Gukurahundi Reconciliation Urged
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
New bill aims to address emotional scars of mass killings, but some say it doesn’t go far enough. By Fiso Dingaan in Lupane, Matabeleland (AR No. 109, 18-Apr-07)
Fighting hard to hold back tears, 52-year-old Ernest Ngwenya points to three mounds of soil crudely marked with stones and burnt logs at a clearing two kilometres from his homestead.
The contorted face tells of the emotional turmoil Ngwenya is battling to control. When he eventually manages to speak, his voice is full of pain and grief.
“I have waited 24 years for this day to grieve openly with my relatives and to show them where I buried our father, brother and uncle who were killed during Gukurahundi,” he said.
“All along, I was afraid that if I talked about something like this, more of my relatives would be beaten or killed - just like what happened during Gukurahundi.”
The government’s bloody suppression of opposition in southern Zimbabwe after independence in 1980 is known as the Gukurahundi, or “the rains that sweep away the chaff”.
The North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade killed an estimated 20,000 people, ostensibly for being dissidents. Many were buried in unmarked graves or thrown down disused mines. But survivors say the killings were systematic and targeted at Zapu office bearers and community leaders such as teachers, nurses and headmen.
Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has not publicly apologised for the massacres except to say the atrocities were “a moment of madness”.
More than two decades later, life is back to normal in Matabeleland and the Midlands. But the relative calm is deceptive.