Disability Talk with Mukoma A: The Joshua Malinga that I know

Following the death of Honourable Malinga who was a special advisor on disability to the Zimbabwean President, a lot of positive things have been said about how he impacted the development of disability rights in Zimbabwe and abroad. My shoes are too small to discuss things at that level but I will instead reflect on my personal interaction with him.

Wena mfana! I want to tell you a little joke”, said Honourable Malinga one day during lunch when I had invited him to be the guest of honour in the International Day for Persons with disabilities which I had organised together with the Umzingwane community.

“Kuthiwa there was a pool which when people would go there, they would be healed of their sicknesses and if they had disabilities they would come out without disabilities”, continued Hon Malinga “A number of people went there and among them was a blind person a deaf person and a crippled person”. (I am using the terms he was using in that conversation). “When the blind person went into the pool, he came back with his eyes and able to see. The deaf person went there and came back able to hear and speak. The crippled person went in and came back with his wheelchair having new tires.” I laughed heartily at this joke but beyond it, I understood Hon Malinga to be saying that he never thought about his condition as being reversable but instead, he thought more about the availability of reasonable accommodation and accessibility of the environment to persons with disabilities.

But how did I really come to know of Hon Malinga? When I was at the law school, I began to take an active interest in disability and disability rights. My undergraduate dissertation was actually on the law and disability in Zimbabwe. At that time however, I was of the view that organisations of and for persons with disabilities were part of the problem and I thought I would not join any of them. Of course, I later changed my thinking when I started working but that is a discussion for another day. In 2009, I left my job in government and joined the Zimbabwe National League of the blind as a disability rights and advocacy officer. I was working under the able leadership of Ishmael Zhou who is currently the male Senator representing persons with disabilities. I then, due to disinformation and misinformation believed that people like Hon Malinga were actually responsible for the stagnation we experienced in disability development in Zimbabwe. I falsely attributed a fatal error in the 17^th amendment to the then Lancaster constitution which had put “Physical disability” as one of the grounds of prohibition of discrimination to him. I reasoned that since he was close to the powers that be and since he had a physical impairment, he could have advised them to capture it as physical disability. Furthermore, the 17^th amendment is the one that ushered in the senate, an issue that split the MDC but that’s a story which belongs elsewhere. However, in 2005, flowing from that amendment, Hon Malinga was appointed to be one of the senators. When I worked in Bulawayo, my boss, Mr. Zhou realised that I was totally enthusiastic but thoroughly misinformed.

One day, when we were talking about disability rights and the disability movement, he suggested that I should learn from elders including Hon Malinga. First of all, I was terribly unease with that suggestion because of what I then thought based on what I had heard about him. Mr. Zhou, sensing my discomfort, advised that it was important for young people like me to be open-minded. He started telling me a new kind of Malinga’s history which I had never come across. He called Hon Malinga and arranged a meeting between me and Hon Malinga which Hon Malinga convened happily at his residence. That was the beginning of a very fruitful journey for me in disability rights. Not only did I learn that Hon Malinga had nothing to do with the errors in both the 17^th amendment and even the 2013 constitution on disability, but that we had so many things in common in our fight for a better livelihood of persons with disabilities in Zimbabwe.

In 2012, the second all stakeholders’ conference on the constitution was convened. I was fortunate to be one of the delegates coming from Bulawayo and Hon Malinga was also present. There came a time when the facilitators indicated that we should break away into groups and the groups were thematic in nature. However, the challenge was that all the groups were going to conduct discussions in venues which were inaccessible to persons using wheelchairs and crutches. I recall that some of our colleagues with disabilities went to the venues but I remained together with Hon Malinga and a lot of other comrades both departed and living. Hon malinga who usually treated me as his son but often called me his young brother told me how impressed he was with the fact that I had not only refused to go upstairs but had mobilised others to understand that our issue as persons with disabilities is that of discrimination and once one has discriminated those with physical impairments, they have discriminated all. When Miss Jessy Majome, who was one of the members of parliament and a key figure in COPAC passed through, we sort audience with her and I remember Hon Malinga whispering to me “Wena mfana khuluma laye hanti lafunda okufanayo plus nguwe olelizwi eliya khatshana. (Young man, speak to her. Isn’t it you learnt the same thing and your voice is loud enough to go far). We eventually got the permission to discuss disability as a cross-cutting issue in our group which remained downstairs and we came up with perhaps the most comprehensive paper in that conference. All the leadership present, including Hon Malinga asked me to present on behalf of the group.

When I decided to go to school for my masters in 2014, hon Malinga was one of my greatest cheer leaders. One day he engaged me in a very interesting subject of which one is better to say between disabled person or person with a disability. Although I will not bother you with the contents of that discussion, suffice it to say that such a discussion prepared me for the British system where the term “disabled people” is preferred to the term “people with disabilities”.

I came back from school and we continued working together in a lot of areas. In 2018, I suppose some of you know how someone from the protocol department in the office of the President threw me out of a meeting between the President and leaders of persons with disabilities. Of course, the meeting had been organised by Hon Malinga but I suppose he had nothing to do with my being thrown out. A year after, there was another meeting between the first lady and persons with disabilities. I was not invited and I did not even attend it. However, after the meeting and certain things that took place there, I felt compelled to write a letter in which I made salutations to the one I called “disability leader”. Anyone who read that letter would immediately know who it was addressed to and some of my friends thought I was putting myself in serious trouble. Deep down my heart, I knew that the Hon Malinga I knew, would not take offense to the kind of constructive criticism I had offered. To prove that my instincts were very correct, a month or so later, someone from Hon Malinga’s office reached out asking me to attend the disability expo and make a presentation on disability rights. At that expo, we met and talked about a lot of things.

My final reflection about Hon Malinga is that he was unapologetic about his being ZANU PF but he understood the power of diversity. He made it so easy for people like me to work with him. Whenever I visited him at his home, office or hotel room, he did not only make me feel at home but he made me be at home. Heroes do not die. They Sleep. Lala ngoxholo baba Malinga. If ever there is anything you taught me, it is that persons with disabilities must never allow anyone to think for them or decide for them. It won’t be easy, it has never meant to be easy but we shall fight to the sweet end.