, insultingly, as ‘Dumbuzenene’. Across the world where genocide has happened labelling has been an essential ingredient of that crime. We therefore wish to make it clear from the onset that if this is the beginning of an orchestrated campaign to place harm in our President’s way, or any of its officials or uMthwakazi society at large, MPC will fight that by all means it has at its disposal. We are also aware that for the most part the system will not act directly but will do so through surrogates or proxies they manipulate from the shadows and afford anonymity in various ways. Further, MPC will not leave threats, veiled as this one was or otherwise, unchallenged. We will always draw the line between free, robust debate and threats and incitement. MPC challenges all our political adversaries to come out of anonymity, as we have done, and engage us in open political combat. Here, belong the skills of debate and persuasion that MPC believes in.

Our political position is simple and publicly stated: the issue of the constitutional and political position of Mthwakazi under Zimbabwe will no longer be swept under carpet, as will the issue of the Gukurahundi genocide. These are the emerging and growing topics of our time.Finally, to their credit, we note that the publishers of New Zimbabwe, on realizing the gross nature of the original posting took immediate steps to change and tone down the title of the posting, from “Face of a terrorist” to “The face of the MPC President!!!” We commend them for their quick action. We can only hope that the publishers of New Zimbabwe, a platform we also wish to use in the future to articulate MPC’s position, will be more vigilant to ensure that a similar thing will not happen to anyone in the future and that its online publication will continue to conform to the applicable laws and good practices operative in their industry. We of course leave it to our President, Mr Mkwananzi, to consider all the options available to him arising from this unprovoked and malicious attack on him.

Thank you.

K. Dube
MPC Director of Communications