BULAWAYO – Britain does not care for democratic transformation in Zimbabwe but is only after stability and investment opportunities for its elites, the opposition Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) has claimed.
As a former colonial power, Britain remained responsible for Zimbabwe, but its responsibility has turned into interference because the Crown is now undermining democracy in the country, MRP president Mqondisi Moyo told ZimLive.com on Friday.
MRP is a radical opposition party pushing for the restoration of the Mthwakazi nation.
Moyo claimed that recent events in the country indicate the July 30 elections have nothing to do with locals, rather are a show for Britain and its allies.
“The quest for human rights and justice has always been the greatest need for the people of Mthwakazi and it is what we are pushing for,” he told ZimLive.com in an interview in Bulawayo.
“As we head into elections, we are seeing that the legitimacy of the coup government is at the centre of the prime objectives of this election. The hunger for business is evidently a catalyst for the support for the coup we are seeing from members of the international community, particularly the British.”
Moyo said it was worrying that key countries were ready to abandon their values and trade democracy for stability.
“We’re greatly concerned with the sudden infatuation of maintaining stability by the international community particularity the British at the expense of democracy and human rights,” said Moyo, who had a meeting of his party stopped by police on Wednesday.
“What we’re witnessing now is a replica of the early 1980s when Britain and her allies prioritised their skewed foreign policy on the Zanu PF government, while they were butchering, raping and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in Matabeleland and the Midlands,” he opined.
“As I speak, thousands of our people still need closure on the whereabouts of their relatives who were swallowed by the jaws of Gukurahundi.”
The MRP leader asserted that because of their relationship, Mnangagwa had received assistance to overthrow former leader Robert Mugabe.
“Yes, Britain did have a hand in assisting Mnangagwa to become president of this country through the coup. Britain and her allies have also lost faith in the opposition especially MDC Alliance. To them, they have wasted a lot of resources funding political parties whose rewards they did not see. Consider how MDC used to be funded by international countries such as Britain,.”” Moyo claimed.
Britain has been a key player in Zimbabwean affairs since the end of colonial rule in 1980.
“We know Mugabe’s rise in the first elections after the liberation struggle was facilitated by Britain who were our colonisers before. In that light, some deals or agreements were also made with Mnangagwa. No wonder during the day of the demonstration in November last year we saw a lot of white people, especially here in Bulawayo. Some of us did not think we still had that large number of whites in the country,” said Moyo.
“As MRP, we feel and believe the coup was through an arrangement by Britain that if Mnangagwa removed Mugabe, whites would be given back their land and solve other issues that happened during the former’s leadership. Last week, Mngangagwa called for a meeting with whites in Harare and it is known his government has reiterated it would give land back to them.
“There are no doubts that Britain facilitated the coup and up to this day some people don’t want to accept that indeed what happened in November was a coup.”
The MRP president pointed out that Britain’s foreign policy has always been hostile to military governments but surprisingly they were now buddies with a coup arrangement.
“That’s why we are saying we were surprised that issues of democracy and issues of human rights are now a thing of the past. Britain is not talking about that, it is talking about stability, we wonder whose stability that is because issues we are grappling with require democracy and human rights.
“Britain has always been part of the matrix of this country that’s why we believe there is some form of relationship between the British and the Mnangagwa dispensation, as it was in the 1980s when they helped Mugabe ascend to power over Joshua Nkomo.”
Exiled and former Zanu PF government minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo, who left Zimbabwe during the coup, has also stated that the backing of Mnangangwa by the world was an international conspiracy that would only bring bad experiences for Zimbabweans.
In November 2017, after Mnangagwa was fired by Mugabe as vice president, Oxford Associate Professor of African Politics, Blessing Miles Tendi, wrote that the former’s relationship with the United Kingdom may have contributed to his dismissal.
Professor Tendi listed how British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Catriona Laing had openly supported Mnangagwa by allegedly helping him secure an international financial bailout as part of a plan to re-engage the country and facilitate his rise.
He also noted the hypocrisy by the British government which openly opposed Mugabe for the violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms but supported Mnangagwa who is accused of masterminding the Gukurahundi atrocities during his tenure as Minister of State Security in the Prime Minister’s Office and the 2008 election violence.
