Opinion / Columnist
Cde Dabengwa, how can you not speak against Gugurahundi architectures and the genocide in Mathebeleland and Midlands?
21 Dec 2014 at 12:36hrs | Views
Comrade Dabengwa, we all thought you are now the voice for the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands! Comrade Joshua Mqabuko is gone, he is late, gone to rest, and he thought he left all the voice in you to lead the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands to speak about the genocide of the 1980 – 1988. How is it possible you are not comfortable to speak against Gugurahundi architectures and the perpetrators of it: one of them is Emerson Mnangagwa? Just by saying this: "I am not comfortable to talk about the participation of Mnangagwa in Gugurahundi atrocities" you are failing thousands of people from Mathebeleland and midlands who perished during the Gugurahundi atrocities in various degrees of violence and most degrading deaths one can ever think of. Let me remind you what Emerson Mnangagwa and his criminal cabal did to the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands Comrade Dabengwa: im Falle Sie haben es vergessen!
They burnt victims alive, forcing villagers to dig their own graves and bury them alive, trucking and burying victims alive in mine shafts, the use of any object to break the victims skull, parading victims and shooting them before a forced audience, which is then butchered in similar fashion in turn Lining victims in a single line, one behind the other facing one direction, and firing gunshots at the back of one victim's head so that victims are killed simultaneously with a single bullet, torturing victims brutally and slowly until they died, forcing victims to lie down on their backs staring into the sun and denying them water and food, Amputating victims hands and legs with axes and other bayonets to see how the fetus of a Ndebele so-called dissident looked like in its mother's womb and then watching these women bleed to death., starving of victims of food and water until they died in various notorious detention camps and also under the imposed chilling curfew which closed down shops and restricted virtually all movement. Kidnappings and disappearances where people were taken from their homes from the streets, from schools and offices, from buses and trains and, also taken while grazing their livestock in the forests, and from many other places and were never seen alive or dead again, gang raping of women and girls was the order of the day.
Are you sure you do not want to be spokesman for Mathebeleland and Midlands and condemn Mnangagwa who was part of that machinery to exterminate the Ndebele people from the map of Zimbabwe? The people of Mathebeleland are looking for a leadership in you that will speak on their behalf and continue to condemn the genocide that took place in Mathebeleland and Midlands. We will not rest until all the architectures of genocide are sent to the Haig to answer charges against the genocide they meted on the people of Mathebeleland and Midlands during 1980 and 1988, one of them is Emerson Mnangagwa.
When I read an article in the BYO24 telling us all that you do not want to comment about the participation of Mnangagwa in the Genocidal practices, he was part and parcel of in the Gugurahundi atrocities, I was very disappointed. Surely we cannot fail the people who perished in this genocide. Their voices are crying out for us to do something about it. Their bones are lying around without any decent burial. We are waiting for your leadership to take this on a higher level. You openly decline this! There is need to internationalize Zimbabwe genocide to get the perpetrators to face justice. If that is not done then we shall face genocide in Zimbabwe again later in their life, you and me will have passed on perhaps, I am trying to show you the seriousness of this genocide if it's not handled with the robustness it deserves.
I am not talking about Mphoko at the moment because he is busy singing for his supper, a small fry when we talk about real revolutionaries of Zimbabwe. If he can deny Gugurahundi and gives us a weak (half cooked)explanation as to why he called Gugurahundi "western propaganda" then you cannot expect much from such a weak personality like him; double faced personality whereby the stomach dictates what he says and does! I wonder how he manages to live with that conscience. He sees food first and then the people he could serve if at all. He needs to be told to reproach his conscience. Somehow he thinks the people of Mathebeleland are stupid, we can accept anything he says as an explanation to his dubious activities in the early 1980s. Mr. Mphoko, please dlana and leave us alone! Those false glory promises about taking Bulawayo to dizzy heights: "sizayicela isivuthiwe".
I am talking about you, Comrade Dabengwa, the Man of the people of that region. Your military credentials can never be tramped up by anybody even Mugabe himself. The issue about genocide in Mathebeleland and Midlands is a non-partisan obligation for all the people coming from that region and the whole of Zimbabwe to sensitively face it and talk about it without fear or favor. Peace and reconciliation can only come if the genocide that took place in Mathebeleland and Midlands is addressed and threshed thoroughly to the satisfaction of the victims of it and the international standards regarding genocide in the country concerned.
Nomazulu Thata writes in her personal capacity and all that she has written are her personal views. She can be contacted on: nomazulu.thata@hotmail.com
Source - Nomazulu Thata
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