Priest, Minister Arrested For Remembering The Gukurahundi

One of Mugabe's top spies dies and the whole country has to come to a stop to remember this 'national hero' And, today being the country's thirty-first birthday, people have to stop what they are doing to give thanks for their ;indepepndence'.

But a priest and a minister have been arrested for holding a memorial to the between twenty and thirty thousand people that died in the early to mid-1980s when Mugabe set the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade on the Matabele people to quell what he called 'dissidents'.

The real number of dissidents was probably no more than a couple of hundred despondent and unhappy men having been overlooked in the rank structure of the new Zimbabwe National Army.

So, to unleash such a force on the people of Matabeleland was not only cruel, but inhumane. There are mass graves throughout Matabeleland that the Mugabe administration refuses to acknowledge, but we are all supposed to fall over backwards with the 'discovery' of a mass grave in Mount Darwin – the bodies reportedly ZANU PF freedom fighters slain by the Rhodesian security forces.

ZANU PF are reluctant to conduct DNA tests and the bodies are too 'fresh' to have been lying undiscovered for thrity one years. They just want to build a monument to their 'brave' cadres...

"A government minister and a Roman Catholic priest were arrested and detained by police for holding a memorial service for victims of massacres in western Zimbabwe after independence in 1980, their attorneys said Friday.

Moses Mzila-Ndlovu, a co-minister in the state national healing commission and a member of the former opposition in Zimbabwe's fragile coalition, attended the service Wednesday officiated by Father Marko Mkandla in Lupane, northwest of the second city of Bulawayo.

Attorney Lizwe Jamela said the two are accused of holding a gathering that police had not authorized. He said they will appear in court Tuesday.

An estimated 20,000 civilians were killed when troops loyal to President Robert Mugabe crushed an armed uprising in western Zimbabwe that ended in 1987.

The priest is also accused of "communicating false statements against the state" by referring to the killings and stirring "offence to a particular tribe."

Why am I not surprised? Mugabe has excused his actions with regard to the Gukurahundi as 'a moment of madness'. He stops short of apologising to the Ndebele people for the genocide.

But the police charge the priest with 'communicating falsehoods'... If the President himself has acknowledged the Gukurahundi, then how can the priest holding a memorial be 'communicating falsehoods'?

The article suggests that the operation was begun as a reaction to an Ndebele 'uprising'... The two Entumbane squirmishes hardly qualify as uprisings, and the number of Ndebele involved hardly count as a tribal revolt...

But Mugabe, as is his habit, is intent on re-writing history to ensure that the actions of his ZANU PF party are shown as heroic and partiotic... Far from it!

"Witnesses said Mzila-Ndlovu was arrested at a police roadblock after he left the service and headed for a meeting of colleagues of the healing and reconciliation commission in the northwest resort town of Victoria Falls.

Last year, police arrested a Bulawayo artist and shut down his exhibition of paintings and graphics depicting bloodshed in the western Matabeleland province before a peace pact was signed in 1987. He later fled his home after receiving threats of violence.

The massacres, many documented by church groups, left deep scars in communities in western Zimbabwe and the killings have never been publicly acknowledged by Mugabe or his security chiefs."

If ever you wanted to read more about the Gukurahundi, there is my book, penned in 2006, "Without Honour". This is a first hand account of my experiences while serving in the Zimbabwe Republic Police in Matabeleland during the bloody attacks on the Ndebele people.

wh lulu 004 JyGJs 16744

The book is available as both an ebook and in printed format. It is 218 pages long, contains 72000 words and about three dozen images.

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man