MATABELAND ANGER MOUNTS

g that the region is a time bomb, which could detonate if Mugabe and his Shona-dominated government remain in power after the next presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2008 and 2010.
There is a growing sense of alienation in the region, particularly among young people, some of who attend football matches wearing shirts bearing a picture of a raging bull, the old symbol of the former Zimbabwe African People’s Union, ZAPU, the liberation movement founded by the late Dr Joshua Nkomo.
Analysts believe it is the young people, more militant and vocal than their elders, who seem certain to resist another election won by Mugabe. Tired of their region being neglected and lagging behind in development, several organisations representing the interests of the minority Ndebele people, who have never felt they fully belong to independent Zimbabwe, have mushroomed.
The Ndebele, offshoots of the Zulu people of South Africa, constitute about 16 per cent of the 11.5 million population of Zimbabwe: the Shona, concentrated in the north and east, account for about 70 per cent.
Some of the organisations are calling for regime change and will back any party that has a strategy to remove Mugabe from power. Others want Matabeleland to be an independent state. Apart from what they see as the Mugabe’s government’s deliberate negligence of the region, they accuse the head of state of having attempted to exterminate its people during widespread massacres in the 1980s by his personal military hit squad, the notorious North Korean-trained 5th Brigade.
Early last month, Zanu (PF)’s information and publicity secretary Nathan Shamuyarira, one of Mugabe’s closest colleagues, exacerbated this already dangerous situation by saying he has no regrets about the 5th Brigade’s atrocities. Having heard his utterances, the people of Matabeleland feel more betrayed than ever, realising that Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union, ZANU, colleagues remain unrepentant.
Political scientist Dr John Makumbe, a Shona and a representative in Zimbabwe of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, said, “They (the Ndebele) are now more militant and vocal than ever before because of the hardships they have been experiencing. The whole country is in trouble, but they feel that they are worse off. They want to kick out the government and Mugabe.”
A former sergeant in ZAPU’s Zambia-based liberation guerrilla army, Max Mnkandla, now president of the Zimbabwe Liberators platform, founded by liberation war fighters who believe the ideals of independence have been betrayed, said, “We are now openly going for regime change. We are going to support anyone that can unseat Mugabe.”
Mnkandla, whose father was killed by 5th Brigade soldiers, added, “That Gukurahundi issue is painful for most of us as it was a merciless struggle by ZANU against defenceless people with no army. We now intend referring Shamuyarira to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to be charges with genocide and other war crimes.”
Felix Mafa, director of the Bulawayo-based Post Independence Survival Trust, a non-government organisation that gives assistance to survivors of the Gukurahundi massacres, said, “Shamuyarira showed us that the old ZANU was not repentant and Mugabe was also not repentant. We now realise that the statement Mugabe made when he said at Joshua Nkomo’s funeral that it [the 5th Brigade offensive] was ‘a moment of madness never to be repeated’ was nothing but a political statement.
“If he was sincere, he would have said something, in the form of an apology for Shamuyarira’s statement; but to date nothing has been said. They are not repentant.”
Shamuyarira was asked at a public meeting if he had any regrets about Gukurahundi. He replied, “No, I don’t regret. They (the 5th Brigade) were doing a job to protect the people … That’s a situation that we would like to put into history. It’s not a fair question to put to me. Why should I be answering this 25 years later?”
David Coltart, a human rights lawyer who defended ZAPU’s leadership, including Nkomo, against charges of treason by Mugabe’s government during Gukurahundi, said, “The statements by Shamuyarira indicate that he is either exceptionally callous or that he simply does not know what happened in the Midlands and Matabeleland areas during that time, because a person with the slightest clue of what happened would not make such reckless statements.”
Coltart recalled affidavits he had taken during Gukurahundi, “Women spoke of how their husbands, sons and relatives would be abducted or simply gunned down in cold blood. Others spoke of how their neighbours would be herded into huts, which would then be set in fire, while all village people who were in ZAPU leadership structures were killed.”
But the most worrying development for Mugabe is a devastating attack made upon him by his vice president, 83-year Joseph Msika, concerning Gukurahundi. Enraged by Shamuyarira’s comments, Msika said he approached Mugabe about his attitude towards the events in Matabeleland in 1983-87 and was not satisfied by the answer he received. “When we asked him (Mugabe) about the disturbances, he apologised to me personally, but I was not convinced,” said Msika.
Msika went further and said his old friend and ZAPU colleague Nkomo was the true father of Zimbabwe’s independence, not Mugabe. When Mugabe claimed to be the one who launched the liberation struggle, he was telling lies, said Msika. – IWPR