SA needs peace in Zimbabwe haunted by Gukurahundi ghosts

There will be those who cheered the explosion at a Zanu-PF rally in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe on Saturday, allegedly an attempt to assassinate President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

In Bulawayo, capital of the southern province of Matabeleland, Mnangagwa – who replaced Robert Mugabe after the latter’s military engineered ousting late last year – is a hated figure.

As former head of the Central Intelligence Organisation, he is accused of playing a major role in the deployment of the North Korean-trained Five Brigade into the province from early 1983.

The troops were, ostensibly, sent in to counter the activities of armed dissidents, who were responsible for a number of acts of terrorism and sabotage. The nickname of the unit, Gukurahundi (a Shona expression meaning the wind that blows away the chaff ahead of the rains), indicated the operation was closer to ethnic cleansing than a military counterattack.

Up to 20 000 Ndebele people were slaughtered in the campaign, thousands more were tortured or detained and thousands fled into exile in neighbouring Botswana and South Africa.

The scars of that killing and the diaspora that followed are still evident today.

The attack on Mnangagwa is worrying, from a broader perspective. Clearly, the ghosts of the Gukurahundi have not been laid to rest. Also, there is a growing secessionary spirit among some in Matabeleland, who believe themselves oppressed by the Shona-speaking majority, who run the ruling Zanu-PF.

Mnangagwa hasn’t helped things by sticking to his denials that he had anything to do with the killings in the 1980s.

If people in Matabeleland believe they can resort to violence, they will be fatally mistaken. They will get no support for insurrection and will be crushed again.

And South Africa will have to deal with the fallout as more people stream across the border.

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