MDC politician, Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga has criticised President Robert Mugabe for unnecessarily stirring tribal tensions in the country through his recent appointment of a Shona vice chancellor to lead Lupane State University.

Professor Pardon Kuipa was early this month appointed to the job by President Mugabe.

Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga’s full speach below:

The first issue that I want to deal with is the issue around ethnicity, the politics of ethnicity. You can only push a country if everybody feels they are part of that nation. We have gotten to a point in this country where we do not feel bad about calling each other a minority group. There is no minority group but are marginalised communities. There are marginalised communities because we continue to refuse to put them at the centre of where things are happening Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, each time you raise this issue, it is turned around to be a leash of tribalism. Mr. Speaker Sir, I brought a motion here that was speaking about the issue around representation in parastatals and the problem that arises with that representation. Before the week was over, what happened? In Lupane, when we were now appointing a Vice Chancellor, who do we pick? We pick somebody who is coming from Mashonaland to become the Vice Chancellor of Matebeleland.

There is no economy that has ever succeeded when you have a people who do not feel to be part of that economy, it has never happened. This is why I started by raising the issue of the fact that, the silence of women in here should be a cause for concern. It means that they are completely out of this debate and feel that there is no point in raising it.

The issue of the politics of ethnicity is a reality in this country and if we do not deal with it, we will continue to have problems. It is not by accident and the President of this country has continued to speak about it.

He has continued to speak about places like Bulawayo for example, being dead economically. Where he has not gone that far, is to begin to say, but why is it dead? It is dead because those people in that particular area do not believe they are part of this country, they do not believe they are part of Zimbabwe. It is not only in Bulawayo, it is places like Masvingo and Manicaland.

When we begin to have one particular class of people who think that they are the only dominating tribe or class in every sphere of everything that goes on, then we have a problem Mr. Speaker Sir. Until we deal with the issue around ethnicity, we have a problem. Our problem as Zimbabweans, and I look around all these people, when we are walking out – I have only called you hon. members because you love being called hon. members. However, I have never heard President Mugabe call himself, His Excellency, he calls himself Robert Gabriel Mugabe, but people here are so desperate to be called honourable, so I will call you honourable. It is sad that you want to be called honourable in an economy we have right now – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear] – The hon. members that are sitting here when you go out there – if it is about challenging a particular person like we now have and removing him from a farm, they use none other than the issue of ethnicity. Even if you are here in Mashonaland, somebody has a farm in Mashonaland West, that person will be thrown out because they happen to be Karanga. If you have a farm.