I AM not one given to flaunting my personal opinions and feelings in the public domain, but when confronted with concealment or circumvention of empirically verifiable reality due to its supposed discomfort, I fail to resist the temptation to scramble out of my cocoon.
Honestly, who will not be alarmed when denialism is intentionally or ignorantly employed to falsify validated historical experiences such as the sole purpose for which President Robert Mugabe established the so-called Fifth Brigade?
And who in their right mindset, if not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will question the actuality of Nazi Germany butchering six million European Jews in a far-reaching ethnic cleansing exercise otherwise known as the Holocaust during World War II? Questioning the former is as barmy as querying the later.
I had never realised how hazardous it was to make assumptions, even on well-documented realities until I wadded into an emotionally-charged debate last week with two fellow journalists who obstinately believe the Fifth Brigade was created as a regular army unit that then digressed from its original brief and transgressed into a ragtag killer machine anon.
I also had never imagined there were Zimbabweans (let alone journalists who should know better) who doubt the extent of the damage that the North Korean-trained militia exacted upon the people of Matabeleland and Midlands in a mafia-style operation code-named Gukurahundi, whose Shona meaning is “washing away the chaff before the spring rains.”
It is a matter of public record that a few months after independence, in October 1980 to be precise, Mugabe signed an agreement with then-North Korean President Kim II Sung to have the notorious Korean army come in and train a brigade outside Zimbabwe’s regular military to crush what he said were “malcontents” in Matabeleland.
The brigade was different from the national army in every respect. Their training involved not the art of conventional warfare, but of skill of maiming, killing, raping and brutalising innocent civilians to achieve conquest.
Denialists and ignoramuses will obviously downplay the extent of the brutalities Mugabe’s mercenaries went on to commit on a civilian population when they were unleashed on Matabeleland and Midlands provinces on the pretext they were tracking and cracking down on dissidents whose origin remains a subject of public debate to this day.
Contributing to this volatile debate (triggered by the Nicodemus mounting and abrupt dismounting of Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo’s statue in Bulawayo), one of the journalists argued coldheartedly that the scope of the damage engendered by the Fifth Brigade could not be quantified.
This was their subtle way of disputing the 20,000 skulls that were crushed by the Fifth Brigade machinery, despite damning evidence gathered by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) in its 1997 report, “Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace.”
Weighing in, another colleague also suggesting rather sheepishly that the Fifth Brigade was created as an ordinary army unit that only morphed into a killer machinery when it was activated to deal with dissidents, some of whom had deserted the Zimbabwe National Army on the grounds that they were being ill-treated by their ZANLA counterparts or sidelined for promotion by management because they belonged to the Ndebele tribe which was associated with Nkomo’s ZIPRA military wing.
Having lost close relatives and neighbours in this barbaric crusade, perpetuated with reckless abandon by a power-hungry tyrant bent on exterminating a particular tribe because of its connection to a certain political outfit, I felt offended at my colleagues’ outlandish and callous reasoning.
I did not expect such twisted logic from journalists old enough to have seen both the struggle for independence and the genocide that followed in the predominantly Ndebele provinces of Matabeleland and Midlands.
I was incensed. Mad as hell. But my state of emotions quickly subsided upon noticing one thing in common about my two colleagues. They both were aliens to Matabeleland and Midlands, and could therefore, be pardoned for failing to comprehend or opting to ignore the magnitude of the Gukurahundi massacre.
It is crucial, however, to put it on record that not all outsiders to Matabeleland and Midlands are as blockheaded. Painting those from outside the two provinces with the same brush will be committing a grave injustice to the many objective Zimbabweans who are mindful of the vicious cruelty that the Ndebele people went through between 1983 and 1987.
The mass graves littered all over Tsholotsho, Lupane, Plumtree and several other rural outposts are anecdotal of what really transpired during the Gukurahundi epoch. These shallow graves, brimming with skeletons of innocent villagers killed execution-style, tell a revealing story to those pushing and perpetuating a dangerous, denialist agenda.
They also are a big indictment on Mugabe and a negligible like-minded number of Shona supremacists who sought, through the Gukurahundi, to obliterate a tribe from the face of the earth for the simple reason that it supported or was perceived to be supporting a political movement of its choice.
But more importantly, the graves serve as an excruciating reminder of an indelible historical experience to many of us - the chaff that the Gukurahundi clouds were seeded to wash away when precipitation took place.
Surely, by querying the purpose for which the Fifth Brigade was founded and the damage it subsequently caused, what historical narrative are we trying to bequeath to our posterity? Is it a history of denialism and, or ignorance? Either way, it is not helpful to the nation healing that we so desperately desire.
In a damning report last week, U.S.-based Genocide Watch called for the prosecution of Mugabe and his cronies for “genocide” against the Ndebele people. The group prides itself in having “campaigned for over thirty years for bringing of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia to justice for genocide and crimes against humanity, and they are finally on trial.”
It urged the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights to conduct a full investigation into the Gukurahundi purge with the aim of establishing a hybrid UN-Zimbabwean tribunal to put Mugabe and his co-perpetrators on trial.
The watchdog declared; “The Gukurahundi meets the definition of genocide because it was carried out by the North-Korean trained, exclusively Shona Fifth Brigade under President Mugabe and it targeted ethnic Matebele people. These militias still exist, like neo-Nazi groups, and conduct terror campaigns against opponents of Mugabe’s Zanu PF in election campaigns.”
Although this was already public knowledge to those who care to remember history, Genocide Watch singled out Army Commander General Constantine Chiwenga and State Security Minister Sydney Sekeramayi among others, as having contributed directly in the execution of this gristly crime of mass murder.
And obviously, people like Enos Nkala, Emerson Mnangagwa and he first Commander of the Fifth Brigade Perence Shiri, should also be brought to book when the day of reckoning comes.
But pressing for justice for the people of Matabeleland and Midlands should not only rest in the hands of foreigners such as the U.S.-based genocide watchdog. It should be the responsibility of all Zimbabweans who disapprove of Zanu PF’s wicked ways.
The push for transitional justice should, however, not end with the Gukurahundi era. It should stretch all the way to contemporary Zimbabwe. Several other tear-jerking chapters of violence in our historical narrative have been written -- albeit small in scope compared to the Gukurahundi purge.
Since the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mugabe and his Zanu PF party have resorted to violence and coercion to stay in power. In the process -- as was during Gukurahundi -- many people have been killed in cold blood for going against the Zanu PF grain. The names are too numerous to enumerate.
As the country rolls out its highly ambitious, but feeble national reconciliation agenda, let Zimbabweans unite and be conscious enough (despite tribe, race and, or creed) to the historical experiences that have occurred in our country over the past years.
Let us not, out of ignorance or denial, seek to alter the purposes for which the notorious Fifth Brigade was formed. Mugabe knows it. Enos Nkala knows it. And so does Perence Shiri, among other vultures, and every other Zimbabwean.
And let us not, especially those few ignorant ones who are aliens to Midlands and Matabeleland, question the extent the Fifth Brigade caused on our people. Doing so is not only barmy but irresponsible in an unforgivable way.
Ntungamili Nkomo is a Zimbabwean journalist domiciled in Washington DC, USA. His views do not reflect any institution that he is aligned with. He is contactable at ntungab@gmail.com