Reflections on partition after Matabeleland’s recent call

Today we published a piece of news emerging from Zimbabwe, that an Ndebele regional party, the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) has called for the secession of Matabeleland from Zimbabwe. This goes back to grievances over an ethnic cleansing campaign by the Shona-led ZANU-PF called the Gukurahundi, and subsequent political grievances. This has been picked up by some foreign commentators, but I think it is worth taking some pause to consider the angles.

MRP

The (MRP) was founded in 2014 in Bulawayo, and seeks the independence of the Matabeleland and Midlands regions under the name of the pre-colonial Mthwakazi kingdom that encompassed around 20 tribes, primarily Ndebele-speaking peoples. The party is led by Mqondisi Moyo, who has remained in control despite an unsuccessful internal challenge in 2023. They have focused a great deal on establishing branches among exile communities, with continued international lobbying efforts directed at bodies such as the UN and SADC, which is an understandable approach, since they have faced arrest in Zimbabwe several times, in a country not known for its respect of freedom of expression or electoral fairness.

MRP still has no parliamentary or local council seats and has achieved only negligible electoral results, with 1,641 votes nationally in the 2023 elections, but it is hard to tell if this means anything in the context of Zimbabwean elections. With little funding, it contests elections rather sparingly, and mainly at a local or regional level. Exact membership numbers are not publicly disclosed, but the party appears to have a small, dedicated core of activists rather than a mass following. Past petition drives have gathered several thousand signatures, but its social media reach remains modest (again, this is Zimbabwe).

Territorial issues

I don’t think partition is as feasible as one might think, for both economic reasons and ethnopolitical reasons, and could be an invitation to disaster due to grudges bourn between the groups. I say this as someone who is a hearty proponent of secession, even as one who considers Ndebele self-determination to be a good thing. But just as a matter of course, I think it’s worth it to pause and consider a few things.

I include here two maps which combine the South African ethnolinguistic map with Zimbabwe’s for reference, though the Zim maps leave much to be desired Matabeleland is rather multi-ethnic. Several groups are shared with South Africa, including a scattering of Xhosa and Zulu.

I have played with this idea before with South Africa, but it isn’t an easy fix when you get up north, and complicated questions emerge at a certain point. Like, do the Venda share a closer affinity with the Shona or with their neighbours? Do the Pedi share a closer affinity with the Tswana, the Sotho, or their neighbours? These are not easy questions.

We’ve already had to partition municipalities up north (see Collins Chabane LM) over ethnic grievances. This is why even if I enjoy the exercise, I think it’s far more realistic to look at existing national movements and work from there – pursuing natural cleavages, so to speak.

Aside from political difficulties, Matabeleland is landlocked and poor. You could maybe see Matabeleland, Masvingo, Limpopo, northern Mpumalanga and Gauteng as a more natural unit, but this is a far more complicated political exercise than reality could entertain, and would require a cataclysm to emerge.

I say this in the vein of balancing economic needs with ethnic representation for groups too small to govern themselves as a modern nation-state. In the map below, I played with pairing wealthy Gauteng with the Limpopo rural hinterland, or foregoing irredentist claims from the Cape over Port Elizabeth in order to give the Xhosa a functioning port.

But even then, some divisions will struggle to make much sense, minorities are unavoidable, and the enormous numbers of Shona migrants not shown on the map, numbering over a million, will severely complicate matters. Reality often has surprises and irrational contingencies which emerge from the political process, and trying to rationalise things too much can create problems.

Basically, I say voluntary partition is a good idea in principle, but it is better to wait for people to demand it and build it themselves before you go meddling in their affairs, and in the case of the MRP in Zimbabwe, I think one should be extremely cautious in one’s optimism.

SA vs Zim

Zimbabwe is a repressive state unafraid of committing acts of ethnically-motivated violence. And the unitary nature of the state and its severe corruption and concentration of power means that a referendum is rather unlikely. If the MRP become successful, they will face assassination attempts, violent repression and persecution, and may have to resort to armed resistance, which is unlikely to work in their favour without foreign backing, and if that were to occur, the spillover into South Africa, where a large native contingent of ethnic Ndebele and an equally large Shona diaspora could end up clashing over perceived support for the movement.

South Africa has three viable secession movements in theory – the Cape, KwaZulu, and Afrikaner enclaves. The enclaves will take time and effort to build and consolidate, and there will then be a watershed moment when they must broker an autonomy arrangement as a discontiguous network of little city-states with more power on the ground than on paper (if they are willing). The Cape may appeal to formal legal structures, since South Africa still has the rule of law, but the support must be built, and cannot simply be lobbied for, because the main body of representatives there, the DA, despise the idea. KwaZulu independence is popular according to professional polls, but the risk of violence is great enough that most leaders won’t touch it, and so de facto autonomy will have to be built up over years before it can happen.

Matabeleland however, might never see the light of day, and if it does, will be born battered, bruised, and landlocked.