Mugabe under pressure to order exhumation of Gukurahundi victims

HARARE - Following the exhumation and reburial of the remains of Zimbabwe's liberation war victims in Manicaland, President Mugabe is  now under pressure to order the exhumation of thousands of innocent civilians murdered during the Gukurahundi massacres in the Matabeleland and Midlands.

The exhumation project has been politicised by ZANU and its supporters, this has invoked bitter memories of the 1970s conflict, as well as the Gukurahundi massacres.

Analysts told the reporters this last week that Mugabe's party had made a huge play on the pre-1980 massacres to garner sympathy from the people ahead of expected presidential and general elections later this year.

More than 20 000 innocent people are believed to have been murdered by members of the North Korea-trained Fifth Brigade, with Mugabe's government claiming at the time that they wanted to crush a rebellion by  supposed dissidents  in  the early 1980s.

Human rights organisations and victims of the Gukurahundi massacres have been demanding for the past three decades the exhumation of bodies believed to have been buried in mass graves around the Matabeleland regions and the Midlands Province.

On his part, Mugabe has steadfastly refused to both compensate and apologise for what has since been described as a genocide – arguing that he was doing this in the interest of national unity and the country.

While there is virtually no single family in Zimbabwe that was unaffected by the bitter war against Ian Smith's regime pre-1980, Zanu PF has sought to project itself as the sole structure concerned about the decent reburial of the country's fallen heroes.

But Edgar Tekere, a former freedom fighter and Zanu PF secretary general, has attacked the beleaguered party's moves to buy political mileage out of the Mashonaland Central reburial programme – at the same time neglecting the more recent killings such as the Gukurahundi massacres.

"That issue (Gukurahundi) was swept under the carpet. But it must be an open issue that our nation must know about. The Catholics did a very comprehensive report about this and the nation should receive that report. Others don't want the report to be out because they know they will be exposed," Tekere told the reporters last week, referring to the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace report on the mid 1980s disturbances.

He added: "Mass graves must be exhumed when they are discovered. This (exhumation of mass graves) must not be done for political reasons."

Many other observers, while welcoming the exhumation exercise, took exception with the fact that Zanu PF leaders knew about the existence of several mass and shallow graves since independence and yet chose to do nothing about it until now.

With the former ruling party in full election mode, a predictable electioneering and propaganda pattern has emerged – in the hope that such tactics will earn the party votes.

Mthwakazi Liberation Front leader Maxwell Mnkandla said his party was concerned about Zanu PF plans to exhume and re-bury victims of colonial war crimes, while ignoring those killed and maimed by Gukurahundi.

"Gukurahundi is the vehicle ZANU PF used to subjugate this region and the feelings of its people do not matter. I am not surprised that they do not even acknowledge that Matabeleland has more people who were thrown alive into mines by the Fifth Brigade, Central Intelligence Organisation, Support Unit and the ZANU youth brigade… than those killed by Smith," Mnkandla said, adding that all they were asking for were dignified burials for the dead.

Methuseli Moyo, spokesman for the revived Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), said plans to rebury the dead "were commendable", but ZAPU was worried about Mugabe's failure to acknowledge that there were far more victims of his own "anti–terror campaigns" lying in unmarked graves all over the Midlands and Matabeleland.

"Smith's war was bad but Gukurahundi was worse because it was black on black genocide. While Smith never denied that his troops committed atrocities… we have a leader and commander-in-chief of an army that killed defenceless civilians in an act of sheer genocide (and he) does not want to acknowledge that fact," he said.

While most of those killed were the late vice president Joshua Nkomo's supporters – opposed to Zanu PF's expedient socialism and one-party state quest – Moyo challenged Mugabe and his government to help national healing by ensuring that "high-ranking perpetrators of the massacres" were brought to book.

Human rights organisations say the largest concentration of victims lie in Matobo District's Bhalagwe area.

Moses Mzila–Ndlovu, a top Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-N) official and Organ on National Healing co–minister, said while he had only heard about the reburial programme on national television, government was also missing an opportunity to foster unity by embarking on partisan and selective commemorations of chosen war victims.

"The national healing process cannot happen because it is being undermined in many ways by the same parties that are supposed to be contributing to it. I will not be surprised if the victims of Gukurahundi, who have been denied everything, from a simple acknowledgement of the genocide to justice, take this as the worst pinch of salt ever added onto their emotional injuries.

"I hope by doing this the government is signaling that it will not interfere if we do the same with the victims of Gukurahundi," Mzila-Ndlovu said.

Zanu PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo refused to comment on the issue.

"It is their opinion," Gumbo said.

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