AFRICANEWS

Zimbabwe

Terror plagues Matabeleland once again

Human rights

The legacy of Gukurahundi, an elite North Korean-trained commando unit that killed and maimed 20,000 Ndebele 14 years ago, is back to haunt southern Zimbabwe's Matabeleland region. Now, the government is sponsoring war veterans to terrorise supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The Matabeleland region in southern Zimbabwe is once again reliving its violent past more than 14 years after government-sponsored commandos killed or maimed about 20,000 Ndebele-speaking people and rendered thousands of others homeless.

Now, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) is sponsoring veterans of the liberation war to carry out a terror campaign against supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

ZANU-PF has already endorsed the candidature of 77-year-old current President Robert Mugabe for the 2002 presidential elections. This time, eager to check MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai's tracks, the party has unleashed war veterans into the region, primarily targeting chiefs and headmen, and secondly, teachers and other civil servants.

Many teachers have reportedly been "dismissed" by war veterans after being accused of being MDC agents who have infiltrated the region. Chiefs and headmen have been harassed for "failing to control their people." Hundreds of people have reportedly fled their homes as the rein of terror intensifies. Observers warn that the situation could get worse as the presidential election date draws nearer.

Traditionally, Matabeleland has been the stronghold of the opposition since the days in which the late Joshua Nkomo led the Patriotic Front -Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (PF-ZAPU), before the party's merger with ZANU-PF in the 1987 Unity Accord. The Ndebele, who live in Matabeleland, are Zimbabwe's second largest tribe apart from Shona that boosts the majority of speakers.

Nkomo, popularly known as "Father Zimbabwe" or Mdala Ndebele ("dear old man") because of the role he played in Zimbabwe's nationalism, became the country's vice president following the Unity Accord. Nkomo's death in 1999 left the Ndebele and Matabeleland leaderless, according to political activist Jethro Mpofu. Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF has been fervently resented in the region since the pre-Unity Accord days.

Zimbabwe gained its independence from Britain in 1980. In a move to purge "dissidents" - former PF-ZAPU freedom fighters who had refused to accept Mugabe and ZANU-PF's rule and resolved rather to remain in the bush - the government unleashed on the population a North Korean-trained commando unit. The unit, which came to be known as Gukurahundi-Shona, terrorised Nkomo's supporters, who were accused of being insurgents.

About 20,000 Ndebele-speaking people were either maimed or killed. Many pregnant women had their wombs opened by bayonets as the elite unit accused them of having been impregnated by the dissidents. Thousands others fled to neighbouring countries, especially Botswana, where they remained as refugees until Nkomo, realising that his people were being exterminated by this Gukurahundi, agreed to the Unity Accord that gave the dissidents a wholesale amnesty. The situation in Matabeleland then became calm.

The Ndebele have complained of years of marginalisation and lack of government attention on developmental issues. Ndebele youth are turning to South Africa for employment, as they watch jobs in the region being occupied by the Shona. But this time, it is not an issue of the majority Shona dominating the minority Ndebele. All this has been forgotten because the current purge is not selective; war veterans are targeting everyone suspected of being a member of the opposition.

"We are living in fear," said traditional Ndebele leader, Hlasela Nkayinde. "What is happening here has taken us back to the 1980s. We are not sure if we are going to last this current wave of violence."

Nevertheless, efforts to revive PF-ZAPU, the party that was the backbone of Ndebele politics, failed in 1999 soon after the death of Nkomo.

Political activist Jethro Mpofu said that the government is meting its punishment on Matabeleland because people in the area voted overwhelmingly for the MDC in last June's parliamentary elections. Out of the 23 parliamentary seats that were at stake in the region, ZANU-PF lost 21 seats to MDC, marking its steadily declining support base.

"Without PF-ZAPU, MDC has emerged (to be) the saviour to people of the region who are complaining of years of marginalisation and underdevelopment," said Mpofu. He added that without Nkomo, the general feeling in the region is that it is now leaderless.

"We are heading for worse times," said Lovemore Moyo, an MDC parliamentarian in the region. Moyo had moved a motion in Parliament calling on the government to accept responsibility for the Gukurahundi atrocities and the need to compensate the victims.

President Mugabe only hinted on the issue of compensation in one of ZANU-PF's rallies during the campaign for the 2000 parliamentary elections. Up to now, nothing has been said or done. He has also remained mute on a 1988 report produced by Catholic priests chronicling the disturbances caused by Gukurahundi in its six years of operation in the region.

"But the people see the need for change," said Moyo. "They see the rot around them and know that the only way to emancipate themselves is to change the system."

Signs of impending uncertainty are already evident. Apart from ordinary villagers and civil servants, war veterans have also targeted white commercial farmers.

For instance, war veterans attacked the Olds family twice, at the family's farm 70 kilometres west of Bulawayo. They murdered Martin Olds last April, and his 72-year-old mother Gloria in March of this year. Gloria was shot 15 times with an AK47 rifle. Three war veterans are currently appearing in court.

The government has maintained that the people of Matabeleland have nothing to fear, as the government would do anything in its authority to protect them. "We won't desert you," Jonathan Moyo, Minister of Information and Publicity once assured ZANU-PF supporters in the region. "You have nothing to fear."

But MDC President Tsvangirai has touched a raw nerve of ZANU-PF, according to observers. In April, he made a tour of Matabeleland districts that suffered during the Gukurahundi onslaught and heard the chilling stories of how people were either killed or maimed by the soldiers, something Mugabe has not done. His rally in rural Matabeleland attracted over 15,000 supporters.

Moyo also said that following Tsvangirai's visit, he received numerous reports from people who claimed state security agents were tailing them whenever there happened to be an MDC meeting. An MDC parliamentarian in the region, Abednigo Bhebhe, was abducted in May and assaulted by war veterans. The party's candidate for elections in the region's rural districts was also kidnapped in the same month, but managed to escape.

"Tsvangirai has struck the right note for his campaign ahead of the crucial elections by his tour of Matabeleland," said Bekithemba Sibindi, President of Imbovane Yamahlabezulu, a pressure group. But war veterans' leader Chenjerai Hunzvi says his organisation would set up bases all over the region to strengthen ZANU-PF ahead of the elections.

Said Sibindi: "There is a genocidal spirit in the government which has for a long time gone unpunished. That spirit does not show any signs of dissipating, and we are not assured that things will get better." But the question that remains ahead of the elections is whether the country can survive another massacre in Matabeleland.

Meanwhile, war veterans have threatened the Catholic Bishops of Zimbabwe with an unspecified retaliatory action "if they do not mind their own business," according to a report in the weekly newspaper The Zimbabwe Mirror.

This was in response to a pastoral letter, titled "Tolerance and Hope," that the bishops had written last month. In it, they denounced political violence across the country and urged people not to be a part of that violence. "Let our common enemy be poverty, disease, and ignorance, not our fellow citizens," said the bishops' letter.

Shortly after the letter's launch, The Herald, a government-controlled newspaper, launched a furious attack against the bishops, saying that they had acted on behalf of the British government.

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