60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

More documents

Recommendations

Info

198 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness to join the party that was responsible for the independence and freedom of Zimbabwe’ (Sunday Mail, 30/8/1981). One of the fi rst harbingers of Matabeleland’s subsequent fate, this announcement juxtaposed the creation of the Fifth Brigade with the renewed articulation of an authoritarian and intolerant nationalism. Quite how ruthlessly the two would operate together was soon enough revealed. Starting in Matabeleland North in January 1983, and eventually expanding to encompass Matabeleland South the following year, a campaign of terror was waged by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade against the region’s inhabitants. Largely if not exclusively Shona-speaking in composition (Africa Confi dential, 3/3/1982, Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2003: 24-25), it was ostensibly deployed by Mugabe to suppress dissident guerrilla activity in Matabeleland. This unrest, which the Harare government claimed was perpetrated by forces loyal to Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU party who were not prepared to accept the result of the April 1980 election, was deemed all the more dangerous because of the opportunities it provided for proxy intervention by South Africa. That the apartheid-era Pretoria regime armed and controlled bands of so-called ‘Super ZAPU’ insurgents as part of a wider strategy of destabilising its neighbours would seem to be beyond dispute (Hanlon 1986; Martin and Johnson 1986 and 1987; and especially Woods 2007). But it would also appear that the scale of the threat posed by dissident activity, whether internally based or externally directed, was greatly exaggerated. It was a convenient justifi cation, cynically used by offi cial spokesmen to turn away criticism (The Star, 30/3/1983; Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and Legal Resources Foundation 1997: 27-37). Indeed, the Fifth Brigade was never put up against such armed dissidents as there actually were. Its energies were devoted entirely to the rural civilian population (Africa Now, 1983; Africa Confi dential, 1984). This single-minded focus, as the journalist and former editor of the Bulawayo Chronicle, Geoff rey Nyarota, later described it, saw ‘an estimated 20,000…innocent civilians…brutally massacred by the time Five Brigade was withdrawn in 1986’ (2006: 135). Probably ‘hundreds of thousands of others were tortured, assaulted or raped or had their property destroyed’, concluded the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2007: 3). ‘Of the people who died, some were shot where they were found; some were “disappeared”, then executed and buried or thrown down disused mine shafts; some were taken to torture camps where some died under torture or were later executed’. Individual testimony of the tens of thousands of crimes committed by the Fifth Brigade, removed from the regular chain of military command and answerable directly to Mugabe, was harrowing in the extreme. As much of this is in the public domain and is now well
the making and meanings of the massacres in matabeleland 199 known, thanks to the joint eff orts of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, and the Legal Resources Foundation, two examples must suffi ce. ‘The uniformed Fifth Brigade soldiers arrived and ordered my husband to carry all the chairs, a table, bed, blankets, clothes and put them in one room. They also took our cash – we had $1500 saved, to buy a scotch cart. They then set fi re to the hut and burnt all our property’, recalled one woman of events in western Tsholotsho at the end of January 1983. ‘They accused my husband of having a gun, which he did not have. They shot at him. The fi rst two times, they missed, but the third time they shot him in the stomach and killed him. They then beat me very hard, even though I was pregnant. I told them I was pregnant, and they told me I should not have children for the whole of Zimbabwe… they hit me on the stomach with the butt of the gun. The unborn child broke into pieces in my stomach. The baby boy died inside. It was God’s desire that I did not die too. The child was born afterwards, piece by piece. A head alone, then a leg, an arm, the body – piece by piece’ (1997: 52). In February 1984, three weeks after a government-sanctioned food embargo – the deliberate denial of food and other services to the approximately 400,000 inhabitants of Matabeland South – had come into operation, people forced to attend a rally at Sibomvu, were harangued by a Fifth Brigade offi cer. He told them his name was Jesus, ‘one of the leaders of the Gukuruhundi’. ‘These are some of the things he said at the meeting: he had some gallons of blood in his car… He wanted more blood because his supply was running low. They had come to this place to kill, not to play. They had come to kill the Mandebele because the dissidents were found only [in] their area and not in Mashonaland… He did not mind thousands of people being killed. “You are going to eat…your children. After that you shall eat your wives. Then the men will remain, and because dissidents have guns, they will kill the men and only dissidents will remain. That’s when we will fi nd the dissidents”. Commander Jesus spoke in Shona while one of the soldiers translated into Ndebele’ (Catholic Commission for Ju s t ic e a nd Pe a c e a nd L e g a l Re s ou r c e s F ou nd a t ion 19 9 7: 117). II So far as reactions at the time are concerned, what is striking is just how much, at least in broad outline, very quickly became known to the outside world. Important elements of the international press were investigating Gukurahundi rumours by as early as late January 1983. Certainly ZAPU itself lost little time in taking foreign journalists to scenes of atrocities in Matabeleland. After witnesses gathered at Mzilikazi Meth-
Page 1 and 2:
no. 50 | december 2008 Revisiting t
Page 3 and 4:
Revisiting the heart of darkness -
Page 5 and 6:
Acknowledgements The larger part of
Page 7:
Dennis Brutus, born 1924 in then Rh
Page 10 and 11:
8 development dialogue december 200
Page 12 and 13:
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25:
Page 26 and 27:
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71:
Page 72 and 73:
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
Page 150 and 151: 148 development dialogue december 2
Page 250 and 251:
Page 252 and 253:
Page 254 and 255:
Page 256 and 257:
Page 258 and 259:
Page 260 and 261:
Page 262 and 263:
In short, both the understanding of
Page 264 and 265:
Page 266 and 267:
Page 268 and 269:
Page 270 and 271:
Page 273 and 274:
Behind most mass violence lurk econ
Page 275 and 276:
ehind most mass violence lurk econo
Page 277 and 278:
Page 279 and 280:
Page 281 and 282:
Is there a south perspective on gen
Page 283 and 284:
is there a south perspective on gen
Page 285 and 286:
Page 287 and 288:
Page 289 and 290:
Page 291 and 292:
Page 293:
Page 296 and 297:
Page 299:
The Voksenåsen Statement Genocides
Page 302 and 303:
Page 304:
Page 308:
This Development Dialogue is publis
show all

60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?