Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
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| Senator Roy Bennett |
Unlike many countries in Africa, Zimbabwe has held many elections. We have held them on time and managed the mechanics of voting relatively efficiently. This poses an obvious question: why would a regime which believes it has a God-given right to rule in perpetuity bother with elections? The answer to this has its roots in an election which took place in February 1980 and in turn provided the basis for the formation of an independent Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe and his party, Zanu, had been fighting a war of liberation from colonial domination supported in that cold war era by China. Zanu’s leaders were deeply sceptical about participating in elections because it believed these would be rigged against them. Zanu was forced into this election by their main guerrilla host sponsors, Mozambique and Tanzania. Zanu participated reluctantly and angrily—yet they also came up with a plan to ensure a manufactured majority of Zimbabweans would vote for them. Advised and trained by Peking at the time, they did this by terrorising and brutalising the rural population which, then, as now, constitutes the bulk of our people.
Terror was not new to Mugabe’s army, Zanla. These guerrilla forces operated largely in the Shona-speaking areas of Zimbabwe, during the liberation war. They relied heavily on Mao Tse Tung’s strategy of terror. Arbitrary killings were the chosen means of putting the fear of God—or, more correctly, the fear of Satan—into innocent, defenceless rural peasant people. One of many techniques was to force so-called “sell outs” or ‘collaborators’ to lie on the ground while their family members were forced to beat them to death. Others were tied with wire and shot at point blank range. One terrible instance remains raw in my mind. These ‘Liberation heroes’ took a metal bar, heated it red hot, made a crook on its end, and disembowelled a woman. Her young daughter was buried alive alongside her. The whole village was forced to watch.Under the ceasefire agreement at that time, Mugabe’s Zanu was obliged to lay down arms and gather its forces at pre-designated assembly points. Instead, Zanu assembled only a portion of its cadres and instructed the rest to remain at large to intimidate the people and thus guarantee the rural vote. These combatants moved among the villages and the people were told that they would be shot, or have their throats cut, if they did not vote for Mugabe’s Zanu. Against the background of the war, and its sickening violence, people needed little convincing that the threat of death was real. But this did not prevent Zanla from reinforcing the point: many more alleged collaborators or ‘sell-outs’ were butchered during the ceasefire. Shona rural areas in Zimbabwe were made no-go zones for other political parties. In one of many examples, Francis Makombe, a candidate representing the rival nationalist party, Zapu—which was supported by the Soviet Union and, ironically, South Africa’s African National Congress—was last seen having hot coals shoved down his throat.
Mugabe ‘won’ a majority. To his surprise and delight Zanu inherited the ‘Bread Basket of Africa’. International recognition, admiration and aid followed. He and his party learnt a lifelong lesson: elections confer legitimacy, no matter how they are won. Put otherwise, violence could always guarantee power in a so-called democracy, just as it does during war. Before assuming office, the commander of Zanla forces in the field died under suspicious circumstances in a ‘car accident’ in Mozambique. The remains of the charismatic Josiah Tongogara have never been exhumed, despite his family’s requests for an independent autopsy. He was at the time a credible rival to Mugabe. Murder and assassination have never been far from Zanu’s leadership.
After its success in 1980, Zanu embarked on a second objective that it hoped to be achieve by a sweeping victory at the next elections, Mugabe’s ZANU had power—but it lacked the element that had underlined the war effort. Zanu wanted not only to rule, but to rule alone. Zanu decided Zimbabwe should become a North Korean-style personalised one-party state. But there was a problem in the form of Joshua Nkomo and his party, Zapu. Zapu enjoyed overwhelming support from the regionally-based minority Ndebele tribe. Zanu had to manufacture a pretext for wiping out Zapu and its support before the next election was held. A bandit problem in the Zapu heartland of Matabeleland provided this pretext. In January 1983, Zanu deployed to Matabeleland the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the army. The Brigade was called Gukurahundi,—which in Shona means the ‘rain that washes away the chaff’. The Gukurahundi was ostensibly mobilised to deal with bandits, known locally as dissidents. Zimbabweans knew then what Mugabe was to embark on. This world needs to now recognise the Gukurahundi massacres for what they were, a shameful act of despicable ETHNIC CLEANSING.
The deployment of the Fifth Brigade brought with it the worst sustained bloodletting ever seen in Zimbabwe. In scale—and in its grotesque, sadist nature—the likes of it had never been seen before. Many, many thousands died; the number will never be known. But this address is not about statistics or numbers. It is about suffering and the need for justice. It is about bringing to justice those who inflicted inconceivably brutal, savage murders on innocent people. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters deserve nothing less. The following are eyewitness accounts, some of which have never been published before:
[They] found him milking. They shot him and broke off his lower jaw and cut off his tongue. He ran away ... They fired again and broke his left arm below the elbow. We found him on the 2nd day ... We brought him home but [he] died the following day.
