VICE President John Nkomo has called for a national dialogue over the post-independence Gukurahundi atrocities and warned opposition groups against using the emotive issue to stoke divisions in the country.
Speaking in Bulawayo, Nkomo, who is Acting President in the absence of President Robert Mugabe, said the dialogue was needed to bring closure to the emotive subject.
"The way to bring closure to Gukurahundi is by engagement to discuss such issues, but quite often, those who talk about it were never victims or were born yesterday and are too young to comprehend what happened and why,” Nkomo said.
“President Mugabe came to Bulawayo when we were over that period with the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo and we all went to Brethren-In-Christ Church here in town and he said it was a moment of madness. They agreed with Umdala uNkomo that it should be a closed chapter.”
In period after independence in 1980, Mugabe unleashed a North Korean-trained army unit to deal with what was described as a dissident menace in the two regions.
Rights groups, however, say over 20,000 civilians, mainly supporters of Mugabe’s then chief rival Joshua Nkomo, were killed and thousands more driven away from their homes in the two regions in the crackdown.
Mugabe has not directly apologised for the crackdown, only describing it as a “moment of madness that was regrettable”.
Vice President Nkomo said the country needed to move beyond what he described as “irreversible history”.
"We have to accept that where there are human tribulations, such things happen. Let's engage to build a better present and a better future and always remember that what happened is history and we can't reverse it,” he said.
The report of a government-commissioned inquiry into the atrocities is still embargoed even to this day. But that has not stopped clamour in the region for those responsible to be brought to book and demands for victims to be compensated.
But Nkomo warned that the issue was sensitive and needed to be handled with care.
“People must engage and as the Organ on National Healing, our task is to say how it can be handled because fires are being fanned,” he said.
"Look at the years we spent in Gonakudzingwa Prison during the liberation war and there are thousands of people who went to war and never returned so who will compensate them for losing their lives?”