New powerful gukurahundi film premiers

As traditional chiefs from Zimbabwe's Matabeleland region embark on a controversial, state-sanctioned process to investigate the Gukurahundi massacres, questions persist about whether the initiative will bring truth, accountability, and healing - or simply mask a national wound that has festered for over four decades.

Into this political and emotional minefield steps award-winning Pan-African filmmaker Nyasha Kadandara, whose debut feature documentary "Matabeleland" has ignited fresh debate over Zimbabwe's most painful chapter.

Premiering to critical acclaim at CPH:DOX 2025 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and now screening across Africa, the film is a haunting exploration of generational trauma, silence, and the search for justice in a country still shadowed by the legacy of Robert Mugabe's authoritarian rule.

The film follows Chris Nyathi, a Zimbabwean migrant living in Botswana, who like many others forced to flee during Mugabe's 37-year reign, is haunted not just by economic exile, but by the unburied remains of his father, a victim of the Gukurahundi massacres.

Between 1982 and 1987, Mugabe's regime deployed the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands under the pretext of rooting out dissidents. In reality, it was a brutal campaign of state terror, targeting Ndebele civilians. An estimated 20,000 people were killed in cold blood. The atrocities remain unpunished - and barely acknowledged.

"Zimbabwe has unfortunately gone through many instances of violence. But this was the first big one, and the worst," Kadandara told OkayAfrica in an interview. "When people talk about reconciliation and moving forward, you can't really do that without looking at the past. There's a big disconnect in the country around why certain things are the way they are in Matabeleland."

Kadandara's documentary is a searing meditation on memory, displacement, and silence - a silence enforced through fear, trauma, and political convenience. Her work gives voice to those long silenced and asks what it truly means to heal in a society that has never reckoned with its violent past.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who served as a senior security minister during the Gukurahundi era and is widely accused of complicity, has launched a process allowing chiefs to lead local consultations. Critics view the move as state-managed and insufficient, falling short of international standards of truth-telling and transitional justice.

In contrast, Matabeleland confronts that silence head-on. It unearths not only bones buried in shallow graves, but also stories buried in families torn apart by a regime that treated its citizens as enemies of the state.

Shot over seven years, the film is also a meditation on migration - how political violence forces people from their homes and reshapes identity across generations.

For many in Zimbabwe, especially the Ndebele community, Kadandara's film represents a long-overdue reckoning. But it also reaffirms the need for truth commissions, reparations, and genuine national dialogue - not token gestures.

As the documentary garners global attention, it puts international pressure on the Zimbabwean government to treat Gukurahundi not as a "closed chapter," but as a defining national trauma still demanding justice and acknowledgment.

Whether the chiefs' inquiries will lead to accountability remains to be seen. But Kadandara's Matabeleland leaves no doubt: there can be no healing without the truth.