By Gifford Mehluli Sibanda
GUKURAHUNDI is a national catastrophe that requires a national approach.
An acknowledgement by perpetrators tops the list of what needs to be done. All that is wrong with Zimbabwe’s politics has its roots in Gukurahundi.
The political violence that has been part of our politics has its roots in Gukurahundi. The perpetrators have learnt from the Gukurahundi script.
I recently visited my village after sometime in the city. To get the news of what happened in my absence, I visited my uncle who is my neighbour.
He is very close to me and with him no discussion is out of bounds.
On a lighter note, he said I had gained weight and he could outpace me in a running challenge.
I challenged him for a 100m run to our home which he agreed.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
As we run home, I took the lead before I fell and scratched my knees.
As he lifted me up, jokingly he said: “You are lucky this is not the 1980s. With an injury on your knees, you will be accused of being a dissident trainee and shot at point-blank.”
I was shocked. I couldn’t understand how he came up with that comment.
Perhaps, it was a clever way of asking me about the progress of the work on the Gukurahundi memorial plaques in Bhalagwe in Kezi.
It hit me hard as he narrated to me the painful moments he and the community endured during the Gukurahundi times.
Thousands of people accused of being dissidents were massacred in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces by the North Korea-trained Fifth Brigade. Our people endured a painful period of torture, rape, displacement and forced disappearances during this genocide perpetrated by the government.
My uncle was young during the Gukurahundi era but he vividly remembers the heinous activities carried out by government.
He recounted how women were raped, people set on fire, others killed and buried in shallow graves.
He said people were forced to sing praising the now late former President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF.
He said it was painful to recount how people endured arbitrary beatings for belonging to the Ndebele tribe, suffered from kwashiorkor and other diseases due to malnutrition as a result of neglect by the government of the day.
He said Gukurahundi haunted him, especially the sight of his sister — my mother — coming home crying, swollen and blood flowing on her face, a sign of thorough beating.
It was in January 1985 and my mother was five months pregnant with me.
His brothers had fled to the city as they feared for their lives.
The pain in the eyes of my uncle, who could not hold his tears as they trickled down his chin, was visible.
He continued to recount the January 1985 incident about my mother.
By the way, then, my mother was a young lady and my father a very promising footballer. They both were not involved in politics in any way.
I was just a five-month-old foetus, four months before I could see the world; I wasn’t a politician either.
I asked myself loudly: Why did the government of Mugabe want to kill me, in my mother’s womb, before I was even born? How was I an enemy before I had come out to see the world and make a choice? Why was my existence criminalised even before birth to the extent that there was an attempt to kill both me and my mother? Neither I nor my uncle had answers to that, only the perpetrator has.
Mugabe is dead, and the answers to my questions await the steps President Emmerson Mnangagwa will take to mollify Gukurahundi victims and put the whole issue to rest.
Mnangagwa was then Security minister who ordered the detention of Ndebele public figures.
His statements at the time, that are well documented, showed that he was a person dedicated to seeing the success of the Gukurahundi genocide through the Fifth Brigade and other State security organs.
He was a key member of the Joint Operations Command, a national committee comprising security chiefs and ministers put in place to brief the President.
It was this meeting that received the report on the progress of Gukurahundi, on how many people were being killed, how many women were being bayoneted, raped, abused, how many people were dehumanised, displaced and forcibly made to disappear.
This happened every week for five years. Mugabe, other military commanders and enablers chose to die with this vital information.
Mnangagwa remains with all answers now.
This is not the figment of my imagination as a tour to Tsholotsho district reveals that the majority of schools that existed then have shallow mass graves in them or nearby.
In Plumtree, not so long ago, an attempt to build a road revealed a shallow mass grave.
A visit to Lupane revealed a population living in fear of finding its voice for justice.
Insuza people will never forget the atrocities they witnessed.
The situation was not any better in Nkosikazi and other areas in Bubi district.
Today, Belmont township in Nkayi stands where a Gukurahundi concentration camp stood.
The people of the Midlands were not spared, Ndebele families were selected, tortured and killed for belonging to the wrong tribe.
Violence in general and the Gukurahundi genocide in particular have been used as a tool for the retention of political power, and they will continue to be used until the Gukurahundi issue is dealt with and justice is served.
The unextrajudicial detentions and governance through statutory instruments bear resemblance to a state of emergency, so a real political solution for a peaceful and reconciled State has to have a foundation in a Gukurahundi solution.
Having gone throughout Matabeleland and the Midlands doing Gukurahundi memorialisation, we have seen the use of State apparatus to scuttle these initiatives in communities, including the stealing of plaques and a police ban on meetings in the communities.
The composition of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission is an insult to the victims, and the commission has been undermined by the same government through the creation of bodies that duplicate its mandate.
Do you think this government is committed to finding a solution to the Gukurahundi genocide?
There is no prize for guessing the answer is a bold no. What seems central to the plan of the perpetrators is that the survivors of Gukurahundi and those who were toddlers then, who witnessed it, must all die and the genocide be forgotten. That is the reason there is a war on instruments of memorialisation and those involved in it.
The world over and throughout history, true solutions for genocide can only be found when the perpetrators are out of power. It is my considered view that an avenue to attain people’s power through democratic means is necessary now, and in the not-so-distant future, and must be about justice and truth for Gukurahundi.
As a nation, we need to find this truth and justice while the faces and foot soldiers of Gukurahundi are still alive. We owe this work to the departed 20 000 or more innocent victims of the genocide and thousands who survived.
The composition of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission is an insult to the victims, and the commission has been undermined by the same government through the creation of bodies that duplicate its mandate.
Do you think this government is committed to finding a solution to the Gukurahundi genocide?
There is no prize for guessing the answer is a bold no. What seems central to the plan of the perpetrators is that the survivors of Gukurahundi and those who were toddlers then, who witnessed it, must all die and the genocide be forgotten. That is the reason there is a war on instruments of memorialisation and those involved in it.
The world over and throughout history, true solutions for genocide can only be found when the perpetrators are out of power. It is my considered view that an avenue to attain people’s power through democratic means is necessary now, and in the not-so-distant future, and must be about justice and truth for Gukurahundi.
As a nation, we need to find this truth and justice while the faces and foot soldiers of Gukurahundi are still alive. We owe this work to the departed 20 000 or more innocent victims of the genocide and thousands who survived.
