Gukurahundi Was Not Genocide - Chief Charumbira
Deputy President of the National Chiefs’ Council, Chief Fortune Charumbira, has said Gukurahundi should not be classified as genocide.
Charumbira was responding to questions from media editors at the ongoing Gukurahundi sensitisation workshop in Bulawayo.
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group to destroy that nation or group.
As reported by ZimLive, the workshop has been called ahead of the rollout of hearings to be spearheaded by traditional leaders within communities under a programme coordinated by the Government.
Charumbira warned the media not to classify the 1980s killings as genocide until the hearings are done. He said:
It’s not genocide and it should not be classified as such until the whole processes are concluded.
Charumbira also defended the government’s decision to exclude the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), which was at the forefront of calling for an end to Gukurahundi. Said Charumbira:
We are doing this the traditional way. We will see if we need their records.
He said only the Council of Chiefs and the Office of the President were conducting the processes.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration has acknowledged the need to bring closure to the Gukurahundi legacy which continues to bring tensions within the country to this date.
In October 2022, Mnangagwa launched a manual on the Gukurahundi community engagement processes by chiefs, including a report on their consultative meetings.
Traditional leaders crafted and adopted the Gukurahundi manual to guide the holding of public hearings.
The manual is a culmination of traditional leaders’ meetings with Mnangagwa, which started in March 2019.
Gukurahundi refers to the killing of thousands of mainly Ndebele civilians carried out by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army in the 1980s.
Many were maimed, others lost homes and some were raped. The Fifth Brigade was deployed by the Government ostensibly to hunt down “dissidents”, that is, a handful of army deserters who were sympathetic to former Vice President Joshua Nkomo’s PF ZAPU.
The term Gukurahundi is derived from a ChiShona term which loosely translates to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains.”
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