THE ZIMBABWE
PEACE PROJECT
The late Joshua Nkomo
When the rights of the
individual – even of a few
individuals – are suppressed,
there can be not respect for
the rights of the people as a
whole.
In his book, The Story of My Life, first
published in 1984, the late nationalist and
Vice President of Zimbabwe, Joshua Mqabuko
Nyongolo Nkomo, wrote,
“What matters is that the leadership should
encourage diverse opinions to be heard – the
opinions of different social groups, different
economic
interests,
different
social
groups…But far too many leaders have come
to believe that their own interests and those
of the people are the same. They confuse selfpreservation with national security, and to
preserve their own regimes throw the
safeguards of the law and of individuals’ rights
out of the window. When the rights of the
individual – even of a few individuals – are
suppressed, there can be not respect for the
rights of the people as a whole. The State
begins to govern against its citizens, rather
than with them…”
36 years after this was written, and more than
21 years after Nkomo’s death, the dream of a
leadership that musters the collective energy
of Zimbabweans towards development, is still
to be realised.
What exists is, in the words of Nkomo, energy
being “dissipated by government which seems
to feel the need to exercise a partisan
authority rather than to mobilise the national
will.”
This is all evident in the human rights
violations the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP)
recorded throughout the month of November,
which confirm a growing pattern of
government’s disregard of the socioeconomic, and civil and political rights of
ordinary citizens.
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