Jonathan Moyo attacks Bulawayo Mayor David Coltart for not being fluent in Ndebele language

Exiled former Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education Jonathan Moyo has blasted the newly elected mayor of Bulawayo David Coltart for not being fluent in siNdebele.

“Now, you @DavidColtart, if the @Our_DA’s youthful Chris Pappas who is vying to be KZN’s Premier in SA’s 2024 elections can do it, and fluently speak the Zulu language of the local community he wants to lead like this, why can’t you do it in Bulawayo where you remain illiterate in siNdebele; after having been born there 66 years ago, and after having practiced law there for 40 years?

“Who were your clients in all those 40 years?

“It’s hard to find any reason you can’t do it like young Pappas, save that okusalayo yikuthi you’re in fact contemptuous of the local community in Bulawayo and its language, notwithstanding your pretenses to the contrary.

“Phansi nge DA phansi,” he says.

The Citizens Coalition for Change’s Coltart was recently elected Bulawayo City mayor, much to the displeasure of the ruling ZANU PF party.

ZANU PF claims that Coltart was imposed by the main opposition party CCC leader Nelson Chamisa.

During campaigns, Chamisa paraded Coltart as the incoming mayor for the country’s second capital city, this indeed came to pass.

Like ZANU PF, Moyo also implied that Coltart was imposed by Chamisa:

“Historically, the practice – particularly common in opposition ranks since the rise of the MDC in 2000 – of Harare party bigwigs choosing their handpicked surrogates to run the affairs of urban municipalities around the country on its behalf is rooted in the colonial era, when big bosses in Salisbury used to appoint white Native Commissioners to run “native” affairs!”

Zwnews