1. “[Joshua Nkomo] proposed that Mr Mugabe conferred with a wide spectrum of society to include representatives from the churches, trade unions, commerce, industry, political parties, the chiefs, former combatants, the armed services, student bodies and others” Star, 20/08/1983 
2. The Star reported Nkomo as proposing “an “Of the Peoples” conference” & telling Mugabe that “it was not too late to rescue the situation, if we can only act resolutely with vision, courage and determination”. Nkomo had spent 5 months in exile in London.
3. I have posted this as a reminder to conveners of efforts to resolve the current political crisis that the wheel doesn’t have to be reinvented. We have been here before. Just a little dig into the archives can help. Incidentally, some of the actors then, like ED are still here.
4. Today, we hear calls for “all-stakeholders’ conference” & similar terms. It’s a shame that much of our history, including post-independence history, is not taught critically in schools. So we continue to wave old things as inventions. And we also repeat old errors.
5. I have lately been studying newpaper reports from the 80s. It reminds me how long ago it was but also how fresh its stories & themes are. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine how someone who was in government in those years can actually claim to have solutions 40 years later.
6. I don’t know how many countries are still governed by people who were in Cabinet in the 1980s. Most of the politicians & administrators of that era are long retired or deceased. They have passed on the baton. Change is a necessary element in evolution. The unchanging suffer.
7. What is utterly shocking is you have seemingly smart people who believe that these men from the 1980s who have known no other life than waking up each day as government ministers/officials; who co-authored the catastrophe could actually solve it? It’s infantile fantasy.
