Opinion / Columnist
Tribalists using Gukurahundi to gain political mileage
16 Sep 2016 at 06:38hrs | Views
I think people must learn to put to rest conflict matters like Ian Smith's raids on Victory camp, Chimoio camp and many others including this Gukurahundi issue.
Unfortunately when it comes to the latter, tribalists are now dangerously trying to gain political mileage as if that conflict just arose because government wanted to eliminate the Ndebeles. And foreign powers are really enjoying this.
It is common knowledge that when these nationalists came out of detention they were still rivals, rejecting Muzorewa, one forming the ANC ZIMBABWE, and the other remaining ZANU.
ANC ZIM attempted to continue talks with Smith, failed, and decided to do whatZanu was doing, armed struggle.
Incidentally, at the height of the war, Smith flew into Zambia and conducted some talks with nationalists there.
These did not achieve anything because Nyerere exposed them. Furthermore, lets not forget the idea of a "zero hour", later, the arms caches.
Then later on, the conflict which was ended by the Unity Accord of 1987. It is most surprising that nobody talks much of mass graves in Zambia and Mozambique, but instead people choose to tribalise Gukurahundi when in fact that was actually a war resulting in rivalry of the two war parties.
To make matters worse, someone is muting a day dream idea of a so called Mthwakazi state!
Good luck in all these endeavours.
Unfortunately when it comes to the latter, tribalists are now dangerously trying to gain political mileage as if that conflict just arose because government wanted to eliminate the Ndebeles. And foreign powers are really enjoying this.
It is common knowledge that when these nationalists came out of detention they were still rivals, rejecting Muzorewa, one forming the ANC ZIMBABWE, and the other remaining ZANU.
ANC ZIM attempted to continue talks with Smith, failed, and decided to do whatZanu was doing, armed struggle.
Incidentally, at the height of the war, Smith flew into Zambia and conducted some talks with nationalists there.
These did not achieve anything because Nyerere exposed them. Furthermore, lets not forget the idea of a "zero hour", later, the arms caches.
Then later on, the conflict which was ended by the Unity Accord of 1987. It is most surprising that nobody talks much of mass graves in Zambia and Mozambique, but instead people choose to tribalise Gukurahundi when in fact that was actually a war resulting in rivalry of the two war parties.
To make matters worse, someone is muting a day dream idea of a so called Mthwakazi state!
Good luck in all these endeavours.
Source - Gen Shumba
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