The TRUE AFRICA 100 is our list of innovators, opinion-formers, game-changers, pioneers, dreamers and mavericks who we feel are shaping the Africa of today.
Nkosilathi Emmanuel Moyo is a human-rights activist from Zimbabwe. Nkosilathi is the co-founder and director of Zimbabwe Organization For Youth In Politics (ZOYP). Created in 2010, the organisation is a community-orientated project situated in his hometown Kwekwe. The purpose of the organisation is to train young people and human-rights defenders to use peaceful means to provoke political change. Nkosilathi has also written books including Zimbabwe: A Revolution Waiting To Happen and Robert Mugabe: from freedom fighter to the People’s Enemy which were bestsellers in Zimbabwe.
Nkosilathi wrote his third book during a stay at human-rights activist shelter, Shelter City in Utrecht in the Netherlands. The book is called The Rise of Grace Mugabe- The Fall of ZANU PF: Truth telling book about Africa’s upcoming first female Dictator. Nkosilathi went to the shelter because of the intimidation and threats he suffered due to his outspoken criticisms of the Zimbabwean government. Nkosilathi strives to promote democracy globally.
What led you to create your organisation, ZOYP and how has it evolved?
It was after I realised that young people were being used (or rather abused) and manipulated by politicians for their selfish partisan interests. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o put it in his moral fable book Matigari:
‘Young people were just being used as the pots that cooks the food but never eats it.’
They were doing all the donkey work in politics i.e. perpetrating political violence. But when it came to decision and policy-making, they were left out. The youth voice in politics is muted. After realising this, I sat down with my friend Jasper Maposa and other young people in the small mining town of Kwekwe and we discussed this problem.
We realised we needed to have a youth organisation which focused on nurturing and developing young people who have political aspirations, amplifying their voice and helping them demand their space. This is how the Zimbabwe Organization For The Youth In Politics (ZOYP) was formed in 2010. Today ZOYP reaches out to more than 2,500 youths in Kwekwe and its surrounding rural communities.
Could you tell me about your recent book on Grace Mugabe? Is she really Africa’s next dictator?
First I would like to say that I write in my personal capacity; my writings do not reflect the position of ZOYP or any other civic group I work with. Back to your question this book is my third. It looks at the de facto president of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe.
It is crystal-clear that President Mugabe is preparing Grace to be the next President of Zimbabwe.
I have called her de facto in the sense that she now controls everything in Zimbabwe. The octogenarian ruler President Robert Mugabe (at 91 years old) is no longer capable of doing his duties well and leaves all the power in his wife’s hands. Unfortunately Grace is empty-headed, brutal, extremely lavish and extravagant as well as immature. She is always on TV spitting venom at her perceived enemies. If you hear her speak, she sounds like a high-school girl and not like the mother of the Zimbabwean nation.
It is crystal clear that President Mugabe is preparing her to be the next president of Zimbabwe. She is even going around doing star rallies across the country to meet the people in preparation of the 2018 polls which she will dismally lose unless she rigs the elections like her husband usually does.
She has already shown us her true colours. That she is very brutal, even more so than Robert Mugabe himself, and like the title of the book indeed she is Africa’s upcoming first female dictator.
Who is your African of the year?
President Goodluck Jonathan.
After losing the elections, he called the winner President Buhari to the state house; gave him a tour of it, a present; and then left in a very peaceful transition. That is what President Robert Mugabe failed to do in 2008 when he lost the elections. Instead he imposed himself after killing hundreds of innocent civilians in a bid to reinstate himself. So I salute men like President Goodluck Jonathan. They’re what Africa needs.
Check out more at nkosilathiemmanuelmoyo.org
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