Mugabe’s death not regretted before Gukurahundi apology

via Bulawayo24 NEWS | Mugabe’s death not regretted before Gukurahundi apology by Ryton Dzimiri 19 January 2014

I noted that the editor of this paper complained about people celebrating the suspected death of our President Mr Robert Mugabe. In Heaven and on Earth, it is my belief that failing to condemn President Mugabe for the demise of my country will only serve to encourage the next coming President to kill, maim, divide, exile, disenfranchise, impoverish, corrupt, marginalise, torture, scare, condemn, oppress, bully, misrule, humiliate, silence, imprison, demoralise, dehumanise my countrymen as President Mugabe has done in the past 33 years.

Being a Christian who preaches peace and doing everything to promote peace in my country which I dedicatedly fought for in the seventies under Zanu PF, I know I also have a frontline responsibility to condemn any evil with maximum precision.

Evil must be condemned when it is done by a family member, a friend, a parent, a son, a daughter or a loved wife and evil must indeed be condemned if it is done by a President one fought to put in power.

President Mugabe was 57 years old when he created Gukurahundi to kill and maim Zimbabweans in 1983. I am not sure if mistakes of a 57 year old man are a result of immaturity but what I am sure of is that President Mugabe has not been sincere enough at the advanced age of 89 to say he is sorry for Gukurahundi.

I lost a home in Zhombe, Gwenzi area in 1984 to Gukurahundi evil. As a child I endured Internationally unacceptable torture two weeks after Mr Mugabe had come to Zhombe to tell us that those who gave Dissidents food would be killed. Mugabe’s armed Dissidents who were carrying Mugabe’s weaponsdemanded food at gunpoint and I gave them food to serve my life. It is not Dissidents who tortured me but Gukurahundi. Mugabe instructed Gukurahundi in my presence at Zhombe Mission dam to kill those who cooked for Gwesela. I was forced to go to that meeting and beaten with thorn sticks. What a cruel black man reducing the confidence of black people. I challenge the President to state it otherwise.

I was then tortured after neighbour Maduna had told the Gukurahundi that she had seen me giving Gwesela mahewu drink. My family were tortured for many weeks and at one time lined up in front of an A.K 47 ready to be shot.

How brave could anyone silence me and yet I lost my childhood, lost my residence, my birth-right, my home, my aspirations as a Zimbabwean and ended up seeking refuge in other people’s countries for 24 years?

President Mugabe is now mature and expected to be wise enough to understand the power of the word sorry and the change it makes in the hearts of the offended. Sorry does not cost and it is the old and the wise who should teach better to say sorry. But, just look at the face of the old and stubborn President who is willing to die without saying sorry.

The stubborn and old intellectual chooses to sink into the grave without saying sorry. His solid and twisted lips are known all over the World for chastising sentence by sentence the evil of Colonialism but his own eyes can’t let him see that I am missing in Zhombe because of his evil. President Mugabe does not care how many people died during that time and how they died and what happened to their offspring. My President always blames people like me for leaving the country and does not want to take a minute to find out what made me leave in the eighties. He calls people like me MDC and I have never been MDC and when I left Zimbabwe Tsvangirai was a top Zanu PF functionary. Edgar Tekere joined me in Soweto I remember meeting him at a fire-wood shop.

The English say ,”there is no reason of getting older if one is not getting wiser”. What kind of an old man is my President? I am not even 45 and I know already that the words sorry can extinguish a fire.

The word sorry has power and it is the old and wiser who are supposed to demonstrate that. Sorry to me would go a long way. The words sorry from a man who told Gukurahundi in my presence to kill victims of armed Dissidents would make me feel  Zimbabwe now cares for its citizens. Sorry the word could make me relocate back to my country with confidence that Mujuru, Tsvangirai or Mnangagwa will not repeat the evil of Mugabe. Sorry would give me a chance to use my foreign gained expertise to contribute to boost my country’s ailing Engineering and Manufacturing industries. Sorry would unite and heal rotten wounds in my country. Sorry would teach the ZRP, ZNA and CIO to respect Zimbabweans and serve to protect and not to maim them as all civilised countries do. Sorry would repair lost trust and induce National confidence which brings economic strength. But, how does one get a stubborn old man like President Mugabe to get wiser since he is getting older. He is more than twice my age, twice my education but half the wisdom to apologise where he made big and insane mistakes where many lost life.

There are 30 year old common citizens in Zimbabwe who know the power of the word sorry and they say it every day. These 30 years olds were born when President Mugabe was already a mature man who should teach, mentor and lead by example to encourage children to learn to say sorry where they make mistakes. President Mugabe will die an old man whose conduct is lower than that of a 30 year old. His peers have written books about him to say he never believed in apologising when he was a teenager in 1935. He will die with all the sins he has accumulated even before he became a teacher in 1950s. He was never taught to say sorry and these are the only words I personally expected him to pronounce since 1983.

It is therefore very correct to express imaginative good times which will befall our land once President Mugabe’s name is called up yonder. The only problem is that the stock-take of his life will be of negative relevance to our country. President Mugabe leaves a legacy of it that it is alright for a black man to kill a black man brutally and still enjoy life without consequences. Mnangagwa or Mujuru will do the exact same for so many years after the burial of Mugabe. The black man they purport to fight for is the one they butcher and loot form en-masse.

“When your skeleton is beginning to loose flesh Mr President as we all will, take a minute to remember your words in Zhombe in 1983. I was only 13, you said in my presence that those who feed your armed Dissidents were to be killed. Gukurahundi tortured me and my family for some months until we left Zhombe. I then hated my country so much and saw no prospect of becoming a useful man on that defiled soil and I left the country because of you. Look back from the quietness of your grave what made me hate your conduct and stubbornness and failure to say sorry. Beyond the grave, you will not have a chance to say sorry and none of us know if ever we will be given a chance to reflect our mistakes and taste the pain we caused on others”. I have no intention to pretend to have good wishes for the President until he opens those stubborn old lips to do what is right and say SORRY before his last breath.

 

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