MatabelelandReport

2. The perpetrator is almost invariably given as "dissidents" or "bandits", with very few acknowledgements of atrocities
by security forces. It is only in instances where individual members of the security forces were prosecuted, which were
rare, that the newspaper reported such atrocities. Most references to security force atrocities take the form of vociferous
denials.
3. When acknowledged, deaths of civilians at the hands of security forces are at times referred to as being "deaths in
crossfire", implying the unintentional killing of innocents where dissidents were the target. This is reminiscent of the
statements made by security force headquarters during the 1970s, where civilian deaths were invariably accounted for in
this way. Of the approximately 3500 named victims on file from other sources, there are in fact only 7 interviews which
refer to 5 people killed and 2 homesteads destroyed in genuine cross-fire.
4. Detainees were named only if they were prominent members of society, or white. Similarly, white murder victims
were invariably named.
5. The political nature of the disturbances is very clear from The Chronicle reports. Speeches made by Government
office bearers and quoted in the press, make it apparent that it was PF-ZAPU that the ruling party sought to destroy, as
well as the handful of dissidents operating at the time. This issue of these two overlapping conflicts has been referred to
above, and is further explored in the Historical Overview following: in general, there are many statements referring to
supporters of PF-ZAPU and supporters of dissidents as being one and the same menace, deserving of one and the same
fate - "to die or go to prison", as Minister Enos Nkala, put it. The LCFHR also makes a strong case for the perception
of the problems as being primarily political.
6. The Chronicle lists atrocities in 2 ways.
i) SPECIFIC REPORTS: there are weekly or monthly news reports, detailing incidents during these short timespans.
These could be considered "Specific Reports", as there is often some accompanying detail as to location
and events, such as precise date and value of property stolen or destroyed from a particular store or mine. In
articles listing "bandit" or "dissident" activities, large and small incidents are often given almost equal
coverage.
ii)
ii) GENERAL REPORTS: The second listing of atrocities occurs in reports of speeches made in Parliament,
stating general totals of atrocities, usually for the previous six months. These were read out as evidence for the
need to continue the state of emergency, which had to be renewed by Parliament every six months.
It is very noticeable that the numbers of atrocities announced in Parliament is always significantly higher than the sum
of the Specific Reports for the same time-span [see Part VII, comparative Tables III and V page ***]. Particularly
noteworthy here is the disparity for "murders" reported in 1986. "Specific Reports" record only 9 murders by dissidents
in that year, while the "General Report" for 1986 refers to 116 civilian deaths. A further confusing factor, when
Government statistics are considered, is the phenomenon of Government agencies committing crimes "disguised" as
dissidents (see below). As all official information and sources for Government figures on dissident atrocities were state
controlled, it is impossible to resolve these discrepancies now.
7. Incidents which occur in very different parts of the country are not always clearly distinguished from each other, but
may be listed together in one article. In fact, there were atrocities being committed by the Mozambique-based MNR in
northern and eastern Zimbabwe during the 1980s and an analysis of Specific Reports shows that 10% of atrocities were
not committed in Matabeleland or the Midlands.
It is not always clear to a casual reader which events occurred where, and whether ZIPRA sympathetic or Renamo
(MNR) dissidents, or ordinary criminals were responsible. This type of reporting seemed to confuse the foreign press at
times: for example, in the Sunday Times of London, 6 March 1983, there is a report called "Timetable of a Massacre".
In it, the murder of a white farmer in Chinhoyi, the raiding of an armoury in Mutare, and the murder of three British
tourists in Nyanga are included by this foreign journalist in a list of "dissident" atrocities which he represented as giving
some justification to the Government's decision to send 5 Brigade into Matabeleland. All the above events actually took
place in northern and eastern Zimbabwe, and in fact, the murder of the three British tourists strongly implicated 5
Brigade itself, which was training in Nyanga at the time.
8. Once The Chronicle reports had been collated for all issues between June 1982 and March 1988, with victims' names
(where possible), dates and perpetrators extracted, these were cross referred with names collated from other sources into
the Human Rights Data Base. The Chronicle Specific Report data amounted to 562 entries, and other sources amounted
to 3 534 entries. It was discovered that fewer than 40 names could be cross-referenced. [If time and money allowed, no
28