Magwegwe MP Felix Magalela Sibanda (MDC-T) claims he has received death threats from unidentified people who accused him of continuously raising the emotive Gukurahundi debate and advocating for compensation of the victims of the atrocities.
Sibanda, who heads a Bulawayo-based human rights pressure group, Post-Independence Survival Trust, said two unidentified men driving an unregistered black car stalked him twice last week after he announced plans to introduce a private members Bill to force Parliament to enact legislation to provide for compensation of victims of the Gukurahundi massacres.
From the 20th of this month, there are two men who have been stalking me, said Sibanda, adding he would not be cowed into submission.
They have appeared at my house in a black car with no number plates and when I approached them, they questioned who I was to talk for the Ndebele people. After that, when I was going to a supermarket, they gestured to me that they would cut my throat. They said my days were numbered because I was talking about what I was not meant to talk about.
I wanted to inform the police, but they never take such issues seriously. However, I am determined and I will not be deterred from fighting for what I think is right for the people of Midlands and Matabeleland. My mission is correct and justified.
As it is, some are living with disabilities which were sustained during the massacres, he said. Sibanda said MDC-T Chief Whip Innocent Gonese had agreed to push for the private members Bill to compensate the estimated 20 000 victims of the 1980s atrocities.
In 2006, then independent MP for Tsholotsho Jonathan Moyo drafted a Gukurahundi National Memorial Bill, which would have criminalised the denial of the atrocities, and established a Gukurahundi National Memorial shrine, fund and board, but the proposed Bill never reached Parliament although it was widely circulated among MPs.
According to Moyo, who is now a Zanu PF politburo member, the proposed Bill was meant to develop and maintain a credible record of the Gukurahundi atrocities and plan and implement national programmes aimed at eliminating any tension or divisions caused by or related to the atrocities.
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Two weeks ago, Zanu PFs Bulawayo governor Cain Mathema stirred a hornets nest when he dismissed the Gukurahundi compensation demands, saying the 1987 Unity Accord between PF Zapu and Zanu PF had atoned for the atrocities.
Last year, Defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa declared that the Matabeleland killings were a closed chapter.
Gukurahundi has remained an emotive issue among villagers, politicians and civic society groups in Midlands and Matabeleland where mostly innocent villagers were targeted by a North Korean-trained military crack team, Fifth Brigade, between 1982 and 1987.
