[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.]

It is ten years since the original publication of ‘Breaking the Silence: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands’ (by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF)). We are delighted to let you know that the report has been re-published in book form by the South African publishing house Jacana under the title ‘Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe’.

Gukurahundi is a traditional Shona word, which means ‘the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains.’ It is the word chosen by the Mugabe regime to describe a military operation against a civilian population during the 1980s.

In 1980, a few short months after Independence Day, Robert Mugabe signed an agreement with the North Korean President Kim Il Sung to have the North Korean military train a brigade for the Zimbabwean army. Training of the 5th Brigade lasted until September 1982. The objective of the 5th Brigade was to crush the people of Matabeleland, force them to submit to Mugabe’s Zanu PF and relinquish their loyalty to Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu).

The infamous red-bereted 5 Brigade were soldiers equipped with unusually cruel skills. We learn through the ‘Breaking the Silence’ report that the methods used to address “reorientation”, “change”, “unfounded grievances” – methods designed to teach a community to “accept defeat” – included civilian murders, civilian rapes, civilian torture and the destruction of civilian property.

The report describes in detail some of the techniques used, and it’s important to understand that all the techniques were calculated to maximise terror, pain, grief and humiliation. The soldiers, under Mugabe’s instruction, set out to injure and mutilate human beings, to kill them, but to do so in such evil cruel ways that the scars would be indelibly etched in memories for generations to come.

Mugabe intended to leave this civilian population with fear for the rest of their lives, for the horror to be so great that they would pass the fear down to subsequent generations. This is how he believed he would manage discontent in the region, and hold onto power indefinitely.

When the soldiers were first deployed in Matabeleland, the shock was significant and the impact immediately felt:

“Five Brigade passed first through Tsholotsho, spreading out rapidly through Lupane and Nkayi, and their impact on all these communal areas was shocking. Within the space of six weeks more than 2000 civilians had died, hundreds of homesteads had been burnt and thousands of civilians had been beaten. Most of the dead were killed in public executions involving between one and 12 people at a time.”

The book form of the report, ‘Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe’, has an introduction by Elinor Sisulu and a foreword by Archbishop Pius Ncube:

Sisulu recounts how she was horrified by the detailed account in the CCJP report of the “mass shooting of 62 young men and women” on the banks of Cwele River in Matabeleland. She contrasts the silence that greeted the 1983 massacre in Matabeleland with the shock and dismay throughout the world occasioned by the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa in March 1960. (The Sunday Independent SA: 27 May 2007)

One of the most difficult things for decent people to comprehend is that these perverse barbaric acts of cruelty were not the actions of psychopaths, but soldiers. Their ‘enemy’ was not an invading army from foreign borders, nor were they fighting for freedom against a repressive racist regime; the vast majority of the ‘enemy’ were our fellow Zimbabweans – men, women, children, and the elderly: the innocent and the defenceless; the helplessly isolated.

Donald Trelford, editor of The Observer (UK) at that time, recalled an interview that he had with Robert Mugabe in 1984 where he asked Mugabe whether he would ever consider a political solution to the Matabeleland issue rather then the military one. Trelford describes Mugabe’s response to his question as ‘blunt’ and ‘chilling’:

“The solution is a military one. Their grievances are unfounded. The verdict of the voters was cast in 1980. They should have accepted defeat then … The situation in Matabeleland is one that requires a change. The people must be reoriented.”

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, carries another chilling quote from Mugabe in the early 1980s: “We eradicate them. We don’t differentiate when we fight because we can’t tell who is a dissident and who is not.”

The publishers of ‘Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe’ write: “the [Breaking the Silence] Report is offered again at a time when the events it describes – the Gukurahundi have acquired a fresh relevance”. They say that they hope “the reavailability of the Report will mean that more people will campaign for an end to human rights violations in Zimbabwe, and for restorative justice for the victims”.

‘Fresh relevance’ indeed. We only need to look at the language used by Zanu PF to see a recurring pattern in thinking: Gukurahundi (1980s) – ‘the early rain which washes away the chaff’, and, Murambatsvina (2000s) – ‘clearing out the trash’. The ‘chaff’ and the ‘trash’ being anyone who dares disagree or challenge the power of Robert Mugabe, or anyone that Mugabe thinks might one day in the future disagree with him or challenge his power.

This book – ‘Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe’ – is an essential book to read for anyone who wants to fully understand Zimbabwe’s history. Both the government enquiries – the Dumbutshena enquiry into the Entumbane battle and the 1984 Chihambakwe enquiry into the 1983 massacres – have never been made public and the Legal Resource Foundation’s attempt to get an order through the Supreme Court (on the basis of access to information in terms of the Constitution) failed. This book therefore stands as perhaps the most critically important record of the violations against the people of Matabeleland during the 1980s. It exposes Mugabe’s capacity for evil, and the enormity of the threat he and his party’s politics of violence presents for any hope that our country might ever enjoy a peaceful non-violent future where human rights are fully respected.

We are delighted that it is now easily available to a worldwide audience.

The book is available for purchase from Exclusive Books in South Africa (full details below). International readers can buy the book via the Exclusive Book website.

Please buy the book and read it and please encourage everyone you know to do the same. If you have a website or blog, please help publicise the fact that this book is now available.

Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe (Price: R189.00)
Sub-title: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980-1988

BP-B12
EAN : 9781770092075
Publisher : Jacana Media Pty Ltd
Country of publication: South Africa

Exclusive Books website: http://www.exclusivebooks.com/
Publisher’s website: http://www.jacana.co.za/

Update: 6 June 2007

Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe is also available via Amazon (click here).

[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.]

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Gukurahundi, 5th Brigade, 5 Brigade, human rights, massacre, genocide, murder, crime against humanity, Breaking the Silence, CCJP, LRF, Elinor Sisulu, Archbishop Pius Ncube

Via our email inbox:

As a businessman in Zimbabwe I am forced, along with my colleagues, to acquire scarce foreign currency from the unofficial market. It is not available through the banks. The official Rate of Exchange for the US dollar is 250:1 but right now we are being forced to pay as much as 56 000:1, a difference of monumental proportions to say the least.

Recently we discovered that one of our payments was held up so we followed procedure and investigated.

The facilitator eventually identified the other company, Parlovan, from whom they had bought the funds for us.

Then matters worsened and still no money had been sent to our supplier despite the fact that some weeks previously we had paid our Zim Dollars.

Finally it was revealed that none other than Solomon Majuru, the Vice President’s husband, was the owner of the company and he was personally involved in the deal. There were “delays” as they had to pay for fuel!!!!!!

One wonders how he acquires huge volumes of such a short commodity and does he secure it from the Reserve Bank at 250:1?????

This is surely pillaging and profiteering at its worst and no wonder the government continues to hold the rate of exchange in an inflation environment of over 4 000 percent. The system of patronage, to maintain power and the “loyalty” of the ruling elite, has simply run out of farms and have now resorted to Forex.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, economy, inflation, Foreign currency, forex, coruption, Solomon Mujuru, Reserve Bank, Parlovan, black market

What is it that makes us feel obliged to right wrongs, to take up causes that aren’t ours, or to risk our lives for something we are not even sure we understand? What makes us stand and fight, when we could simply walk away and leave others to battle on?

Looking back, it was a seemingly insignificant event in my youth that set my life on a crash course with oppression. In those days, my family used to make an annual holiday trip from Bulawayo to the Natal coast in South Africa. That was in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Our inquisitive young minds found things that were so bizarre that not even the pounding waves, the amusement parks, the myriad sweets, toys or gaudy trinkets, could distract us from asking our parents countless awkward questions like: Dad, why do they have signs on all the park benches? Mom, what does “Net Blankes” (Afrikaans for “Whites Only”) mean? Why are there only eight people in this blue bus, but in all those green buses where there is standing room only? Why can’t we get into this carriage – It’s the right train isn’t it?

Even as children in those days, the inequities and injustices of apartheid seemed so blatant and alien to the way we had been raised. The hushed explanations of our embarrassed parents did not make any sense either. Why couldn’t an African person sit on that bench, or the old coloured man for that matter? Were our parents joking? Certainly their faces didn’t look like they were.

Then one day, some years later, when I was probably about 16, it all finally all became clear to me. The event was trivial, but something changed inside me that day. We were at a Caravan Park, close to the beach and, to get into town, we had to cross the railway line. I was looking for a safe place to cross. There were some African labourers trudging off down a path to a distant crossing, even though there was a short tunnel under the line quite close by! I just couldn’t figure it. I went into the tunnel and saw why.

It was one of them – one of those ever-present, all-controlling “Net Blankes” signs. The realisation of the importance of those pathetic, offensive signs finally hit me – a simple injustice that was just the tip of the omnipotent iceberg of oppression. I lost it!

Never one to so much as raise my voice in public, I attacked that sign. I found it was loose, and I ripped it from the wall of the tunnel. I bent it. I jumped on it. I bashed it. I threw it at the wall. I continued until it was barely recognisable, then I threw it as far as I could into the bushes. That was the day that the fire started – the fire still burns inside me tonight.

It was an act of bravado that day, but to me it was statement – small though it was. To me it meant that the bastion of apartheid was just a fraction closer to being breached. From that day on, I reasoned, people would notice that the sign was gone and ask: Where has it gone? Why has it gone? or: Does this mean that things have changed? Well, if it’s not there, then it means they can’t stop me using the tunnel! And so on…

In reality, my action that day didn’t bring apartheid crashing down, but I learned that even the smallest act of defiance in the face of oppression makes a difference. It may not have changed anyone else’s life, but it changed mine forever, and the day will come that the mugabe regime will regret it. Be sure of it. Be sure that the fire still burns!

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, apartehid, South Africa, justice, human rights, resistance, protest, action

Sokari at Black Looks emailed and asked for an update on Murambatsvina 2 years on. And this email, from the Crisis Coalition, came in at the same time; it answers her question:

Solidarity with Victims of Operation Murambatsvina

THE 18th of May brings back sad memories of how the government of Zimbabwe systematically rendered at least 700 000 of its citizens homeless. The informal sector which had become a source of livelihood for many in a country which had over 80% of its potential labor force unemployed was not spared by the operation. Many small to medium enterprises were destroyed as army trucks, earth moving machines and bulldozers were driven into the high density areas, ostensibly, to rid the country of filth in an operation codenamed Murambatsvina (Restore Order).

As the effects of Murambatsvina continue to bite, women and children are amongst the hardest hit. The access to anti-retroviral drugs and the home-based care programmes were disrupted due to displacement caused by Murambatsvina. For them this was a death sentence leading to many deaths which could have been avoided, had it not been for an insensitive regime, which cared not for the welfare of people but for the consolidation and retention of political power, through brutality unexpected from a government that is already failing to provide anti-retroviral therapy to its people, and faced with a plunging economy but claims to have its people at heart.

Murambatsvina 2 Years On!

As we take stock of Operation Murambatsvina 2 years down the line, we are confronted with the reality of whole families (father, mother and children, some of whom are in their teens) living in a single makeshift plastic shack along Mukuvisi River, stripping them of their human dignity, and exposing them not only to cholera and other health hazards but also to a life worse than they led in the concrete and brick structures they were living in before the operation.

Promises by the government to build alternative shelter for affected people in another operation code-named Garikayi Hlalani Kuhle have come to naught, as only under 5000 homesteads have been built to replace over 90 000 homesteads that were destroyed. The few that were built remain unserviced with no ablution facilities but also largely available only to card carrying members of the ruling ZANU PF party. Operation Garikayi has since proved to be nothing more than a public relations stunt and a poor attempt at covering what is now increasingly being called, together with rampant human rights violations.

Furthermore, none of the recommendations by Dr Anna Tibaijuka’s, the UN Special Envoy have been implemented, after the government dismissed her as a conduit of the West.

We Remember

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition this year, as it did last year, commemorate, with its members and partners, Operation Murambatsvina over 8 weeks, to among other objectives,

• Remind the Government that we remember the operation for the loss of livelihood it precipitated for the majority poor.
• Let the world know that more people’s lives have continued to be destroyed as a direct result of Operation Murambatsvina. The commemoration will also save to remind each other of the fact that those who orchestrated the operation, have not been brought to account for their heinous acts, and that the full course of justice has not yet been taken.

The Coalition calls upon the international community, particularly the United Nations, Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union to reign in on the government of Zimbabwe known for instigating gross human rights abuses. We urge the Zimbabwe government to implement the recommendations of the report of the UN Special Envoy Dr Tibaijuka and to compensate the victims of Operation Murambatsvina.

Macdonald Lewanika
Spokesperson
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Murambatsvina, human rights, poverty, refugees, crime against humanity

Please send a Remember Murambatsvina e-card !

[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.]

Today is the second anniversary of the occasion when, the grubby little dictator, Robert Mugabe, openly declared his contempt for the man in the street, placed there and suffering because of his economic policies. In an ensuing “moment of madness” Bob, spurred by his secret service, declared that these people were filth and had to be fumigated, removed like cockroaches from the simple homes they had lived in for years.

In the dead of winter, just like Stalin, one his heroes, Bob set the armed forces on defenceless families and brought in the bulldozers to throw them into the street. Within a matter of weeks, 700 000 people were living in the open, exposed to the harsh winter by night and loss of dignity and property by day. It was a hopeless situation as working men and women were tormented by the choice between going to work and leaving their property and helpless children in the open, or not going to work and getting fired. The expression between a rock and a hard place has never been so real.

Two years later, neither the rock nor the hard place has made way for comfort. Instead, the people continue to eke out a miserable life, their eyes clearly displaying their hopelessness while Bob gleefully speeds past in his motorcade. An evil man indeed.

How did the world react to this? South Africa, who blame their own frightening crime levels on apartheid’s legacy of stripping people of their dignity and on poverty, saw no evil at all and continued its quiet diplomacy with Brother Bob. Does this country, the so-called hope of Africa, deserve to host the world cup?

The UN, it must be admitted, sent in Anna to confront King Bob. She wrote a good report and was called all sorts of names by Zanu PF, a fate which befalls everyone who dares criticise Bob and his policies. The UN bureaucrats did their work but Kofi Annan was focussed on something else – his impending retirement. So more ‘quiet diplomacy’ ensued and won the day as Annan’s schedule did not allow him to visit this country while he jet-setted the world making farewell speeches. It was a question of priorities.

Zimbabweans helped where they could but, in their majority, whispered comments in the privacy of their offices. Nearly all expressed sympathy; however, no public display of outrage ever occurred. Some companies bought a few tents for some of their staff and, with conscience clear, went back to the business of seeing to the bottom line. The opposition stayed ominously silent, with no attempt to mobilise the people.

The rest of Africa either supported Bob or kept their heads averted in passive solidarity. There is a tremendous shame in Africa when to spite your face you cut off your nose. Just for the sake of thumbing their noses at the EU, African leaders did not condemn Bob.

Instead, two years later, they have rewarded this evil regime by nominating and electing it to head the UN body on Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development!? The irony could not be more bitter for those people still living in plastic tents with absolutely no facilities at all. Their fate was sealed simply because a grubby little dictator was afraid the people would rise up against him. So, he set out to destroy them and send them back to the bleak backwaters of the rural areas.

The pain of last week’s endorsement of Zimbabwe at the UN could not be more poignant. How dare the world vote him in to lead the way in sustainable development, for a country no longer able to feed itself, not because of drought or non existent sanctions, but because Bob in a great sulk after being defeated in a referendum, set about punishing the people by dismantling the agricultural sector. It is a deep-seated evil that knows no bounds.

The praise singers in his party all have relatives who were affected by this operation and still they have no shame in actively applauding the oppression of a humble people. It was not the first time, nor will it be the last the Bob has insulted all who dare oppose him: in the language typical of a cunning and manipulative thug, he called on peasants to “strike fear in the hearts of our enemy the whites,” he then turned on the same peasants and called them “totemless people” and “filth” and now he is restoring their citizenship rights because he needs them for 2008.

The man is truly evil and yet he gets away with it every time. He has demonstrated that no one is above a bashing from him; his own party members, business executives, the man in the street, lawyers, judges, women marching with children, church leaders, members of the opposition – in short anyone who dares oppose him is the enemy.

This man stands alone, evil and surrounded by fear and misery. Yet he continues to gloat publicly like Bokassa, Mobutu and Amin did before him.

Africa should be hanging its head in shame.

[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.]

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, human rights, Murambatsvina, justice, Robert Mugabe, refugees

All of us in Zimbabwe find ourselves in an amazing dilemma. Today, I rushed to the bank and drew the maximum allowable, $1.5m (about 19 UK pounds) as this is the maximum amount of cash that an individual can lawfully withdraw each day as dictated by the government.

I was paid my salary 4 days ago which means that I have already lost 12% of my income by the time I even began to spend it. That is 3% per day which is inflation in Zimbabwe right now, if this is annualized it will mean that anything we buy will increase over 4000 times the price in 12 months.

So we draw our money and rush to buy basic goods for the household in the hope we will catch bargains to avoid the price increases. If one is lucky enough, it means rushing back to the bank again to draw more cash the next day despite that, this journey may cost the owner of a vehicle $100 000 or so each time.

When I go through this process I think of the innocent and less streetwise who may hold on to their money for a week before spending it and this simply means that 12% of the value of your hard earned money is lost by then. Then consider another anomaly. The public sector cannot cope with the rapidly changing economics so it means the poorest worker is now paying income tax at a level which used to be a relatively high income bracket.

All round, it is the people that suffer and lose and the system gobbles up their valuable money.

Then I, like every one else, has to decide what to do with my remaining cash which I will require for incidentals. If I hold on to it, I lose, so therefore we go out into the market place and decide whether to buy goods that we can re-sell or we risk arrest by quite clearly breaking the law and buying currency on the black market. If we get caught we face punishment and very definitely will not recover the foreign currency from the state.

This is sadly the position today, but next week and then every day and every hour thereafter it will get worse and the state simply prints money to survive whilst we sweat and toil and struggle only to lose again.

It is obvious to me that this situation will consume itself and everything will come to an end.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, inflation, salary, earnings, poverty, hyper-inflation, economics

[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.]

That is because it has already been over colonised starting with the British who swapped flags with us on 18 April 1980, followed by the North Koreans who helped us decimate our population by 20 000 people, then very briefly the Malaysians. After that, there was a lull until Ghadaffi took a short walk to colonialism across the bridge at the Chirundu border post. Driving to Harare, his beady eye caught sight of rolling farmland after rolling farmland. He even stopped along the way to announce to bemused peasants that he was now lord of the revolution. By the time he reached Harare the ink was barely dry on the deals that mortgaged Zimbabwean land for oil that never provided the much-touted panacea to self-inflicted Zimbabwean economic ills.

Then Ghadaffi let down our dear leader by selling out to the west and going to bed with Blair.

So our dear leader turned for the final run to a “tried and trusted” friend in China whose economy is growing at a tremendous clip. As we looked east into the sunrise at the end of the racetrack, announcements of impending deals threw the nation into a frenzy as major deal after major deal galloped our way. Or did it? The Chinese, of course, reciprocated by not making it to the finish line and the Zimbabwean ambassador to China became the fall guy. Our dear leader, desperate for friends, has continued to woo China who are only too happy to colonise us at arms length. This colonisation has taken two forms:

First, the flooding of cheap and poor quality Chinese products into our market to the detriment of our own production. This has led to the closure of a wide range of businesses in Zimbabwe – from small shops who cannot compete against the deluge, to the loss of thousands of jobs in the textile industry. Our leaders prefer to support jobs in China than jobs at home.

The second impact has been the second mortgage bond on mines, farms and various industries for a few tractors that find their way on to the chefs’ farms rather than to the people in whose name the chaotic and ruinous land reform was carried out.

Our dear leader has proved once again that he is ready to buy cheap tractors that do not last long but, that is not all, the tractors are destined to benefit a few fat chefs.

Has China colonised Zimbabwe? Big time! Has this colonisation benefited the people? Small time! Even “Comrade Mbeki” has warned Africa against being fodder for China’s economic growth. The traffic is one way, the chefs benefit in a very large and private way, and the people continue to grind out a miserable living while the chefs wine and dine the Chinese at the Sheraton.

There is worse to come. A country whose name did not feature in the Zimbabwean press for over twenty five years is now flavour of the year: Equatorial Guinea. We bet 99% of the population would be hard pressed to locate Equatorial Guinea on the map. This little backwater led by a tyrant with impressive credentials in the top ten hit-parade of dictators and mad men is waiting in the wings to become Zimbabwe’s next coloniser. It is fashionable.

Yes, it is true that Zimbabwe will never be a colony of Britain again; that title has been passed on to more like-minded friends who kill their uncles to get into power, crush revolutions by killing up to five thousand people a day in places like Tianamen Square, and form a solidarity ring with our mad men as long as it helps all sides stay in power.

By the time our mad men leave office, Zimbabweans will be saddled with a huge debt plus interest for the next three generations. It is time to take back our country or remain colonised for the rest of our lives.

[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.]

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, colonisation, colony, British, Britain, United Kingdom, North Korea, China, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Ghadaffi