- “politicians should leave it to us” with regard to “settling things in Matabeleland”: Shiri
It may be over 30 years ago since the Gukurahundi atrocities ended, yet some of the men who perpetrated Zimbabwe history’s most horrendous crimes are still alive, serving in government and even plotting beyond Robert Mugabe era.
When two young school drop-outs Dominic Chinenge (Constantine Chiwenga) and his friend Bigboy Samson Chikerema (Perence Shiri) left for war from Mt St Mary’s in Wedza where both were students, little did the nation know they would later form one of the most brutal combinations in post-independent Zimbabwe.
The army commanders who directed the killings, many of whom still retain key positions in a security sector that underwrites the regime, are also shown in the documents to have been eager accomplices. Zvobgo commented that the first commander of 5 Brigade, Perence Shiri, had said the “politicians should leave it to us” with regard to “settling things in Matabeleland”, according to historian Dr Stuart Doran.
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Shiri is now the head of Zimbabwe’s air force. He worked closely with many former members of Mugabe’s guerilla army, Zanla, notwithstanding a myth that 5 Brigade operated separately from the rest of the army. Those who assisted Shiri allegedly included the now chief of Zimbabwe’s defence forces, Constantine Chiwenga.
During the killings, Shiri frequently consulted with Chiwenga who was head of 1 Brigade based in Bulawayo.
Chiwenga’s unit also provided a range of practical assistance, including logistical support for 5 Brigade and a base from which Shiri’s men operated when they made punitive raids on Bulawayo’s townships.
Together with other former Zanla cadres, who shared common experiences and common hatreds, the pair was intimately involved in an apparent attempt to obliterate the Ndebele from the face of the earth, said Doran.
Another denier who was complicity in the murders is current VP Emmerson Mnangagwa .
When David Coltart launched his biography, where he quoted Mnangagwa making some very derogatory remarks about people in Matabeleland, the kind of language that was at the epicentre of the Rwandan genocide.
Mnangagwa, the Chronicle of March 5, 1983, reported, likened “dissidents to cockroaches” and the Fifth Brigade, which carried out the killings, to “DDT”, a deadly pesticide to wipe out the insurgents.-Online
