This open letter is addressed to the November 2017 coup plotters and junior army officers. The first section of the letter is directed at the former and the concluding part to the latter.
According to the press conference that you held just before the 2017 coup, it is evident that many of you were senior Army Commanders, who are also ex-combatants and members of ZANU PF. Therefore, there is virtually no difference between ZANU PF and the military.
You make great efforts to convince Zimbabweans that you freed the country from colonialism, but it has become clear to many of us that you abuse power in-order to continue with a more vicious form of colonialism fronted by black people such as yourselves.
In 2017 you manipulated Zimbabweans to support your coup on the pretext that you were restoring the legacy of the liberation struggle yet you ended up putting the country in a messy constitutional crisis where it is now effectively under a military dictatorship.
You imposed on us the so-called new dispensation which is abusing the judiciary, abducting, torturing and imprisoning opposition party members, innocent civilians, journalist and anybody else that might hold a view that differs from theirs.
It has finally dawned on most Zimbabweans that the liberation struggle legacy that you restored was nothing but violence and looting,
Your own history of violence and primitive accumulation is comparable to that of white Rhodesians, but morally far more reprehensible. The wartime pungwe beatings, extra judicial killings, and sexual abuse of women.
Post-independence and wartime political assassinations, the Nhari rebellion killings, early 1980’s genocide in Matabeleland, Chiadzwa killings, and most recently the massacre of unarmed protestors in August 2018.
Theft of the country’s minerals through military companies and other means, the disproportionately large pieces of land you grabbed from white settler farmers and allocated to yourselves, your relatives and sycophants.
The senior ministerial and public sector jobs you dished out to yourselves despite being unqualified and inexperienced to hold such positions.
The consequences are all too clear to see, a violent, intolerant, corrupt society that reaps were it never sowed, parastatals that have since closed or are lying derelict, town locations that are sinking in raw sewage, power shortages etc.
There is clearly no freedom and there are no heroes or liberators in a country that fails to feed itself, a country where hospitals have become places where sick people go to die, a country where city dwellers fetch water from bush pump boreholes, a country that goes for close to twenty four hours per day without electricity, a country where the best brains thought it best to become refugees in foreign lands where they are abused and dehumanised, working dirty and dangerous jobs because their own country has nothing to offer them.
In the New Zimbabwe, bygones shall not be bygones but the beginning of justice for all. The main priority shall be to ensure that you repay the disproportionate power, money and wealth that you appropriated to yourselves.
One former opposition leader, in his naivety and attempt to appease you, promised that he would not make any major changes to the military.
He cowardly succumbed to the late Douglas Nyikayaramba’s threat that military generals would not salute anyone without liberation struggle credentials.
In the New Zimbabwe, the people shall make and un-make kings.
Many of you will probably be dead by then because senior army commanders that died in the seven-year period stretching from the 2017 coup up 2024 are way far more than the number that died in fifty years, starting from the liberation war in the 1970’s up to the coup.
Sad as it may, but death shall not absolve you nor shall it stop justice.
If indeed the conditions that justified you to mount a coup against Robert Mugabe still exists, it follows that it would be legally admissible (see justice George Chiweshe’s ruling on case number HC 10820/17 – concerning the matter of Joseph Evurath Sibanda and Leonard Leonard Chikomba v President of the Republic of Zimbabwe – Robert Gabriel Mugabe N.O.; Minister of Defence, Commander of the Defence Forces of Zimbabwe and the Attorney-General of Zimbabwe) to launch another coup or military assisted transition as you called it but it is very unlikely that Zimbabweans will ever support a coup orchestrated by the very same people who abused their goodwill in November 2017.
My guess is that another military assisted transition can only be successful if mounted by junior military officers because firstly, they are neither ex-combatants nor beneficiaries of your “independent Zimbabwe” and lastly, they are less likely to be ZANU PF.
If they are brave enough to consider it, they should be aware of the people’s demands.
Since there is no meaningful opposition party or dissident ZANU PF faction to articulate the people’s demands, I will articulate them through the proposed Zimbabwe People’s Charter, which is a set of twenty practical demands aimed at reclaiming the power, money and wealth which was either stolen or unjustly acquired by those who claim to have liberated Zimbabwe and its people from colonial rule, colonialists, extractive multinational corporations and religious leaders. Equally important, it proposes reparation of victims of excessive power in all its forms.
Here is a draft copy of the proposed Zimbabwe People’s Charter;
- All Zimbabwe army personnel above the age of 50 years must be retired with immediate effect and not replaced until the size of the army is 50% of what it was in November 2017.
- All A2 farm owners must be residents at their farms and must not be in full-time employment elsewhere.
- The country must debate and set A2 farm sizes to about 150 arable hectares in regions one to three, the first 150ha surrounding the farmhouse must be offered to the owner before the land redistribution.
- All A2 farms that have not been used to full capacity in the past 10 years must be immediately reallocated but with preference given to people with traceable previous commercial farming experience regardless of their race.
- Municipal land exceeding 20ha (owned by individuals or registered companies that employ less than 100 permanent staff) must be forfeited to the city council.
- 99% annual taxation must be charged on the market value of all valuable domestic movable and immovable property that exceeds four municipal houses and four cars.
- Monthly bedroom tax must be charged on all house rooms exceeding 15 unless the property is registered and operating as a business with auditable tax returns.
- All beneficiaries of the war victim’s compensation fund must be reassessed by an independent organisation. Funds inappropriately disbursed must be repaid in US dollars or equivalent in both movable and immovable property.
- All property lost through the indigenisation policies or other means other than a fair market exchange must be returned to its original owners by those who either stole it or benefited by other means.
- 99% income tax must be charged on a fraction of salaries or wages that exceed $60 000 per year backdated to 2009. $60 000 is 10 times more than the amount required to support a family of five.
- Constitutional amendment must follow constitutional enactment procedures.
- All (past and present) donations or payments made to churches, faith and traditional healers must be refundable when demanded by the donor/payer at any time.
- Compulsory employment of all skilled and qualified disabled people by all Zimbabwe stock exchange listed companies in proportion to their market capitalisation.
- Multiple directorships of publicly listed companies and other corporations with an annual turnover that exceeds $1-million must be banned.
- Traditional leadership — chiefs and headmen — must be subject to elections every 10 years.
- All university degrees awarded by unregistered foreign and local universities and honorary degrees awarded by Zimbabwean universities after 2000 must be respectively invalidated and withdrawn.
- The Chihambakwe commission Gukurahundi report and the Entumbane report written by Justice Enoch Dumbutshena must be publicised to allow victims to decide on appropriate reparation.
- A conditional grant must be paid to people over the age of 65; orphans, unemployed disabled and all inhabitants of region five regardless of citizenship five years after the 1923 general elections.
- Zimbabwe insurance companies must be compelled to comply with the Justice Smith commission, which established that they owe pensioners $4-billion and which they have refused to pay out.
- Displaced Zimbabweans in the diaspora must be allowed to vote
Some might rightly argue that the ideas shared in this piece are the reasons why the military and ZANU PF are run by geriatrics who will hold on to power until death due to fear of retribution.
In my considered view, the proposed Zimbabwe People’s Charter is not about retribution, but the long overdue, inescapable justice, one that will never be sought at the Hague unless those who invaded Iraqi and Afghanistan, bombed Libya, murdered Qaddafi and even today unashamedly support and fund genocide in Palestine face justice.
In some progressive countries, an opinion piece such as this one would generate debate and possibly a powerful political movement but sadly in Zimbabwe it could lead to abduction, imprisonment, torture or death but if the idea of taking back our stolen inheritance takes hold in the people’s hearts and minds, I will welcome my death and suffering a thousand times.
