Delayed Joshua Nkomo honour hypocritical?

The reasons behind the official opening of the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Airport and the unveiling of a statue in honour of the late Vice President last year, after so many years of hesitation from the Zanu PF leader Robert Mugabe are questionable.

Could it be that the Zanu PF leader and his party, who had viciously attacked ZAPU and its leader Joshua Nkomo in the 1980s calling them dissidents, had suddenly tuned a new leaf or the move to honour Nkomo is a ploy to win the hearts of Matabeleland people so they could support Zanupf.

I feel that Mugabe’s late honour of Nkomo is suspicious considering that if the move was sincere, Nkomo should have been honoured long ago not only in Bulawayo but across the country as well.

The government provoked fury in 2010 when it attempted to erect Nkomo’s statue at the Karigamombe Building in Harare, a name which loosely translates to ‘Felling the Bull’.

The government backed off following protests from the Nkomo family and ZAPU leaders, who felt that the erection of the statue there was a celebration of Nkomo’s incarceration and defeat by Mugabe.

Furthermore exploring the Nkomo projects even deeply, one gets a feeling that there is an underlying disrespect for the demands and recommendations for the Nkomo projects from both the people of Matabeleland and those of the Nkomo Family itself.

The Nkomo family following the removal of the Nkomo statue in 2011 from the then Main Street was quoted in the then NewsDay Southern Edition as having said the statue did not capture the late Vice President in his entirety and was small. however years later upon the release of the what was dubbed "new" Nkomo statue coming along with renaming of Main Street to Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street, the same small statue was used but with just a bigger platform to put it on.

Pictures of the then Nkomo statue and the "new" one will reveal that it is pretty much the same statue to the naked eye. Pictured below are the "old" and the "new" statues. the old being above the new one. One is left wondering why it took the government 2 more years to finally relaunch the statue when the largest change was the platform it rests upon. Indeed the marginalisation of the regions projects is noted in this microcosm of the Nkomo statue.