IT’S 42 years now since a dark cloud of Gukurahundi engulfed Matabeleland and parts of Midlands provinces, in which the Zanu PF government, then led by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, unleashed North Korea-trained 5 Brigade soldiers, ostensibly to halt the ex-Zipra dissident menace, yet exterminating innocent civilians, who included women and children born or unborn.
The phenomenon was not only into killings, but a cocktail of stories of the atrocities are told, such as the raping of women and girls, forcing fathers to sleep with their daughters or daughters-in-law, forcing people to pound their infants in pounding bowls, forcing them to cook their children’s corpses and eat them, even forcing people to bury their loved ones alive.
Many were displaced and some disappeared without trace.
Gukurahundi was carried out from 1982 to 1987.
In her doctoral research titled, The Gukurahundi ‘Genocide’: Memory and Justice in Independent Zimbabwe (2019) done with the University of Cape Town, Nompilo Ndlovu noted that the 5 Brigade unit sought to find 400 armed dissidents, but their excessively violent actions ultimately resulted in 20 000 civilians being killed, thousands tortured and/or made to disappear as well as 400 000 persons being brought to the brink of starvation due to targeted food limitations within the Matabeleland and Midlands regions.
“The story of Gukurahundi is complex and multifaceted, but significantly, it was about the political annihilation of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu), as an opposition party, as well as its supporters predominantly from these targeted provinces. Essentially, the key aspect that this study speaks to is: How has State denial and produced silences of Gukurahundi shaped survivor memories across generations; and contributed to justice in independent Zimbabwe?” Ndlovu asked.
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“Amid produced silences, Gukurahundi memory remains existent over years after the occurrence and is nuanced in various ways.”
Mugabe at some point referred to the Gukurahundi period as a “moment of madness” when he was pressured to speak on the atrocities.
He refused to acknowledge the emotive issue as genocide. Despite having appointed commissions such as the Chihambakwe and Dumbutshena commissions of inquiry to probe and come up with reports on the atrocities, he, instead, classified the reports.
To date, they have never been made public.
Only the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJPZ) report came out exposing that over 20 000 people were killed during Gukurahundi.
The word Gukurahundi is derived from a Shona-language term which loosely translates to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains”.
Hence in truth, Gukurahundi was a tribal operation meant to annihilate the Ndebele tribe for political expediency.
But the Zanu PF government and its supporters will always argue that Gukurahundi was a necessary evil to get rid of the ex-Zipra dissident menace.
After many years of bickering over bringing closure to the issue, with Mugabe’s government refusing to consider the cries of the affected, the so-called second republic under the President Emmerson Mnangagwa administration seems to have opened platforms to discuss the emotive issue in efforts to address it and heal the nation from the historical trauma.
He has since tasked chiefs in Matabeleland to consult with their communities and compile a report on Gukurahundi, which some sections of society view as a positive step towards addressing the issue.
Many people from the affected areas view the move as a decoy to hoodwink them into believing that something is being done, yet everything will just be shelved like what happened with the previous commissions’ findings.
For political commentator Abigail Mupambi, it’s a good idea that the chiefs are leading the process.
She says the atrocities affected many communities and in particular brought about tension and tampered with the social fabric right at community level.
“Only the custodians of the people at that level can appreciate and understand the need to re-build communities based on truth, reconciliation and healing. I foresee identification and the opening up of the real and direct victims of Gukurahundi ahead of the activists and other players who, of course, played a crucial role over the years to call for this process,” Mupambi said.
“It looks like this issue took about four decades to take such a centre stage. Indeed, this issue should have gotten prompt attention earlier to allow the majority of victims to come out and narrate or open up to the facts around this issue. Some victims obviously have naturally passed on over this period, some may, due to a prolonged period, miss out certain events. Meanwhile, it is crucial for such a process to rest its base on accuracy.”
She said it was, however, important to note that the very same issue has managed to remain topical and today, we hope with this process coming in, there may be an appreciation and closure reached between the involved parties.
For South Africa-based political analyst Nhlanhla Moses Ncube, the process is already skewed for the purpose of protecting the perpetrators.
He thinks government should have gathered the views of the victims and survivors on how the process should be done instead of imposing a programme with a predetermined outcome.
“The absence of truth telling does not help the credibility of the process either. This process will not yield any useful outcome save to highlight the issue of Gukurahundi, which would be a welcome element considering that it has been talked about sparingly,” Ncube said.
“I foresee a situation in which the process will be Zanunised, both directly and indirectly. The leading role in the person of Mnangagwa will ensure that Zanu PF members and supporters will suppress the input of the victims.
“State propaganda will indirectly influence the outcome. The use of toned-down diction by Zanu PF-controlled media will also head-clamp the initiative. However, whatever will happen, will ensure that the process falls short of meeting international standards with regard to genocides.”
Ncube’s view is that the programme should not be controlled by the perpetrators and their political parties, especially Zanu PF.
“A bottom-up approach boasting inclusion of a commission comprising unbiased international experts would do. I think the current approach will predictably fall headlong,” he said.
“Though late, the genocide should be resolved and the genocidaires must be exposed. There is no alternative to that. Unfortunately, it is being attended to in a daringly faulty manner because the perpetrators are trying to paint themselves positively for personal expedience.”
For Bulawayo-based educationist and political analyst, Thembelani Dube, the consultations are a direct ownership of atrocities by the perpetrator and are a welcome development.
To him, what is likely to be witnessed is the victims and traumatised communities demanding that the perpetrator be availed for them to get closure through truth-telling and acknowledgement of what happened by those who were at the helm and foot soldiers at the time.
The proper procedure should be truth-telling for reconciliation to occur. Time is always right as long as there has never been anyone coming forth to own up to the atrocious events that took place regardless of the time they were committed, Dube believes.
“The time is also right for the perpetrators who have been carrying the burden for too long. Both the victimised and the victimiser have been longing for the process to start rolling, albeit its shortcomings.”
Matabeleland academic William Jethro Mpofu believes the programme is an attempt by government to silence the region and close the Gukurahundi tragedy, which he described as an epistemicide.
“Right now, the biggest risk we are facing is that of epistemicide (destruction of knowledge about the Gukurahundi) and obscurantism (deliberately preventing the Gukurahundi atrocities from being known by the world). These are the twin evils that are staring at us right now,” he said.
For another Bulawayo-based educationist and political commentator Ben Moyo, the government-led process is flawed because it says nothing about perpetrators, but gives mandate to chiefs, which he says the Constitution does not give any power to do that.
“The Traditional Leaders Act does not empower chiefs to do that? Only the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission was the one mandated to do that. If its mandate had expired, the government should have renewed its mandate,” Moyo said.
He notes that chiefs are recipients of government salaries and cannot bite the hand that feeds them.
Moyo says the process has a number of flaws, declaring that it belongs to Mnangagwa.
He says the perpetrator cannot lead the process since he was never close to the sufferings that the people encountered.
“I also foresee victims and survivors breaking down during the hearings and what remains is whether the process will have the mechanism to handle such situations. Also the fact that the process leaves out Midlands and urban areas makes it incomplete as many people were affected in those areas,” Moyo said.
“I also foresee the report after these consultations being classified like the previous ones.”
The media has been shut out of the process and this is seen as one of the pointers that the process is not sincere.
Since the time of Gukurahundi, Moyo says, the media has not been honest enough to investigate the genocide in the manner it was orchestrated.
“I believe that the media should open up now to carry out case studies from the victims of Gukurahundi. The mass graves that we know, some of them have not been identified. We have people who were murdered in cold blood and we need justice for those people. We need scholarships for this region, (where education) was delayed by 10 years. We need an affirmative action programme on the economic front because we lost out in the 10 years,” Moyo said.
The media will have to navigate its way on how to cover the process.
In the meantime, it is already at the forefront engaging various communities that are willing to tell their stories about Gukurahundi with the help of pressure groups such as Ibhetshu LikaZulu and various human rights groups.
The Gukurahundi issue must be resolved once and for all so that the country can move forward together.
Spiritualists believe that the decline in the state of the country’s economy and infrastructure is because of our failure to resolve such emotive issues.