CHIEF Fortune Charumbira’s utterances ahead of the Gukurahundi hearings cannot go unchallenged lest leaders from the region are accused of betraying those who were murdered, raped, tortured and maimed by perpetrators during the disturbances, Zapu president Sibangilizwe Nkomo has said.
Charumbira touched off a storm last week when he said the disturbances that rocked the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces in the 1980s in which thousands were massacred by North Korea-trained soldiers was not genocide.
More than 20 000 people in the two Matabeleland provinces and the Midlands were massacred, according to independent estimates.
However, Nkomo described Charumbira as a Gukurahundi apologist.
“Does chief Charumbira even understand the definition of genocide? The simplest and basic non-technical and non-legalistic definition as found in the Merriam Webster dictionary says, ‘It is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group’.
“For chief Charumbira to further claim that the incident happened when the soldiers were in pursuit of dissidents, with a few women and children killed as collateral damage, is not only a misrepresentation of facts, but also nauseatingly disingenuous and disrespectful. History does not lie and sooner or later it embarrasses those who survive by lying,” he said.
Nkomo said over the years there were concerted efforts aimed at trivialising, downplaying the gravity and depth of the emotive Gukurahundi issue the objective being to cover up for the heinous atrocities, trivialise the matter and reduce to the minimum the numbers of people reportedly massacred.
“In an effort to buy time and with the hope of evading justice, the perpetrator keeps changing goal posts. Firstly, by concealing the Chihambakwe report and other findings by independent media and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe.
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“Secondly, by appointing twice a benign and ineffective National Peace and Reconciliation Commission. Now, there is the spurious Mnangagwa-controlled chiefs’ ‘reconciliation’ charade.
“The cat has been out of the bag since the unofficial lifting of the lid on the Chihambakwe report, several other pieces of evidence are now readily available in the public domain, needless to mention the victims, the affected and the eye-witnesses who are demanding to meet the perpetrator face to face.”
Nkomo said this was evidence pointing to the genocide in Matabeleland and Midlands.
“Chief Charumbira cannot single-handedly sweep the genocide into the mass graves. I wonder if chief Charumbira and other chiefs sleep soundly in their beds at night, knowing that there are thousands of souls crying in the wilderness, knowing full well that they are being used by the perpetrator of genocide, recurrent oppression and violence, to further his own interests and postpone justice for as long as possible,” he said.
Meanwhile, some Gukurahundi victims, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, expressed concern over the sincerity of the government in resolving the matter.
One of the victims said he had to seek the services of a lawyer after their father was killed during the Gukurahundi to have him declared dead to obtain this death certificate.
