Zimbabwe’s acting President Phelekezela Mphoko has made a u-turn announcing that the government will not dig up mass graves of people who died during Gukurahundi, saying to do so is unAfrican, the state media The Herald has reported.
“We cannot go to the mass graves and start digging. It is not in our African culture. What we are only going to do is to put a big plaque which will indicate that there are people who were buried there,” he told Parliament on Wednesday.
“Those with bones that are visible by the grave site, we will take the bones and rebury them properly. It will be done within the law.”
Last year in October Mphoko claimed that government will rebury the remains of thousands of people who were killed during the 1980s massacres, only to make a u-turn now.
“The government is working on modalities of healing the wounds of the disturbances experienced in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands provinces in the 1980s by ensuring that all victims are identified and given decent burial,” said Mphoko.
Over 20 000 civilians are estimated to have been killed during post-independence disturbances in Midlands Province and Matabeleland region.
Mphoko’s announcement is set to clash with fellow VP Mnangagwa who only last year in August told parliament that the Home Affairs ministry should assist with reburials of Gukurahundi victims in Matabeleland.
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Background
Mugabe in 1982, two years after independence from colonial rule, unleashed a crack North Korean-trained army on southern Zimbabwe, claiming that his government had the intelligence of a looming military insurgency led by the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-Zapu).
While the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) acknowledged that there was a small band of disgruntled Zapu members who had turned themselves into dissidents, Mugabe’s security agents went to kill some 20,000 mostly innocent villagers.
Most of them were buried in shallow graves and have not been given proper reburial for fear of reprisal from the security sector which feels that doing so would cause civil instability on mostly tribal lines.
Mphoko, however, surprised many on Monday when he said the government would go ahead and rebury those remains in a condolence message to the family of Cyril Ndebele, the former Speaker of Parliament who passed away last week.
