MTHWAKAZI Republic Party (MRP) has implored the European Union Observer Mission to the August 23 general elections to help the party re-establish a Mthwakazi State, separate from Zimbabwe.
The party’s president Mqondisi Moyo directed part of his address to supporters during a rally at Bulawayo’s Stanley Square last week to the EU observers who attended the rally, asking them to assist Matabeleland achieve self-rule.
Moyo told the EU observers that his party’s its main objective as an organisation was to push for Mthwakazi State restoration and the EU was one of the core institutions they petitioned early this year when they sought 20 000 signatures of people from the Matabeleland region.
The 20 000 figure represents the victims of Gukurahundi who were killed between 1982 and 1987 by the national army’s North Korea-trained Fifth Brigade.
“This petition is inspired by standing resolution of the UN (United Nations) with regards to the autonomy and self-determination of all minority groups whose human rights are being denied and their dignity trampled on by their majority ethnic groups anywhere in the world,” he said.
“We are a proud and law-abiding nation that was established by King Mzilikazi Khumalo bringing together many ethnic groups and creating a sense of singular nationhood among them, called Mthwakazi kingdom State.”
The secessionist party contends that before the merging of Matabeleland and Mashonaland to create the present day Zimbabwe, there existed an Mthwakazi State which bounded the Midlands, Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South provinces along the infamous Jameson line which they say was one of the boundaries signed for by the last paramount Ndebele King Lobengula Khumalo.
Moyo said the colonisation of Mthwakazi was separate from Mashonaland or Zimbabwe because it was still a sovereign State at the time southern Africa was colonised in 1890.
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He said the British Crown also legalised the continued occupation of Mthwakazi illegally by proclaiming the Matabeleland Order-in-Council on July 19, 1894, claiming that the kingdom had been broken down and replaced by a better system.
Moyo told the EU observers that through the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of 1918, this illegal decision was further reinforced.
“In 1980, using the same Order-in-Council, the British Crown and government decolonised Mashonaland to create the Republic of Zimbabwe, and simultaneously transferred to them the mandate to rule Mthwakazi by conquest to a black majority supremacy regime,” Moyo argued.
“When this regime came into power in 1980 within two years it started to train an army to kill unarmed civilians in Mthwakazi without any provocation or declaration of war, by creating the so called ‘dissidents problem’. The number of people killed was officially reported to be at least 20 000 civilians.”
He said Matabeleland had suffered 130 years of occupation, dehumanisation and oppression.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has in the past said Zimbabwe will remain a republic and a unitary State and will not be divide by the MRP.
