President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s cocktail of measures to
pacify the south-western parts of the country that bore the brunt of the 1980s
massacres by the army have been greeted by strident opposition from traditional
leaders.
Mnangagwa early this month, through Justice secretary
Virginia Mabhiza, announced that the government would facilitate the
acquisition of death certificates for Gukurahundi victims and identity
documents for survivors.
The government also announced that remains of victims
buried in mass and shallow graves would be exhumed for reburial, but chiefs
from Matabeleland and
Midlands say they are against anyone “tampering with
evidence of the massacres.”
According to sources, Matabeleland and Midlands chiefs met
the Matebeleland Collective (MC), a group of civil society groups that
extracted the concessions
from Mnangagwa, at a lodge in Bulawayo last Thursday where
they made their position known.
From the Midlands chiefs Sigodo, and Mafala attended the
meeting while Gampu, Nyangazonke and Ndiweni represented Matabeleland.Nyangazonke, Ndiweni and Mathema in separate interviews
said traditional leaders were not against the MC as an independent body, but
the process government announced through the group on low it wants to address
the emotive issue without any acknowledgement and apology.
“There was a lot of reaction against the MC on why they had
the meeting with the president to discuss Gukurahundi in the first place,”
Ndiweni said while
confirming the meeting.
“We took all that criticism on board since we are the
sounding board for the concerns of the people.
“For us, we had to meet them to find out what they were
saying and doing. However, our position is absolutely very clear that there
must not be a single exhumation under any circumstance.
“That is premature; we are saying there is a known record
internationally of undertaking this process wherever genocide has taken place.
Rwanda for example.”
Ndiweni said the exhumations that are expected to start in
Tsholotsho this week would contaminate the evidence.
“I repeat: Absolutely under no circumstances must there be
a single exhumation,” he said.
“The minute you do that you have tainted the evidence, you
have corrupted the evidence. That evidence will not be accepted in a court of
law.
“The minute you do that there will never be any
truth-telling.” Mathema from Matabeleland South said traditional leaders
expected truthtelling and acknowledgement of the massacres to be central in
resolving the Gukurahundi issue.
“As chiefs, this is part of the conversation that we will
take on board, and try and meet the government of the day on how to formulate a
roadmap on addressing
Gukurahundi,” he said.
“We have been engaging the MC, but we are clear that there
must, first, be an acknowledgement and an apology and we then move forward.
There must be
truthtelling.
“How do you even say you are addressing Gukurahundi without
an acknowledgment? What are you addressing? As for the victims, how do you ask
them to forgive
without apologising?
“They apologise to who, and for what? That must be very
clear.”
Nyangazonke weighed in saying the chiefs wanted a meeting
with Mnangagwa.
“As chiefs, we are saying we want to independently meet the
president about this, and do things differently,” he said.
“We feel chiefs are better placed to handle this as they
have a constituency unlike the MC, as, for example, on exhumations, on whose
land will this take
place?
“Some of the things that the MC agreed on with government
cannot be undertaken without the blessing of the chiefs.
“The Gukurahundi issue is becoming a dog-eat-dog matter, a
money-making project.
“For us, it is not about the money, but that [addressing
Gukurahundi] is our role as the chiefs to undertake. We are going to be
different in the way we
address this.”
The traditional leaders said the people who suffered most
from the brutal campaign by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade were in the
rural areas, but they were not consulted.
“Gukurahundi happened in the communal areas, under our
jurisdiction, not in towns where they agreed on some of the formulas of
addressing it,” Nyangazonke
said.
“It is their right, and we cannot stop them, but when they
come to the communal areas, to our areas of jurisdiction, they will understand
what we mean.”
Jenni Williams, one of the MC coordinators, also confirmed
the meeting, but said they would continue engaging the traditional leaders for
a solution to the
Gukurahundi issue.
“We have had many meetings with chiefs over the past years
on Gukurahundi,” she said.
“The engagements have been ongoing, and last week’s meeting
is no different.
“We will continue to do so, also with other stakeholders.
That is an ongoing conversation.”
The MC met Mnangagwa at the Bulawayo State House last month
where they made demands that government must address issues arising from
Gukurahundi.
Human rights groups say at least 20 000 people died after
former president Robert Mugabe unleashed the Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland and
Midlands in 1983 to track down dissidents that are said have numbered less than
100.
The killings only ended when Zapu, led by late
vice-president Joshua Nkomo, whose supporters were the main target of the pogrom,
agreed to merge with Mugabe’s
Zanu PF in 1987.
Mngangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba recently caused a
furore when he told this publication in an interview that Gukurahundi was a
war, pitting two armed
sides.
He was reacting to accusations that Mnangagwa was an
architect of the killings. Standard
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