Introduction of the Organization: U-Mhlahlo we Sizwe sika Mthwakazi
U-Mhlahlo is the community based, civic Organization of Mthwakazi which is fighting for the abolition of the “Rule by Conquest” of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi and promotes its diverse cultural identity and the right of people to its symbiotic nationality on the bases of equality and the right to self-determination. U-Mhlahlo was formed on 11 June 2006 at Amakhosi Cultural Village, at Makhokhoba Township, in Bulawayo. It was formed by the Activists from 29 community based civic groups, which consisted of political activists, cultural, religious, workers, students, women, youths, elderly people and some traditional leaders.
U Mhlahlo is an inborn child of the spontaneous underground movement in a territory which had been subjugated for the past 118 years under the ‘Rule by Conquest” consisting of 87 years of the racial domination from 1893 up to 1980 and 30 plus years of tribal domination from 1980 to the present date. Its people are conquered, traumatized, displaced, exiled to fruitless lands, concentrated in areas in the Native Reserves and subjected to be permanent forced and cheap labour that was permanently impoverished. Their region is underdeveloped, featuring lack of education, its people are denied the fundamental freedoms and human rights. Generally the territory features the everlasting reign of terror and deprivation situations which are characterized by oppression and insecurity among its population.
uMhlahlo Vision: The Kingdom of Mthwakazi to be a state of choice for peace, human dignity, prosperity and Cultural excellence
uMhlahlo Mission: The Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi to replace the “Rule by Conquest” with freedom and self-determination
Our Aim: To restore the Kingdom of Mthwakazi, rehabilitate its people and reconstruct its economy
The Overview of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi under the “Rule by Conquest”
The Lifetime Resistance of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi
After the fall of its Kingdom, the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi continued to endeavour to restore the deposed Kingdom of Mthwakazi through various forms of the struggle. This trend was shortly interrupted by the politics of Pan-Africanism during the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which proved incompatible with special form of colonialism which was different from anything known by the continent. But even during the Pan-Africanist era, some far sighted tribesmen remained focused on the question of Mthwakazi.
The 1896 Uprising
The Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi did not accept conquest without further protest. On 20 March 1896, under the leadership of the royal council of Mthwakazi; they staged an anti-conquest war against the BSA conquerors, and forced them to call for peace talks. An amicable agreement was reached, unfortunately the conquerors were not genuine because after an agreement they went behind Mthwakazi to arm themselves with superior weapons and fortified the conquest.
The generation of the Royal Council of Mthwakazi who survived the uprising continued to express disgruntlement against subjugation until the advent of the First World War when they resolved to challenge Britain legally through the Privy Council in 1914. They instructed Prince Nyamande, the surviving son of the disappeared King Lobengula to appeal against conquest in the court demanding the abolition of the “Rule by Conquest” together with the returning of the looted over 6000,000 cattle.
The National Home Movement
In 1912, Prince Nyamande had formed the National Home Movement to spearhead the restoration of the Kingdom of Mthwakazi and the recovery of the looted head of cattle by the BSA Co in 1893.
The movement solicited for international support from the Ethiopian Church of South Africa, the ANC and the Ant-Slavery and Aborigine Protection Society in Britain (APS). They got legal advice from John Harris the Secretary-General of the APS and Alfred Mangena the ANC lawyer. The solicitors defended the Land Case in 1918. Unfortunately the court used the right of conquest to over-rule the Land Case of Mthwakazi. The Privy Council ruled that: “THE NDEBELE SOVEREIGNTY HAD BEN DESTROYED AND REPLACED BY THE MATABELELAND ORDER-IN-COUNCIL”.
The court uttered a lot of degrading and discriminatory allegations against the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi purporting that it was uncivilized and not worth to rule such a beautiful country, and the “Rule by Conquest” continued. The Royal Council of Mthwakazi Petitioned Prince Arthur In 1919 after the British crown had assumed the responsibility of the overthrow of Mthwakazi, the National Home Movement petitioned King George V to grant the deposed Kingdom a protectorate and return the cattle since the right to conquest had been condemned by the civilized world at the Treaty of Versailles. The petition claimed that the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi has NO PIECE OF LAND WHICH THEY OWN, and have been created to be a nomadic people under a veiled slavery. He had the support of experienced Black politicians from SA.
The British Prince had come to Mthwakazi to respond to the petition and had a one weak political conference with the Royal Council of Mthwakazi. However the talks proved fruitless. At this time the generation of the pre-conquest Royal Council of Mthwakazi which had witnessed the conquest soon perished living only the pathetic legend behind. Thus the Movement of the restoration of the deposed Kingdom lost continuity through lack of leadership.
Pan-Africanism
After the death of Queen Nozikheyi, King Lobengula’s wife who remained an activist since the conquest, Prince Nyamande and the old generation of other chiefs who had survived the fall of the Kingdom, a new generation of activists who had grown up as forced and cheap labour in the mines, farms, roads and dams construction, and factories, imaged and continued to pursue the Question of Mthwakazi. The attention of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi shifted to Pan-Africanism.
The Matebele Home Society
During the middle of the 1920s the reformed Home Movement continued to represent the Mthwakazi interests. This Society was connected with the coming of King Lobengula’s grandsons Rhodes and Njube. After their father Njube had died having been banished for life in South Africa, they returned to the country, Rhodes founded the Lions Football Club (which transformed into the present Highlanders Football Club) with his brother Albert and Nsele Hlabangane. Rhodes also tried to take stock of the royal head of cattle in. The Industrial Commercial Workers Union (ICU) The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) of Masotsha Ndlovu was formed in 1928. The ICU was an initiative of the South African trade-union movement. In 1927 Robert Sambo a S.A. trade unionist had come to open the branches of the ICU in the country but was deported after forming branches in Bulawayo and Salisbury.
The Bantu Women’s League
On 21 May 1929 Martha Ngano the President of the Bantu Women League, first women’ league of Mthwakazi, wrote a letter to the Governor’s wife Lady Riddell on behalf of the mothers of Bulawayo expressing their grievances against the horrible conditions under which the Africans lived with their children in the locations. She challenged Her Excellence to visit the locations and see the crowded cottages with small rooms. She prayed to God to bless her and make her a mother and deliverer both spiritual and national for the sake the Rhodesian Bantu children. She working women of Mthwakazi started rallying behind the struggle in large numbers. The League was suppressed by terror.
The Bantu Congress
The Bantu Congress was formed in 1934 by people who came from the groups of Mthwakazi people. The members of the Jabavu family who were involved in the South African politics since the 1880s and concerned themselves with the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi assisted in its formation. John Tengo Jabavu came to Mthwakazi The Congress held its first annual conference in 1935 and became known as the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress. The SR ANC gathered a larger membership for many years made African opinion heard and gave valuable political training to Africans of the future. Pan-Africanistic Nationalism In 1957 the first nationalist organization, the Salisbury Youth League approached the SR-ANC and request that the two organizations should unity to form a common front against the common colonialist and formed the Pan-Africanist ANC which followed the vision of Kwame Nkruma that Africa must unity.
The ANC was formed to forged an inter-territorial ANC of Southern Rhodesia on 12 September 1957, he terms of the alliance was to forge the political unity and activism at a mass level throughout the country against the common colonial power. This party developed into ZAPU which split when the Zimbabwean people broke away to form ZANU. However the spirit of Pan-Africanism continued to dominate in the convictions of the people of SR. They fought the liberation war as the Patriotic Front alliance until the decolonization of Mashonaland as Zimbabwe under the constitution which enshrined the Matabeleland Order-in-Council. And Zimbabwe came to enforce the “Rule by Conquest” over Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi using the Matabeleland Order-in-Council.
Collapse of Nationalism
As soon as Southern Rhodesia was decolonized under the skewed constitution which granted Zimbabwe 80 seats and Mthwakazi 20 in a parliament of 100 seats in 1980, ZANU broke away from the PF, together with the backing of its majority seats. The unity between the Zimbabweans and Mthwakazi collapsed. The struggle to abolition the “Rule by Conquest” over the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi was reborn as the United National Federal Party in 1978. This party was formed by the surviving generation of Mthwakazi Royal Council under the leadership of Paramount Chief Khayisa Ndiweni who were challenging the connivance of the Zimbabwe chiefs and the white Rhodesians who had formed a multi-racial political settlement which was led by three Shona politicians: Bishop Abel Muzorewa, James Chikerema and Ndabaning Sithole and the white leader Ian Douglas Smith.
The Birth of the transfer of Racial Domination into Tribal Domination
On 8 November 1978, at the age of 61 years Chief Khayisa Ndiweni, formed the United National Federal Party (UNFP), as a break away from the Zimbabwe United People’s Organization. (ZUPO), a political party formed by the joint Council of Chiefs of Mthwakazi and Zimbabwe, which was led by Chief Chirawu as the President of the Council of Chiefs the Vice President Chief Khayisa Ndiweni became its Vice President. ZUPO had been formed on the bases of equal representation for the two Territories.
The joint Council of the Chiefs of both Zimbabwe and Mthwakazi had approved that each Territory shall be divided into eight regions to be used as election constituencies and ensure locally representation in any future elections. ZUPO pledged itself to select candidates in each region from amongst the local people. The candidates will have to be locally known and respected persons, familiar with the particular constituency’s life and problems. This was the first political party in Southern Rhodesia to recognise the different Territories which have their natural rights to be represented by their own trusted and elected representatives.
During the formation of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia government under the 3 March 1978 agreement, the Executive Council of four (EXCO), which formed the presidency happened to have one white and three Zimbabweans with no Mthwakazi representative, and the Ministerial Council lacked equal representation.
In September 1978, ZUPO changed its original Policy of Equal Representation. Its National Executive without the participation of the Mthwakazi Chiefs held a meeting and resolved that the country shall be divided into four regions, three of which to report to Salisbury (Harare in Zimbabwe) the forth was to report at Bulawayo, in Mthwakazi. When the internal settlement was formed, Mashonaland region got represented by Chief Chirawu, Manicaland by Bishop Muzorewa and Victoria region by Ndabaningi Sithole in the ESCO that formed the collective presidency with Ian Douglas Smith representing the whites. All the three regions happened to form one country, Zimbabwe. Mthwakazi was not represented in the Council of Four.
The Cabinet which made all the decisions was also dominated by the Zimbabwe Ministers, with only four Mthwakazi out of 18 Ministers. Later on in 1979, when the Lancaster House Constitution was made, the four provinces of the internal settlement were styled the electoral colleges and each of the three Zimbabwe regions was allocated 20 seats making a total of 60 seats, against 20 seats allocated to Mthwakazi.
Re-Awakening of the abolition of the “Rule by Conquest”
In May 1978, the Mthwakazi chiefs felt uneasy and held a meeting at Ntabazinduna and resolved that the Executive Council be enlarged by another member to include a representative of Mthwakazi. The request never materialized. At a further meeting the chiefs charged Chief Khayisa Ndiweni with the formation of a political party, the policy of which should be aimed to ensure that any future government will be based on the principle of non-domination.
On 8 November Chief Khayisa resigned from his posts both in the Transitional Government and in ZUPO. On 16 November, he announced the UNFP which advocated and ensured that any future system of government will be based on the principle of non-domination. The UNFP decided that the only solution which could save Rhodesia from a complete break up and could secure unity was the establishment of federation of the two Territories. Chief Chirawu and the National Executive of ZUPO accused Chief Kayisa of tribalism for demanding equal representation for his Territory, while themselves practiced not just tribalism, but sheer nepotism.
The UNFP had limited funds, but relied on the solution that it offered to the nation which was just and sensible. It urged its supporters to spread the Party’s message and distribute its printed policies. However it was soon overshadowed by the Patriotic Front War Lords and failed to gain strength after the decolonization of Zimbabwe, and the subsequent transfer of the racial domination by the tribal domination of Mthwakazi. However the vision of non domination remained living within the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi, until after the Gukurahundi Genocide, when its victims and survivors started to reinitiate it. That came as the birth of many small organizations which advocated the abolition of the “Rule by Conquest” and the automatic restoration of the Kingdom of Mthwakazi, and subsequently the union of the victims and survivors became the nucleus of U-Mhlahlo we Sizwe sika Mthwakazi on 11 June 2006. U-Mhlahlo is walking on the footsteps of the founders of the UNFP and carrying forward their unfulfilled mission.
The Emergence of U Mhlahlo
During the shocking impact of the 5th Brigade (Gukurahundi) after 1983 in which within six weeks, it had left thousands of civilians dead, hundreds of the homestead burnt and many others had been killed and tortured or disappeared. Most of them were killed in public executions, mutilated, some bodies were left to rot, others were thrown into old gold mines, others covered with bunches of trees and burnt, tortured, kidnapped and caused to disappear, while women were raped, other pregnant ones operated alive by barrels of guns, with the claims that the perpetrators were searching for the unborn babies of the dissident.
The people of Mthwakazi spontaneously went underground in various hideouts in the killing grounds. When the situation eventually cooled down, slowly and secretly the people started coming up in twos, small groups, at hospitals, prisons, funerals, work places, wedding parties, prayer meetings, public transports or any other gatherings’; the people whispered trying to find out about the fate of others who were being unnoticed probable being dead, kidnapped, disappeared, jailed without a fair trial and so on. The consultations resulted with the formation of various groupings. These groupings systematically converged bringing together the victims and survivors of the Gukurahundi genocide. The small groups gradual grew into secret and larger formations, their communication spread among the multi-ethnic nationalities of Mthwakazi until after 23 years on 11 June 2006 when the 29 civic groups of activists resolved to move from the underground activities into a formal registered organization operating legal to solve the “Question of Mthwakazi” once and for all. Hence the birth of “U Mhlahlo we Sizwe sika Mthwakazi” the Community, civic Organization is the voice of the conquered Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi.
The Outlook of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi or The Land of Mthwakazi
The Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi is downtrodden; her country is both marginalized as well as underdeveloped. It lacks adequate developmental infrastructures and institutions such as the roads for efficient transport, educational facilities and health centres in the grassroots areas of dwelling. Telephones are not available in most areas, many people cannot afford electronic media facilities and public transport is scarce. Over population coupled with poor economic planning in the places where they were exiled to have rendered traditional cattle ranching community poor. Since cattle were the basic means of economy in the territory, providing meat and milk, draught power for all hard work as well as the means of cash for sending children to school etc. The system of agriculture has collapse and the production of the crops has diminished.
The “Rule by Conquest” has caused the people of the region to depend on the Donors for their survival. Crop farming has collapsed and other small live stocks like goats, sheep and chicken have declined due to the overuse, under stringent conditions featuring the oppression.
The Scope of Operation
U-Mhlahlo operates in 25 rural districts, two cities, five big towns, various small towns and localities of the deposed Kingdom of Mthwakazi. Its members are mostly concentrated among the poor black people, who are mostly affected by the deprivation situation and lack disposable income. (c) The People of Mthwakazi Generally Mthwakazi are suffering from illiteracy, its death rate is high and the diseases are numerous while the hospitals are lacking medication. That puts the whole social security of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi at stake. This scenario necessitates the need for education, training and development in various fields of the community. That is imperative among the leadership of the community movement from the village level up to the national level in both the management skills and technical knowledge, to enable them to offer the international approved standard of leadership, as well as to enable them to make good decisions and formulate good policies for the community.
The community members also require training in the civic knowledge, administrative jobs and development skills. All that centres on the right of people to self-determination, the moral support of the international humanitarian community on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the UN General Assembly’s Declaration on the Decolonization of Countries and Peoples who have not yet gained their self-government.
The Task of the Organization
U-Mhlahlo we Sizwe sika Mthwakazi is leading both in fact finding and the resumption of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi. U-Mhlahlo has defined the situation under the “Rule by Conquest as a crisis in which tensions are amounting to the breaking point. The danger is that, the most trivial incident in this situation may plunge the community into irretrievable disaster. Hence U-Mhlahlo is defining the direction timely and is suggesting the way out crisis rationally, by instituting the legal litigations and the peaceful advocacy of abolition of the “Rule by Conquest” as a way of restoring the deposed Kingdom of Mthwakazi and attaining the right to self-determination by the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi.
The “Rule by Conquest” is a unique type of colonialism which is devastating the well-being of the society; yet it is little known by the world at large. The Strategy and Tactics of U-Mhlahlo The main methods of action of U-Mhlahlo are the legal litigations and the peaceful advocacy to raise the mindset of a democratic sense of consciousness as a way of using the public opinion to abolish the “Rule by Conquest” because U-Mhlahlo believes that the public opinion is a powerful weapon of correcting the wrong.
Raising the democratic sense of consciousness is a detonation of influence that spreads among the minds and souls of the conquered people through invoking the attitude of freedom of action and self-determination. U-Mhlahlo does not believe in wishful thinking; but upholds the inborn solution based on the concrete situation of Mthwakazi, by Mthwakazi and for Mthwakazi through catering for the interests of the Inter-Cultural Society of Mthwakazi as whole peoples, and conforms to the United Nations Charter and its principles of promoting the fundamental freedoms and human rights. Human rights are there for our protection against the people who want to harm or hurt us. They also help us to get along with each other and live in peace.
For further information regarding uMhlahlo and its programmes please contact us on the following email and telephone numbers in Zimbabwe.
Emails: info@umhlahlo.org or admin@umhlahlo.org
Telephone numbers:
0737335621
0773064948
0775587644
