ZIMBABWE today celebrates the signing of the 1987 Unity Accord to end Gukurahundi, but critics are sceptical that traditional leaders are the best foot forward in finding closure to the massacres.
At least 20 000 civilians were killed in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces before the Unity Accord was signed by PF Zapu and Zanu PF in 1987.
Since then, December 22 has been celebrated as Unity Day.
However, decades after the signing of the Unity Accord, there has been no closure to the mass killings with victims still crying for compensation and justice.
In 2019, President Emmerson Mnangagwa opened public debate on Gukurahundi culminating in an agreement where traditional leaders were tasked to lead public hearings on the sensitive subject.
The public hearings begin early next year.
Former human rights commissioner Japhet Ndabeni Ncube, however, cast doubt that chiefs have the expertise to conduct the hearings.
“The whole thing is a non-starter. We need an independent body to deal with this matter,” Ncube said, adding that chiefs were captured by the State.
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“Chiefs are given cars and other benefits by the government now they are given laptops. Their hands are tied, they cannot do anything.
“We cannot expect them to say anything negative about the government.”
Ibhetshu LikaZulu secretary-general Mbuso Fuzwayo, said Gukurahundi could not be reduced to a cultural event without a truth-telling process.
“I think it would be wrong for anyone and chiefs to reduce it to a cultural thing,” Fuzwayo said.
“How do you restore the dignity of women who were raped, without the participation of a perpetrator which is the State in truth telling?
“How do you deal with the issue of enforced disappearances without bringing the person behind those enforced disappearances?”
Chief Mathema said the process had to be inclusive.
“If the process is done above board, it should not exclude voices of the affected people,” Mathema said.
Meanwhile, ZIPRA spokesperson Buster Magwizi has urged fellow ex-combatants to wear black in memory of their departed colleagues who were killed by the Fifth Brigade during Gukurahundi.
“Today we are not celebrating the Unity Day but to us it is a day of mourning the more than 20 000 innocent people who were massacred during the Gukurahundi era,” said Magwizi.
ZIPRA was the military wing of Zapu during the war of independence. The majority of Gukurahundi victims were ZPRA and Zapu members.
