Remembering victims of Zimbabwe’s Gukurahundi genocide
In honour of his 50th birthday year, blogger and social commentator Rejoice Ngwenya launced the 2010% campaign in March.
In June, he said it was confession time, and demanded redress for the atrocities of Gukurahundi.
Celebrating his 50th birthday today, Rejoice sent us the piece below.
On a day, today, 10 September 2010, that I turn exactly fifty [50] years old, I would like not just to celebrate life in abundance, but also take a twenty-four hour ‘moment of extended silence’ to ponder over those who lost their lives.
In particular, I grieve with my sister Doreen whose daughter Tracey passed on under the cruel pain of leukaemia in England. Moreover there are those twenty thousand citizens of Matebeleland and the Midlands provinces of Zimbabwe – some of which I have heard of – Moliat Ndlovu, Cwayi Bhebhe, Charles Loxton, William Loxton, Dayan Loxton, Gifford Matandaware et al – who perished in the 1980s under the bayonet of Gukurahundi. Mr and Mrs [Luke] Khumalo, the intellectual couple of Tekwani High School, Plumtree, Zimbabwe, are yet to be accounted for, having given their entire lives to impart knowledge on thousands of young people.
My question: at a time when the coalition government of Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirayi and Arthur Mutambara pretend to offer the people of my country a chance for peace, why are the perpetrators of the heinous and barbaric acts of Gukurahundi still roaming free? ZANU-PF, under whose control the blood-thirsty North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade chose to waste innocent lives, has yet to confess its crimes against humanity. On a day, today, 10 September 2010, that I turn exactly fifty [50] years old, thirty [30] of those having lived under a brutal authoritarian dictatorship, I would therefore like to propose that ZANU-PF show their remorse by acknowledging that they were wrong, and instead of concentrating on further violating the liberties of white commercial farmers and black human rights defenders, invest money and time in financing a monument at Entumbane, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – so we can forever remember those whose lives they needlessly took. In celebrating life, I therefore acknowledge the existence of death.
How will you make your birthday a day of action?