Mnangagwa Blames Gukurahundi Atrocities On Former Colonisers
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has accused Zimbabwe’s former colonial powers of instigating divisions in the country, which he claims ultimately led to the Gukurahundi massacres.
The atrocities were carried out by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade under the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s government, with Mnangagwa serving as the Minister of State Security and overseeing the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) at the time.
Speaking at the launch of the Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Programme in Bulawayo on Sunday, July 14, 2024, Mnangagwa alleged that the country’s detractors were responsible for Zimbabwe’s post-independence conflict.
He claimed that the former colonisers had deliberately pitted different tribes against each other, leading to the Gukurahundi tragedy.
Mnangagwa’s comments come as the government attempts to address the long-standing grievances and trauma experienced by the victims and their families through the Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Programme.
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The programme aims to facilitate dialogue and community-led initiatives to promote healing and reconciliation in the affected regions. Said Mnangagwa:
History records that all internal divisions amongst us as a people have been instigated by our detractors in various guises through generations.
It is our detractors who worked tirelessly to pit one tribe against the other during the colonial era.
These oppressors sought to sow seeds of division amongst liberation struggle fighters and within communities.
Their interference and machinations were designed to divide us and consequently created our post-independence conflicts.
We are aware that the same forces have not abandoned their ultimate goal of thwarting the realisation of our determination to remain as united Zimbabweans.
Our unity must stand as an immovable barrier to prevent their historic goal of subjugating us in numerous ways including in the economic sphere. The interference by our detractors manifests itself in different ways.
They manifest as political parties with a regional agenda which seeks to divide our people and question the unitary nature of our State. We see them!
They manifest as voluntary organisations ostensibly concerned with the people’s plight yet they exaggerate and magnify regional grievances whilst at the same time seeking to belittle our efforts at reconciliation and unity at the behest of their founders. We see them!
They are present in all forms of the media including social media, propagating statements of hatred, difference and vengeance against specific groupings of our nation. We see them! Let us all say to them you shall not succeed.
Gukurahundi, a Shona word meaning “the early rain that washes away the chaff”, refers to the killing of an estimated 20,000 people, mostly from the Ndebele ethnic group, in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between 1983 and 1987.
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