The beleaguered ZANU (PF) political party is at it again, now by trying to buy political mileage out of the discovery of bodies in the Mashonaland region, yet they continue to neglect the massacres carried out in Matabeleland in the 1980’s. It seems to me that ZANU (PF) leaders have known about these graves since Independence yet chose to do nothing about them.

Is this their latest sad election mode? Are they desperate in the hope that these cheap tactics will earn them votes? When ZANU PF launched its anti sanctions campaign we dismissed it with the contempt it deserves. Most of us thought that this must be their last project before the said elections, but alas it became clear that we are fooling ourselves. Just listen and read the news coming from the State controlled media, since the beginning of this week about the “mass graves” that have been found around the country.

Comments are also being aired from the usual supporters – War Veterans Association, War Collaborators, Zanu Women’s league and ordinary ZANU (PF) supporters. “We are so hurt and why did they not take Smith to Hague for these atrocities… blah blah blah …”

Why all of a sudden only exhume bodies that purportedly buried by Rhodesian forces, what about the thousands of innocent civilians murdered and buried during Gukurahundi in Matabeleland and Midlands?

While the reburial is commendable ZANU (PF) should know that it has its own victims. The question is who is behind these discoveries 30 years on? Why has it became so spontaneous in all provinces? Were the locals aware of these graves but kept quiet? Those behind these discoveries must be careful because the number of bodies being discovered will surpass the number of living Zimbabweans in one province! This will backfire and is typical of what I call cheap electioneering .

A disused mineshaft. A mass grave. Hurried exhumations. A mood of dread, suspicion, and blistering political rhetoric.

This has the makings of a very Zimbabwean murder mystery.

For many days the state-controlled media, loyal to President Robert Mugabe, has been giving saturation coverage to the exhumation of hundreds of bodies from an abandoned mine.

Zanu-PF ministers have been on hand to declare that the corpses were victims of the liberation struggle, murdered by forces of the white Rhodesian leader, Ian Smith, during the 1970s. Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere and others have been quick to build political capital out of the gruesome site – explicitly linking the past atrocities to the alleged “pro-white” tendencies of their current rivals in the MDC.

There seems to be no doubt that the graves, and the corpses, are genuine. But the timing and handling of the “discovery” have raised suspicions in some quarters. Perhaps even more significantly, some people are starting to question the age and identity of the dead.

Are all the bodies really victims of the liberation war, or could some have been killed during the Gukurahundi massacres of the early 1980s?

Some people who have visited the site, and seen the condition of the bodies, have even suggested that some of them could be MDC activists, killed by pro-Zanu-PF gangs during the violent election campaign of 2008.

Perhaps significantly, Zanu-PF ministers now appear to be distancing themselves from the exhumations, which were carried out by an organization called the Fallen Heroes Trust – linked in numerous reports to President Mugabe’s party.

A professional, independent forensic examination is presumably the only way to settle this matter.