What will Msika say to Nkomo?
I wrote recently about the cost of dying in Zimbabwe, unaffordable for most - the image above is of a ‘hearse’.
Since then Joseph Msika died. I wonder what the epitaph on his gravestone will be.
Will he be remembered for his courageous part in the struggle for freedom in our country, a main actor from the ranks of a disillusioned Zapu? Or will his last engraved legacy remind us of his later role as puppet to a crazed dictator, oppressing the very people he proclaimed to represent?
One thing is for sure, his family won’t have to worry about the cost of the funeral. He will be laid in a casket of great grandeur at the infamous “Heroes Acre”, where there are lots of acres and fewer and fewer real heroes as time goes by. The service will inevitably find the puppet-master of evil in fine form, as funerals are renowned as events to ramp up the rhetoric and Robert Mugabe will rant on and on and on at full volume.
Msika has cut a pathetic figure of late, a frail geriatric propping up a failing regime, apparently an unwilling puppet at times as he did not stand in either the 2005 or 2008 elections, but was appointed nonetheless by Mugabe to cabinet. This was done in adherence to the agreement signed with Joshua Nkomo to share power with ZAPU.
Perhaps Msika’s erstwhile leader, Joshua Nkomo, is waiting for him on the other side to find out what happened to the principles that galvanised the war of liberation? How will he react when Msika imparts the news that the heroes all fell down and became corrupt self-serving individuals who stole the nation from its people?
Msika occasionally came out with ineffectual statements as a reminder of his former principled self. At a rally held in Bulawayo in October 2006, Msika dismissed Mugabe’s previous apology for the Gukurahundi killings, condemned internationally for the violence unleashed on innocent Ndebele citizens over a four-year period: “When we asked him about the massacres he apologized, but I was not convinced about his sincerity,” Msika said. He did little else to demand justice for the estimated 20 000 victims of Gukurahundi, instead playing his own part in a regime that ensure any gains made by our liberated nation have become sullied and our people more deprived of their rights than ever before in history.
I do not wish to be disrespectful or to wish ill on the dead, but when I heard Msika had died I mourned more for the death of principle, for wasted potential and misguided leadership, than for a man who showed potential but let it waste away.
More on Joseph Msika at these links here:
Joseph Msika
Vice President Joseph Msika dies
Orbituary: Joseph Msika
Old Mugabe ally dies in Zimbabwe
Harare Confirms Death of VP Msika, Liberation Hero & ZANU-PF Moderate
August 7th, 2009 05:24
Media reports this week show that Mugabe and his generals are preparing for total war against their own citizens.
The Zimbabwe police force, normally 20,000 strong, is being beefed up to 50,000 by the recruitment of illiterate militia, while millions of additional rounds of AK-47 ammunition are being sourced from South Africa and abroad.
Zimbabweans face a ‘Total Onslaught’ from their own government in the run up to the next election.