Howzit

I was sent this by email from Zimbabwe - and it looks at what I believe to be a smoking gun.

Mugabe is of Malwian extraction and therefore is not qualified to stand as President of Zimbabwe. And I have indicated this many time on my main page.

I am glad that someone has finally written so well about the question over Mugabe’s ancestry. God knows how many people he has cheated out of some sort of ‘home’ country.

When I arrived in the UK, I was on a Zimbabwean passport with a British Right of Abode. The passport was due to run out with 2 years and I wrote away to the Zimbabwean authorities asking what I needed to do to extend my Zimbabwean passport.

I received a letter from the authorities telling me that I was born in the UK, and therefore I had ‘cheated’ the Zimbabwean authorities into issuing me a passport! The fact that I had lived there from 1964 through 1998 seemed to have escaped their attention.

Within a week I had applied for and been issued a British passport.

“ZimDaily exclusively revealed on Wednesday last week that Mugabe is a Zimbabwean of Malawian origin. His father, Masuzyo Gabriel Matibili, was an immigrant worker.

Many ZimDaily readers missed the point: it is not about Mugabe’s Malawian roots but about the Bill he assented to and made it a law that stripped millions of Zimbabweans of their citizenship and their right to vote in the crucial 2000 and 2002 plebiscites.

The government enacted a law late in 1999 just before the crucial 2000 parliamentary elections which saw the opposition shocking ZANU PF by snatching 57 seats in the 120-seat chamber, the first time an opposition party came close to toppling Mugabe since independence in 1980.

Had more than six million Zimbabweans, both black and white of foreign descent, voted, the scales could have tilted the other way.

That was at the height of the chaotic land grab that saw more than five thousand white commercial farmers forcibly moved off their farms ostensibly to parcel them out to their cronies in ZANU PF and government.

White-owned businesses were taken over, too, in the name of black empowerment.

Zimbabweans of foreign descent, who formed the bulk of those working on farms and in mines were the most affected. They suddenly found themselves homeless and jobless and had they been allowed to vote, they could have “voted with their stomachs”, sending ZANU PF crashing out.

Comments from ZimDaily readers worldwide ranged from sober to extreme hatred of anything from Malawi.

“What is wrong with Malawians?” asked a reader after a flurry of innuendos and derogatory remarks about Mugabe and his ancestry.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong about Malawi or anything from Malawi. In fact, we have had many Zimbabweans of Malawian descent who have done extremely well in their various endeavours.

The late finance ministers Bernard Chidzero and Ariston Chambati were Zimbabweans of Malawian descent. So too were broadcasters Brighton Matewere and the late Benedict Mazonde and renowned journalist Bill Saidi, now deputy editor of The Standard newspaper. The list is endless.

Besides Bantu migration, Malawi was part of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland federation. In other words, it was one country. Therefore, there was free movement of people within the federation.

What many readers were against are the double standards applied by the Mugabe regime. Unless, they said, many disenfranchised Zimbabweans living within and without our borders were allowed to vote and have their citizenship restored, then Mugabe cannot legitimately continue running this country as he is also a Zimbabwean of foreign descent. Unless, of course, he renounces his claim to Malawian citizenship.

That also applies to his nephews and niece - Patrick, Robert and Sarudzai Zhuwao - Sabina Mugabe’s children. Their father was a Mozambican immigrant worker.

However, a brawl between imbibers at an elite Harare sports club on Wednesday night takes the biscuit: it was sparked by a “You are as ugly as Robert Mugabe” slur. Apparently, the victim was a Zimbabwean of Malawian descent.”

I would also add my agreement to there being nothing wrong with Malawi. I visited their many times whilst I worked for a transport company in Zimbabwe, and found it to be an incredibly beautiful country and found the people to be honest and true.

But my heart still belongs to Zimbabwe…

Take care.

‘debvhu