Matabeleland-based secessionist party Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) has said that the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) is incapable of addressing the Gukurahundi issue.
MRP president Mqondisi Moyo said that in light of the government’s failure to release the findings of the highly-hyped Chihambakwe and Dumbutshena commissions on the Gukurahundi genocide during the former president Robert Mugabe’s reign, it is imperative that a neutral commission should be established.
An independent and neutral commission should involve foreigners, according to Moyo. He said:
We continue to demand a neutral international Commission of Inquiry into Gukurahundi Genocide because there was a foreign element in the commission of this crime against humanity.
Such a Commission must be able to unpack the involvement or lack of it, of the British government under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher.
Gukurahundi is a term used to refer to disturbances in Matabeleland and Midlands in the 1980s which resulted in the death of an estimated 20,000 Ndebele people.
It was carried out by the North Korean trained 5th Brigade which was an elite regiment of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. Gukurahundi is derived from a Shona language term which loosely translates to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains”.