The ghost and legacy of Gukurahundi haunt Zimbabwe: Only a total break with the past, based on Justice, will save it.
By MAGGEMM: 27/5/08
It is arguably without doubt that the most defining chapter of post-independence Zimbabwe is the genocide in Matebeleland and Midlands, where up to 20,000 people were massacred by government troops. Dubbed “Gukurahundi”, this genocide has bequeathed to successive generations a legacy of volatile ethnic relations, mistrust, violence, murder and impunity - all of which must be broken once and for all, if the country is to enjoy real, sustainable peace. Of all these, violence, murder and impunity have been the most recurrent and devastating, whose effects linger on in Zimbabwean society up to this day. More than 30 people are so far reported to have died in a new wave of state terror in Mashonaland rural areas, which some commentators have gone as far as calling it genocide. MAGGEMM unreservedly condemns these attacks by state-sponsored agents on defenceless civilians and calls on the government to stop them.
The crisis in Zimbabwe shows no sign of abating, there doesn’t seem to be light at the end of the tunnel for the millions of Zimbabweans suffering under the ruthless dictatorship of Robert Mugabe. Diplomatic and other efforts by African countries do not seem to be yielding any results, as far as ending the repression and suffering of Zimbabweans is concerned. Zanu-Pf’s systematic brutalisation of Zimbabweans continues to fly in the face of these diplomatic efforts. This state of affairs therefore begs the question: why is the government doing this to its own people? Apart from the political reasons which MAGGEMM will leave for others to grapple with, the answer lies in the unacknowledged past that is Gukurahundi. According to press reports, some of the political master-minders of the current wave of terror are the same people who master-minded Gukurahundi in the 1980s. Having bludgeoned Pf-Zapu into submission and the people of Matebeleland into silence and fear, they will have reckoned that if they can get away with a terror campaign of the size and devastation of Gukurahundi, they are now beyond reproach. We must not allow them to get away with these crimes against humanity.
The tactics used by the state against Zimbabwean people today are drawn from the 1980s Gukurahundi manual. Back then and in order to justify its campaign of terror against the people of Matebeleland, the government had to create a new “enemy” in the person of Joshua Nkomo. Having declared Nkomo state enemy number one, hatred against him was whipped up to frenzied levels. Public hate speeches by government officials referred to Nkomo and his supporters as “snakes” whose heads had to be crushed. Hutus in Rwanda used this type of language before killing up to a million Tutsis, whom they called “cockroaches”. Still, identifying Joshua Nkomo as the enemy was not enough – the plan needed to be turned into a “people’s project” if it was to gain wider acceptance and legitimacy within Zimbabwean society. What better way, therefore, to give it legitimacy than give it a traditional Shona term, ‘Gukurahundi’? The stage was set for a “final” assault on Nkomo and his supporters.
Fast-forward to 2008 and once again, the government describes the rape, murder and disenfranchisement of Zimbabweans as a “people’s project” they call “Hondo Yeminda”. Twinning this “project’” with history and Chimurenga nationalism shows how much Zanu-Pf is still mired in a war mentality, even though the country is not involved in any war, in the true sense of the word. The emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and other opposition forces has once again forced Zanu-Pf to resort to war tactics against defenceless civilians. Thousands of unemployed youths - most of whom have little or no understanding of the so-called ‘war’ beyond their immediate concerns for jobs and money – have been manipulated into terrorising the opposition.
So it is that almost 30 years since Gukurahundi, there is still a strong taboo against discussing this dark chapter of Zimbabwean history. For the people of Matebeleland - first as victims of Gukurahundi and second as according to social custom - there cannot begin to be a serious conversation without proper acknowledgement of the genocide as a crime against their humanity.
For Zanu-Pf and its followers, Gukurahundi is a non-issue, laid to rest by the “Unity Accord” signed between Zanu-Pf and Joshua Nkomo in 1987. Thus, instead of seeing the “Unity Accord” as a means to an end, to Zanu-Pf it became an end in itself which then explains why the party refuses to officially acknowledge Gukurahundi. Zanu-PF has closed all public space, making sure that no meaningful debate on Gukurahundi can ever take place. Its leaders have tied the party’s interests to those of the rest of the general population. Fearing possible prosecution for crimes against humanity, the ruling elite has packaged and presented its [survival] interests in such a way that they are now synonymous with the public or national interest. Thus discussions about Gukurahundi are seen as a threat to public/national order with the result that most Zimbabweans now believe that to revisit the Gukurahundi genocide would be to destabilise the country. Zanu-Pf could not have wanted it any other way.
The main opposition MDC party is itself divided and so has no coherent policy on Gukurahundi. Each of the two factions gives its own policy positions, which range from Morgan Tswangirai’s amnesty offer to David Coltart’s preference of a South Africa style Truth and Reconciliation exercise. Deep divisions within the MDC have made it almost impossible for the party to agree on the basic terms of a Gukurahundi policy framework. Whatever policy positions political parties adopt on Gukurahundi, those policies must be informed by the direct input of the victims if they are going to be meaningful and effective. As French essayist and moralist Joseph Joubert (1754 – 1824) said “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
Gukurahundi is without doubt the millstone hanging round Zimbabwe’s neck. It is a festering wound that must be cleansed and healed if true peace is to be established in Zimbabwe. As Desmond Tutu also said “no divided country has a future if it insists on going forward without truth and forgiveness.” We would also add justice.
