by Tawanda Musariri

Mthwakazi Republic Party, a secessionist political party headquartered in Bulawayo is polishing up plans to launch a church in Bulawayo in the near future.

The Church has been named Mthwakazi Church of God. The church is designed to whip emotion supporting the party doctrine and ideology among its faithful, an insider has confided to Harare Post. Mthwakazi seeks to establish an exclusive Ndebele state out of Matabeleland, Bulawayo and part of the Midlands Province.

According to the party, the claimed territory is theirs and they should have territorial sovereignty over it. The party seeks to unite Ndebeles against non-Ndebeles and membership to the party is not open to non-Ndebeles.

According to word coming from the party members, like the party, the church will only be open to Ndebele people alone.

The xenophobic party is led by Mqondisi Moyo, a former Government employee based in Bulawayo. The party which is to be launched in Bulawayo in October is expected to be led by a pro-secessionist South African clergyman, Reverend Makhelithi Ndiweni who is expected to launch the church in Bulawayo.

The Church is expected to launch branches in South Africa where a sizeable number of Ndebele people are. Ndebeles are close cousins of the Zulu tribe and their languages share up to 95 percent of words and phonetic structure.

Ndebeles arrived in the land north of the Limpopo in 1838, now Zimbabwe under the leadership of then Chief Mzilikazi who was fleeing the terror of Zulu King Tshaka in Zululand, now South Africa. Mzilikazi later became King after establishing his own state away from Zululand. On their way, the Ndebele fleeing party’s well trained fighters conquered, raided and assimilated some weaker tribes on their way, converting them into pseudo Ndebeles where Mqondisi Moyo hails from.

According to the Ndebele legend, only a few people from the Khumalo, Ndiweni and a handful other clans make up the real Ndebele peoples. Mzilikazi hailed from the Khumalo clan.

A majority of Ndebele speaking peoples whose surnames are derived from their totems like ncube (Monkey); mpofu (Eland); Nyathi (Buffalo); Ndlovu (Elephant) and Moyo ([a bull’s] heart) among others are all but Shona speaking people who were assimilated into the Ndebele clan by might and have no paternal Ndebele blood.

The irony of the MRP is that it disregards non-Ndebele people from getting membership yet their president is an assimilate from the Shona tribe. The party which thrives on tribalism, regionalism and xenophobia is largely ignored in the second largest city.  

Prior to the Ndebele arrival, the land they occupy today was occupied by the Changamire State, a Shona speaking tribe. This is the same land the MRP is intending to establish their exclusive state.