MRP Courts EU Over Mthwakazi State “Restoration”

The opposition Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) has pleaded with the European Union Observer Mission to the 23 August elections to help it establish an independent Mthwakazi State, separate from Zimbabwe.

Early this year, MRP petitioned several institutions, among them the EU, as it sought 20 000 signatures of people from the Matabeleland region in a bid to push for Mthwakazi State “restoration”.

MRP president Mqondisi Moyo directed part of his speech during a rally at Bulawayo’s Stanley Square last week to the EU observers who attended the rally, asking them to assist Mthwakazi attain self-rule. Said Moyo:

This petition is inspired by the standing resolution of the UN (United Nations) with regard 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.

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.

He said before the merging of Matabeleland and Mashonaland to create present-day Zimbabwe, there existed a Mthwakazi State.

Moyo said the colonisation of Mthwakazi in the late 19th century was separate from Mashonaland or Zimbabwe because it was still a sovereign State when the latter was colonised.

He told EU observers that the British Crown also legalised the continued occupation of Mthwakazi illegally by proclaiming the Matabeleland Order-in-Council on July 19, 1894. The MRP leader said:

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.

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.

Moyo said Mthwakazi had suffered 130 years of occupation, dehumanisation and oppression.

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