60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

the making and meanings of the massacres in matabeleland 201
which ‘direct reports from unimpeachable sources supported many
of the allegations of killings and brutality which had appeared in the
foreign press’, an editorial criticised the local media for shying away
from reporting what was virtually a ‘state of martial law…[where] the
gun is ruling, [and] the people live in great fear’ (The Star, 9/3/1983).
When neither this nor private approaches elicited any response from
the government, at the end of March the Zimbabwean Catholic Bishops’
Conference released a pastoral statement condemning the killing
and maiming of ‘hundreds and hundreds of innocent people’. There
was, the statement declared, ‘incontrovertible evidence’ of continuing
‘wanton atrocities and brutalities… We appeal to the government
to exercise its authority to put an immediate stop to these excesses and
to appoint a judicial commission charged with the responsibility for
establishing the truth, apportioning blame and distributing compensation’
(Rand Daily Mail, 30/3/1983).
Never known for backing down in the face of facts and reasoned argument,
the Mugabe government dismissed the pastoral statement out
of hand as ‘irresponsible, contrived and propagandist’. Rejecting the
bishops’ appeal for a judicial commission of enquiry, the minister for
information, Nathan Shamuyarira, characterised the statement as utterly
one-sided and ‘formulated in response to prodding and promoting
support from foreign interests and groups hostile to Zimbabwe’. With
cynical disregard for the context in which the bishops had urged the
government ‘to preserve the ethnic rights of the minorities within its
borders’, Shamuyarira shamelessly played ZANU-PF’s version of the
anti-apartheid card. ‘We reject utterly the retrograde and reactionary
plea to preserve the so-called ethnic rights, a plea which in eff ect invites
the government to adopt in Zimbabwe the principles that underpin the
abhorrent Bantustan system of apartheid in South Africa’. In any case,
he argued, as Harare had evidence linking dissident activity to South
Africa, the actions taken by the government in Matabeleland ‘must
be seen in this light’ (The Star, 30/3/1983). Predictably, Mugabe himself
refused to give any ground. Dismissing the criticism as ‘sermonising
by sanctimonious prelates’, Mugabe insisted that ZAPU dissidents,
not the Fifth Brigade, had killed and maimed hundreds of innocents
(Rand Daily Mail, 6/4/1983). At celebrations in Bulawayo marking the
third anniversary of Independence, his message was uncompromising.
While noting that ‘in areas where banditry and dissident activities
are rampant and civilian sympathy is a common feature, it may not
be possible to distinguish innocent from guilty’, Mugabe warned that
communities which sympathised with dissidents ‘must not be shocked
when the Government views them as enemies of peace as much as the
dissidents themselves’ (The Herald, 19/4/1983).