Chinotimba Targets Coltart For 'Genocide' Remark

Last week we read about Joseph Chinotimba’s interview with a foreign newspaper and about his desire to be the Minister of Education. Chinotimba claims to be a war veteran but this has been disproved as he was a municipal policeman in Salisbury, Rhodesia during the chimurenga.

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This week he is obviously beginning the siege of Coltart by labelling him a "Selous Scout" and saying that no one should call the Gukurahundi a ‘genocide’.

For the record, a genocide 'is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group'.

The Gukurahundi was the killing of Matabele people by the specially North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, and an estimated twenty to thirty thousand people lost their lives in the operation.

The Matabele people have craved for an apology from Robert Mugabe - but all they have received is the dismissive comment that the operation was 'a moment of madness'.

Further, a human rights group agrees that the reign of terror in Matabeleland and the Midlands was a genocide.

"A United States-based international human rights group says President Robert Mugabe and several of his most senior officials should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity after ruling that the killing of thousands of civilians in Matabeleland and Midlands between 1982 and 1987 was "genocide".

Genocide Watch is the first major rights group to call the mass civilian murder, known as Gukurahundi, a genocide. Rights groups estimate 20,000 people were killed.

"There is no statute of limitations for genocide or crimes against humanity,” said Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch."

Chinotimba will dismiss the group’s decision to label the Gukurahundi a genocide - but would prefer to have the minister apologise with seven days.

Chinotimba does not embellish on any action he or other ‘war veterans’ may embark upon if Coltart does not apologise.

"War veterans leader Joseph Chinotimba has demanded that Education Minister David Coltart apologises within seven days for calling Gukurahundi a "genocide".

"We cannot continue folding our hands and watch former Rhodesians insulting us," Chinotimba, deputy chairman of the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans' Association, declared on Thursday.

The public threats against Coltart, who is white, came as the minister posted a letter he received from the chairman of the Harare Province of the war veterans’ association, and his reply to it, on his website.

Chinotimba is incensed that Coltart, whom he erroneously called a former 'Selous Scout' - the special forces regiment of the Rhodesian army - used the annual Lozikeyi Lecture on October 29 to state that the first 30 years of Zimbabwe’s independence had been marked by “serious and consistent human rights abuses, including a politicide, if not genocide, which occurred in the mid-1980s in the south-west of the country."

The minister’s lecture, reproduced on New Zimbabwe.com in full, was reported in a news story by the NewsDay newspaper which used the headline: 'It was genocide - Coltart'.

"It is quite preposterous in the extreme for Coltart to preach about human rights violations and post-independence disturbances when taking into cognisance his background as a former member of the brutal and murderous Rhodesian Selous Scouts,” Chinotimba blasted.

He claimed Coltart’s comments were a 'despicable attack' on the war veterans, adding: "The utterances are unacceptable and an insult to our country’s liberation struggle, national reconciliation and the legacy of national independence.

"Coltart owes us and the rest of the nation an apology within seven days. We cannot continue folding our hands and watch former Rhodesians insulting us.

"Your utterances have given us second thoughts on those white farmers who are still on our land yet you benefited from the reconciliation policy."

Coltart has now released a letter he sent to Charles Mpofu, the Harare province chairman of the war veterans' association, explaining his comments.

Coltart said: "I was misquoted by NewsDay in so far as their headline is concerned. In this regard, I attach a copy of the actual speech I gave which I trust will set the record straight.

"Amongst other things, you will note that I made reference in it to the Nyadzonia Massacre and to my concern that human rights violations of the past, including the colonial era, have not been adequately dealt with in my view.

"...human rights are universal, eternal and sacrosanct and whenever they are breached, men and women of goodwill have a duty to speak out against such breaches."

Coltart, a respected human rights lawyer, used his letter to clarify his role in the white minority Rhodesian government.

"For the record, I was never a member of the Selous Scouts or any unit of the army," Coltart said. "I was a member of the British South Africa Police (BSAP) having been conscripted by the Rhodesian government (as applied to all white 18 year old men)."

Where there is war, there are always going to be divisions. Division over goals, targets and the manner in which these are achieved. Genocide, however, when a country is not a war - which, in the 1980s Zimbabwe was not - is unacceptable and should therefore fall under the auspices and litigation responsibilities of the International Criminal Court.

But, as yet, the world seems reluctant to bring Mugabe to answer for his vast, varied and numerous crimes against humanity - including genocide... notably, the Gukurahundi.

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man