The son of the revered late veteran nationalist and Vice President Joshua Nkomo, Sibangilizwe, said it is imperative to include the people in national dialogue for it to bring national unity.
Nkomo said though the 1987 Unity Accord succeeded in ending the Gukurahundi brutalities that were going on during the early to mid-1980s, the agreement did not bring real national unity.
He further claimed that even the Government of National Unity (GNU) failed because political party-led unity initiatives are only for political expediency. Said Nkomo:
The Unity Accord was a stop-gap measure to stop the killings, it was not a wedding during a good time but during sad times, it worked during that sad period to stop the killings. Unity will never come from parties but will only become real through the efforts of the general public.
Somehow people have to come together but not under a political outfit as has been the case. Political party unity-led initiatives are not working. We saw that even with the GNU, it failed.
Political party-led unity initiatives are only for political expediency, just like in the GNU where it worked for a while to calm people before the eating started and they forgot the people. The word unity is being abused for political expediency.
Nkomo called for a complete overhaul of Zimbabwe’s political system saying the system we have is a continuation of the murderous Rhodesian regime. He added:
The truth is a complete overhaul of the system is critical at the moment. The system we have now is just a continuation of the … Mugabe and colonial era.
Nothing has changed so far, only the faces have changed. Forty years on, Zimbabwe is still a troubled country.