Gukurahundi trails: I would have killed Bill Saidi

Our African culture strongly warns against speaking ill of the deceased more so before they are laid to rest but sometimes it really gets unavoidable.

I have been following many people speak praises on the departed former Chronicle journalist Bill Saidi. Was more shocked by the ZAPU leadership also writing a huge praise obituary for Saidi.

I asked myself what the motivation was if this current ZAPU indeed claims to be the same PF ZAPU which was led by Joshua Nkomo and Saidi so much hated together with its entire leadership.

I first really got to know of Saidi and concern myself about him in 1984 albeit I was only a teenager. He caught my attention and grief when my father and other PF ZAPU senior officials were arrested by the ZANU  regime when ZANU was at its peak of being ZANU and Gukurahundi was also entering its peak.  

In The Chronicle story which Saidi wrote he described my father as a senior dissident who had been arrested in Gwanda and published a photo of him with other ZAPU leaders from Gwanda in tattered prison clothes while we as family did not even know which prison they were being kept in.

At that time I was a very keen follower of the latest news from any sources and radio was always abuzz of dissident activities and how government was brutally dealing with dissidents. On the ground reports from the rural areas were coming in everyday of people being wantonly killed for being dissidents or harbouring dissidents.

I couldn't stomach the report of my own father being described as a dissident and appearing in the national paper in prison clothes tagged not only a dissident but a senior dissident. For all I knew my father was fulltime employed as the Township Superintendent by the Gwanda Rural Council at that time and was never on a single day absent from home to warrant him time to have gone out to practice dissident activity.

I think it was just two days after Bill Saidi's story that we were attacked by ZANU members with stones and petrol bombs while we slept in the night at home and our father was away in the prison we didn't know of but which Saidi knew of and never bothered to disclose in his story.

I remember vividly how me and my mum jumped out of the house through a bedroom window and left my younger siblings sleeping in the house not aware of what was happening. God has his own way of doing things and non of those petrol bombs went off that night.

The following morning we fled Gwanda as a family and sort refuge in Bulawayo. In only our second day in Bulawayo we got word that our home in Gwanda had been burnt down roof to floor. I couldn't and didn't want to believe it. My only source of information was that I was going to see it in the Bill Saidi Chronicle newspaper, what with the home of the most senior Gwanda dissident burnt down, it should have been headline.

I was lucky that my father's young brother who had squeezed us into his house in Luveve would always send me to buy the newspaper first thing in the morning and I would always start with searching for this Bill Saidi's latest update. Guess what, he was there in that morning's paper and to my shock he was writing heavily praising "government intervention in dealing with dissidents" and nothing about the burnt house in Gwanda.

I honestly hated that guy more on that day.

Years later when I was a little older and doing my third year at college, a brother of mine who was working for The Chronicle as a reporter took me to the Bulawayo Press Club when it was still housed at a Bulawayo hotel and journalists would gather there for media briefings and drink. He was busy helping me link some media names to faces. When he introduced me to this Bill Saidi I felt a bout of anger I have never felt again in my life.

To tell the truth I searched my pockets for a gun I knew I never had but prayed in a second that I will find in my pocket. I was ready to give my heart justice there and then and would not have cared the resultant consequences. Fortunately no magic happened  to throw a gun or any weapon into my pocket. In huge anger I walked out of that place and never set my foot into that press club again.

When I heard of Saidi's death this week, that film of years ago replayed in my mind and I felt the anger rise again. I couldn't carry it and the following morning I went to my father's grave needing to console myself that I know that my father was never a dissident and in my heart I was saying another Gukurahundi tolerant had passed on.

As I was walking in the graveyard in the Gwanda Cemetery towards my father's grave, I passed through a mass grave of the Savage Family which was murdered by dissidents round about the same time that we were going through that terrible ordeal. It struck me and I stopped for a moment and asked myself how the Savage Family feels every time they visit that grave.

As I proceeded to my father's grave an internal voice asked me how long I was going to carry this anger in my heart. I honestly don't know for how long not only me but hundreds of thousands other Gukurahundi and dissidents victims we are going to be left exposed to such heart paining anger against each other.

I have never imagined myself in a situation where I feel relief on the death of another human being but the emotions that arose in me on the death of Saidi taught me a different dimension of the life we are forced to live in this country. This thirty year old Gukurahundi matter has been allowed to go unattended for too long and everyday people with answers to these ills are dying leaving us the victims to nurse bleeding hearts which we pass on to our children while the perpetrators die relief fully with nothing told to anyone.

Here I am right now left believing that I should have talked to Saidi and opened up to him and told him how much damage a news article he wrote in pursuant of his duty did to the subconscious part of my life. I strongly believe he will have explained one or two factors behind his work and definitely apologised and that apology would have cleared my subconscious life.

Having opened up I feel relieved and ready to forgive Saidi without talking to him and wish him a peaceful eternal rest. God in heaven is the one to judge.

As an aside, it comes into mind ukuthi how many of us are enduring this pain and even worse than I have been through? It is my plea to President Robert Mugabe and his government to seriously think of the sufferings that the people of Matabeleland have been through all these years and provide us with an open platform to have victims and perpetrators speak the truth to each other and find truce. Bleeding hearts can never be governable.     

The starting point to a better Zimbabwe lies in truce and I make it my 2017 resolution that in my little corner I will give my effort into a push for a genuine Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Together we can do it.

Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo is an independent political commentator based in Gwanda and writes this in his personal capacity. The article was extracted from his personal Facebook page. He can be contacted on bekezelamaduma@yahoo.co.uk