What role did Mnangagwa play in Gukurahundi? Asks Frazer Muzondo, an MDC (UK) Activist as he opines on Zimbabwe’s dark past in an opinion piece titled “Mnangagwa and Zimbabwe’s dark past”

As victory in the 1980 independence wasn’t enough to satisfy former president Robert Mugabe’s lust for control, Mugabe and the country’s current leader Emmerson Mnangagwa saw the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo and ZAPU as the real enemy not the Rhodesians.

Mugabe’s ruthless rise to dominance, driven by ambition and his loathing for fellow nationalist leader Nkomo and the evolution of a de facto one party state is what caused Gukurahundi.

As a result, in 1983, history tells us that Mugabe ordered the deployment of the 5th Brigade in Matebeleland which was seen as a ZAPU stronghold. The indiscriminate killings allegedly left close to twenty thousand people dead, mainly the Ndebeles.

These killings compounded with the torture and acts of brutality left survivors mentally scarred and up to today neither Mnangagwa nor Mugabe has offered compensation or an apology.

During these acts of genocide, the man who provided the day to day bridge between the political leadership and the killers in the security services was none other than President Mnangagwa.

Apparently, Perence Shiri who is currently a cabinet minister in Mnangagwa’s Coup cabinet was commander of the 5th Brigade then.

It’s no secret that Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s counsellor and confidante for more than thirty years and during these 30 years, Zimbabweans have endured deepening poverty, rampant corruption and systematic human rights abuses under the watchful eye of Emmerson Mnangagwa.

This is the same man seeking support and the people’s vote on the ballot box. Therefore even though Mugabe is gone, but the link with the past isn’t broken.
But how come the first western diplomat to congratulate Mnangagwa in person after the end of the 37years of despotic Mugabe’s rule through a military coup which was not a coup, was a UK minister?

Has the UK government forgotten the Gukurahundi and its perpetrators or were they complicit when the genocide was being committed.

Therefore a ‘New Dispensation’ will never be New with the face of Mnangagwa on it. Zimbabwe needs real change and real transformation without a link to the dark past. Mnangagwa isn’t capable of taking this country to its real potential.