“Let’s Rebury Gukurahundi Victims By Force”

Source: “Let’s Rebury Gukurahundi Victims By Force” | ZimEye

Paul Nyathi | ZAPU leader Dumiso Dabengwa may have struck a wrong code in his efforts to find closure to the Gukurahundi atrocities of the eighties.

Addressing about 300 people at a function held in Bulawayo on Friday, Dabengwa invited the people of Matabeleland to gather in August next year and rebury all the Gukurahundi victims in descent graves even without authority from government.

“Let us rise in numbers next year around August to October and go out through the entire region with picks and shovels and dig up all the people lying in the shallow graves and bury them,” said Dabengwa.

“You need not worry about the coffins we will be able to get those,” he said.

Further to that Dabengwa said that Matabeleland people should not invite the Gukurahundi atrocities perpetrators, chief of who he singled out President Emerson Mnangagwa, to apologise to the victims claiming that there can never be an apology on premeditated murder.

“In do not agree with sentiments that say Mnangagwa must come and apologise to us for the atrocities before we can start accepting him as president, they executed the murders after careful planning that’s why they have not apologised in 30 years, leave them like that don’t ask for their apology,” he said.

Dabengwa urged the people of Matabeleland to begin to realise that the solution on the Gukurahundi issues lies within the region and not from the same government which executed the killings.

Responding to Dabengwa’s calls, Alliance for National Salvation ANSA leader Moses Mzila Ndlovu said that Dabengwa’s call was out of order as it is tantamount to tempering with evidence “which will be required soon.”

“Dabengwa’s call doesn’t work, we can not at a time when we are pushing for investigations on the killings start tempering with the evidence,” he said.

Mzila said that what needs to be done first is to work at voting out the government that harbours the perpetrators of the atrocities so that a new government can effectively deal with them.

Another Bulawayo veteran politician, Felix Magalela Mafa also dismissed Dabengwa claiming that his call for the tempering with the mass graves is out of order as it will disturb vital evidence of the killings.

Mafa also said that reburials can not just be done without consulting the families of the murdered people as per cultural requirements.

At least 20 000 people are suspected to have been killed and buried in shallow graves and disused mines throughout Matabeleland and part of Midlands province during the Gukurahundi era of 1982 to 1987.