"When considering the question should we remember? it is very important to firstly ask, has any victim forgotten? Could they ever forget? Secondly we should ask, who wants to forget? Who benefits when the atrocities stay silent in the past?"
(Roberto Cabrera - Guatemalan human rights activist)
Gukurahundi is a Shona word which means “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains”. It was also the name given to a special force (Fifth Brigade) of 3500 mainly ex-Zanla guerrillas which was outside the normal army command structure and loyal to the ruling Zanu-PF party. Together with the police and CIO, Fifth Brigade arrested, tortured, “disappeared” and killed thousands of civilians in Matabeleland and Midlands between 1982 and 1988.
The only known account of what happened during Gukurahundi was published in 1997 by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJP) and the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF). Their ground-breaking report entitled Breaking the Silence: Building True Peace, while quite authoritative in its detail and diligence, only tells a small part of Gukurahundi.
