THE MDC and ZAPU have called for the exhumation of remains of Gukurahundi victims said buried in mines across Matabeleland, just days after government officials announced they had found over 400 skeletons of victims of the 1970s liberation war in Mt Darwin.

ZAPU said evidence of the 1980s crackdown in Matabeleland and the Midlands targeting President Robert Mugabe’s opponents was “plenty and fresh”, and the MDC led by Welshman Ncube demanded a “decent burial” for the victims.

The calls came as a government-supported charity, Fallen Heroes of Zimbabwe Trust, said it had carried out the exhumation of over 400 victims of “atrocities” carried out by the Rhodesian minority government during the 1970s.

The claims have not been independently verified, and a radical Matabeleland-based pressure group -- the Mthwakazi Liberation Front -- refused earlier this week to take the claims at face value, insisting that some of the skeletons may in fact belong to victims of the 1980s genocide in Matabeleland which rights groups say may have killed as many as 20,000 people.

ZAPU said it “fully supports the exposure of war time atrocities”, but a spokesman said: “We would be happier if there was also an exposure and exhumation of mass graves of our supporters massacred by Zanu PF’s Gukurahundi forces between 1982 and 1987.”

ZAPU said the Gukurahundi massacres were “worse than the Rhodesian atrocities”, adding: “These were perpetrated by a black government on black people, simply because they belonged to a different tribe or they supported a rival political movement.”

It added: “Gukurahundi evidence is plenty and fresh, with some of the architects of the genocide, namely Perence Shiri, Emerson Mnangagwa and others still with us and can make the task easier by volunteering evidence and pin-pointing the mass graves we do not yet know.”

In a separate statement, the MDC said it appreciates the “good work being done by villagers and members of the Fallen Heroes Trust of exhuming victims of the liberation war from mass graves”, but demanded more.

“It is unfortunate to note that the exhumation process is not transparently done and is being carried out on a partisan basis,” a statement from the party said.

“We are calling for the decentralisation of the exhumation process so that all those who were brutally murdered during and after the war can be accorded a decent burial.

“We are demanding the immediate exhumation and decent burial for thousands of those Gukurahundi victims who were murdered in cold blood by the North Korean trained 5th Brigade.”

The Mt Darwin exhumations have attracted senior government officials and Cabinet ministers who have queued on state television to denounce Ian Smith’s Rhodesian forces. The discoveries in disused mine wells have provided Zanu PF with election campaign fodder against its rivals.

“Those who witnessed the horrific Gukurahundi genocide against the people of Matabeleland and parts of Midlands Provinces in the 1980s know  that thousands mysteriously ‘disappeared’ in Harare, Chitungwiza and others parts of Mashonaland at the hands of the tribalistic Zimbabwe  regime,” said spokesman David Magagula.

“The ‘discovery’ of the said skeletons could as well provide a clue as to the fate of the said ethnic Ndebele people and  ex-ZIPRA force troops who disappeared during the same period and still cannot be accounted for.”