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Mambo to meet BCC over roads

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BULAWAYO City fathers have agreed to meet the Mambo dynasty which is protesting council’s decision not to rename some roads in the city after its Lozwi kings.

BULAWAYO City fathers have agreed to meet the Mambo dynasty which is protesting council’s decision not to rename some roads in the city after its Lozwi kings.

BY NQOBANI NDLOVU

The Mambo dynasty is at loggerheads with council for overlooking Lozwi kings in the renaming of city roads, and has threatened to pull down King Lobengula Street plaques in protest if their demands are not met. Mambo king, Mike Moyo questioned council’s wisdom in among others naming a street after King Mzilikazi whom he argued “…is already honoured through a suburb, school and art centre …We don’t see why one of the Lozwi kings should not have the Mzilikazi Street named after him.

“We have been subject to colonisation first by Mzilikazi and then the whites. Mzilikazi oppressed us, creating a caste system in which the Nguni were regarded as first class citizens while those incorporated along the way were in the second stratum” Moyo expressed “utter dismay” and disappointment at the local authority for sidelining the Mambo dynasty, before calling on the government to intervene and “stop this diabolical” exercise. A latest council report of the general purposes committee shows that the local authority has agreed to meet the Mambo dynasty.

“The town clerk (Christopher Dube) reported (March 4, 2020) that he had received the attached letter from the Mambo Royal Council dated February 12, 2020. Since the reception of the attached letter, the Mambo dynasty was keen to meet councillors and discuss the matter further,” the report read.

“It was, therefore, resolved that the request by the Mambo dynasty to engage councillors on the naming of the city’s major streets be acceded to, and authority be granted to members of the general purposes committee to meet the Mambo dynasty on a mutually convenient date.”

The two parties have not met, while a date for the meeting is yet to be set, the Southern Eye was told yesterday.

In November last year, the government renamed some major roads and buildings across the country.

The Bulawayo City Council immediately countered the central government’s decision by renaming the city’s streets after luminaries such as the late Zipra commander Lookout Masuku and others from the Matabeleland region. The Mambo Dynasty Trust, which was formed in July 2015, has been pushing for the revival of the Mambo kingdom which collapsed in 1835. However, cultural observers have alleged the Mambo dynasty was reactionary and meant to challenge the revival of the Ndebele monarchy.