Hands off our valiant revolutionary women
ZIMBABWE is a blessed nation, with gallant heroines like Victoria Fikile Chitepo, Ruth Nomonde Chinamano, Sarah Francesca Mugabe, Vivian Mwashita and Joanna Nkomo (affectionately known as Mama Mafuyana).
These heroines contributed immensely towards the liberation of this nation.
Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri is one of the few surviving liberation war cadres who, from the days of the struggle up to now, continue to fight for the empowerment of women and national development.
In a world where it has become a fashionable thing to under-appreciate the living, only to sing praises after one is deceased, this piece seeks to celebrate living revolutionary heroines, particularly Cde Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri.
Having received military training at a very tender age, Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri fought the Rhodesian white colonialists in the Second Chimurenga under Zanu-PF’s military wing Zanla, which was commanded by the great late General Josiah Magama Tongogara.
After independence, she carried on with her revolutionary work in the political arena as she was secretary in the President’s office in the 1980s and attained her first ministerial role in the late 90s.
She has made history by becoming the first-ever female cadre to be chairperson of Zanu-PF.
Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri will forever be a revolutionary role model and source of inspiration, not only to womanhood, but to Zimbabweans, the black community and many women beyond our borders.
Just like other illustrious African women like the late Mama Winnie Mandela and Josina Muthemba Machel, Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri’s outstanding attributes in the pre and post-colonial epochs leave footprints which cannot be wiped by anything, including denigrating and malicious behavioural schemes by fugitives such as Jonathan Moyo.
It is not only shameful, but disgraceful, that a supposedly decorated professor driven by political bitterness plunges into a futile exercise of demeaning a celebrated national heroine.
In an attempt to besmirch Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri, Moyo resorted to social media, gushing out vitriol.
His recent targets have also been women like Tsitsi Masiyiwa.
In his social media post, Moyo claimed that the decorated war heroine could not have been stopped from writing a book on Gen Tongogagra because she has no capacity of doing so.
Perhaps the fugitive Moyo needs to be reminded that the same person that he is besmirching today was his university colleague in early 80 when the two were students at the University of Southern California.
Southern California is a revered institution in America and could surely have not admitted Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri if she wasn’t intellectually gifted as the disgraced Moyo would want us to believe.
We are, however, not surprised by Moyo’s rants as he seems to have a penchant of objectifying women as instruments of political ridicule.
Many will remember how he ridiculed the former First Lady when she expressed willingness to embrace President Mnangagwa and the new political dispensation.
It is sad and unacceptable that Moyo chooses to take a swipe at a female cadre, one who endured the hardships of military training and the revolutionary struggle; the same struggle he chose to run away from.
Such misogyny is unacceptable, especially on an illustrious woman who since independence has remained consistent in her defence of the motherland, overcoming all sorts of odds.
In comparison with Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri, Moyo pales into a miserable figure devoid of social skills needed to exist in any political organisation.
He has consistently exhibited disturbing histrionic traits and is at worst self-destructing.
Operation Restore Legacy has relegated the perennial flip-flopper into political humpty-dumpty that thrives on abusing social media to vent bitterness and anger.
While we can accept that a defeated or bitter person can act rancorously and choleric, we find it extremely repugnant that he dares besmirch one of our national heroines who still bear the institutional memory of our nation’s foundational ethos. Lonias Rozvi Majoni.