Moses Mzila Ndlovu, the former Co-Minister of National Healing and Integration, asserts that the government deliberately minimizes the severity of the Gukurahundi “genocide”.
He said the ZANU PF-led Government does this by employing euphemistic language and terminology that subtly shifts blame onto the victims for the atrocities committed.
Speaking to CITE, Ndlovu criticized Government officials for persistently using moderate terms such as “conflict,” “disturbances,” and “dissident activity” to characterise the “genocide” that unfolded in Matabeleland and the Midlands during the 1980s. He said:
In the last 40 years, ZANU PF has been trying without success to kill the Gukurahundi Genocide issue. Genocide is a crime under international law.
It was defined in 1948 as acts with intent to destroy in whole or in part, national, ethnic, religious or racial group by the United Nations Genocide Convention and Zimbabwe’s Gukurahundi Genocide has all the features of a Genocide.
The genocide nomenclature, has, however, been deliberately avoided by ZANU and the government as part of its continuing efforts to conceal the massive killings in Matabeleland.
They rather use inaccurate terminology meant to mislead the public, terminology that accuses the victims of being responsible for the crime.
This, however, is normal in Genocide situations. The victims are variously accused and labelled to set them apart from the rest of the population for purposes of extermination.
Part of the criminal effort to bury the crime is found in the inappropriate language they use to project the killings as an ordinary military operation…
To say Gukurahundi is a conflict is a gross misrepresentation of facts. Conflict takes two or more sides using violence on the upper scale to resolve their differences such as in war. There was no war or conflict after Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
He said the Government has made some members of the public believe the pronouncements on decriminalising Gukurahundi when the real motive is to destroy the evidence and bury the issue under concrete.
Ndlovu emphatically stated that during the Gukurahundi, there existed no dual perspectives; rather, the Fifth Brigade operated unilaterally in an “imaginary battlefield” populated by genuine individuals with authentic languages, emotions, cultures, and the same fundamental need for safety as any other citizens in the country. He said:
Is it not curious enough that there were no casualties suffered by the Fifth Brigade during its notorious operation code named Gukurahundi which itself spells out the specific purpose and intent of the barbarians…
It was not even a case of an upper hand they enjoyed against a false enemy force but the absence of that force.
How could unarmed civilians, many in their advanced ages and frail while others were unborn babies constitute the other side of the ‘conflict?’ Bizzare!
Gukurahundi was a dark chapter in Zimbabwe’s history, marked by a series of mass killings that occurred between 1982 and 1987.
The term itself derives from the Shona language and roughly translates to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains.
Thousands of people in the provinces of Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, and Midlands were detained, marched to re-education camps, tortured, raped, and summarily executed.
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