Gukurahundi victims deserve justice in their living years
When the trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished by Britain in 1807 with the United States following suit in 1808, many former slaves were alive and lived to see a new dawn of freedom. Though the slave trade continued illegally well into the 1860s at least it had been outlawed formally with many former slaves rising to not only be free but to actually beat the odds in academia, business and sport championships. Some former slaves were even assisted by Uncle Sam to sail back to Africa to establish their own colony in Liberia. Others remained in America and used their freedom to fight for civil liberties. To them, liberty was a secondary issue. Freedom was the first step towards justice for the trans-Atlantic slave trade that had spanned across 400 years.
History also records that when Soviet soldiers poured into Auschwitz in January 1945, they found some survivors of the Holocaust, left behind by the Nazis to die. They were still alive, albeit emaciated and on the brink of death but their liberation gave them a fighting chance. To the Jews liberated by the Red Army, freedom meant the dawn of a new era. They could finally find their own place in the world as free men and women.
Even those that perished shortly afterwards died knowing that freedom had finally come even within moments of their final days on earth. They had tasted freedom even for a fleeting moment. Those who made it went on to beat the odds and thrive in the world of business, espionage, media and political influence.
The above examples, plucked from a large volume of human history, clearly prove the African adage that says there is no night so long that it does not end with dawn. It goes without saying that there are many who perished during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust. Estimates peg the death tolls in the millions. Exact figures vary according to source and context but every death caused by the oppression of a man by another is one too many. Yet humanity has shown sustained resistance to learn from history. Every single day a new tyrant is born. Pol Pot, Idi Amin Dada, and Robert Gabriel Mugabe penned their own chapters in the blood of their own kinsmen. Without absolving the likes of Adolf Hitler who committed atrocities against Jewish people in Nazi Germany, no one expected Zimbabweans to perish at the hands of their own kith and kin, Robert Mugabe.
The Gukurahundi Genocide of Ndebele Zimbabweans between 1982 and 1987 is Mugabe’s greatest blemish and makes it regrettable that he was born at all. It is debatable but there was something inherently evil about Robert Mugabe. He was an eloquent anglophile with excellent table manners but his heart emitted darkness that only the devil could admire. It was Sir Robert Mugabe who singlehandedly masterminded Gukurahundi and deployed his legion of minions to execute his evil plan to the letter. Anyone who opposed Mugabe or tried to reason with him about the demerits of annihilating a whole tribe from existential memory might as well have slapped the dictator for good measure. Mugabe reserved his deluxe packages in hate for those who commiserated with his victims. There were many willing foot soldiers no doubt, but a good number of Gukurahundi perpetrators were too afraid to disobey Mugabe’s orders.
When the atrocities stopped with the signing of the Unity Accord on 22 December 1987, Mugabe made it the remainder of his life’s mission to evade accountability let alone punishment for his Gukurahundi bloodbath. In his warped thinking, Gukurahundi was a closed chapter. Victims of Gukurahundi had to endure decades of watching a free Mugabe enjoying all the standard perks of a tin pot dictator. Under his iron dorm of a heavily armed security detail, nothing uncomfortable ever happened to Robert Mugabe, except the time he tripped and fell on arrival at Harare International Airport due to a badly laid carpet – not old age, you! Mugabe’s demise only came on 15 November 2017, when his own disgruntled army generals deposed him in a coup d’état supported worldwide.
No one stood with Mugabe when he was deposed by the military. Not the Pope in Rome nor the Queen in London. Victims of Gukurahundi saw a chance exactly 30 years later to finally hold Mugabe to account for his deeds. Closure and justice at last, or so they thought. The euphoria from such prospects was palpable. Yet the flame of liberty from their shackled existence was quickly extinguished by Mugabe’s successor, one Emerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa. Briefly celebrated for dislodging Mugabe as the “civilian” face of the 2017 military coup, it was naïve of longsuffering Zimbabweans to expect real change from a man whose middle name, Dambudzo, literally means hardship. Hardly half a year later on August 1 2018, six civilian citizens lay dead on the streets of Harare, shot by armed soldiers from the Presidential Guard battalion, deployed to quell post-electoral fraud protests.
For victims of Gukurahundi, another decade of impunity and immunity had started just as they were ready to heal from the possibility of justice within their living years. To this day, there seems to be no genuine desire by the Mnangagwa administration to address the festering issue of Gukurahundi. Victims have been passed a half-hearted curved ball in the form of a chief-led dialogue process which is yet to commence, half a year after launch by none other than President Mnangagwa. It is safe to surmise that his intelligence forecasts have dissuaded him from greenlighting his “self-defeating” programme. Murmurings and slogans of term limit extension could easily be linked to that fear of prosecution by the ICC for Gukurahundi as a genocide and crimes against humanity. It also stands to reason that Mugabe’s fall from grace taught his successor a thing or two about the tearful end of dictatorship. Good luck trying to end the dictatorship of a man who “ended” a dictatorship.
What then happens to victims of Gukurahundi? Four decades of helplessly watching as their erstwhile tormentors roam free with total impunity. Some rape victims during Gukurahundi know their rapists and have watched them place their bloody hands on the Bible, to take sacred oath as honourable ministers in charge of upholding Zimbabwe’s constitution. Voting for change has not worked as new vote rigging mechanism are devised with each plebiscite. In the absence of free and fair elections, what will it take for victims of Gukurahundi to be heard in their living years? Many who lived after the 1987 peace compromise have not gained anything tangible from the end of their senseless torture, rape and dehumanization. Only the perpetrators have been spared from the burdens of remorse and accountability. Psychologically and materially, the victims continue to suffer.
There seems to be a deliberate gambit by those in power to delay any forms of open dialogue around the Gukurahundi issue to ensure that all its survivors die. The plan is plain and straightforward. The genocide is supposed to die with its victims. Even commemorative plaques erected to immortalize the reality of Gukurahundi are bombed into smithereens. Those who “make noise” about Gukurahundi must also be silenced. Yet the blood of the dead ones continues to speak through the living. How can the dead be killed again? Articles and petitions in the lands of the free continue to give perpetrators of Gukurahundi a hard run for their comfort. Let the world know that Gukurahundi was a genocide and its victims deserve justice in their living years.
Sadly for many of them by now, it will be ambitious to expect the miracle at Auschwitz in January 1945, where some among the dying Jews only saw freedom but for a fleeting moment.
