Mr Kgalema Motlante
Chairman of The Zimbabwe Commission,
On 1st August 2018 Post Election Protest Public Executions
The Zimbabwe Kgalema Motlanthe Commission of Inquiry
Republic of South Africa
Dear Commission Chairman, Mr Kgalema Motlante,Re: Commission’s Failure To Protect Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide Witnesses

This complaint letter, from the 1893 Mthwakazi (Matebeleland) Human Rights
Restoration Movement (1893 MHRRM), is in response to the way the victims of
Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide, who testified before your Commission of
Inquiry on the 26th October 2018 in Bulawayo, Mthwakazi (Matebeleland) in
Zimbabwe, were treated in front of your Commission. We thought it wise to deliver
this letter to you via the UK RSA Embassy as you are a citizen of South Africa.
We note with grave concern that on the 26th October 2018 at Rainbow Hotel, a
number of victims of the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide, whom you kindly
gave a greenlight to testify before your Commission of Inquiry about their
Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide experiences, were harassed, beaten and
arrested by the Zimbabwean police and possibly state agents in front of your
Commission without your Commission making any efforts to protect them. These
witnesses and victims of the Matebeleland Genocide were subsequently taken to
custody and eventually to court for trial on trumped up charges levelled against
them by the Zimbabwean state.

While the 1893 Mthwakazi Human Rights Restoration Movement appreciates your
sound decision to allow the people of Matebeleland to testify before your
Commission about their experiences during the Matebeleland Gukurahundi
Genocide, the Movement however strongly condemns your Commission’s failure
to offer the surviving victim witnesses of this horrific state crime, protection,
security and support from beatings, arrests, threats to their lives and that of their
families and court trials on trumped up charges from the state of Zimbabwe. The
Commission has a duty to institute mechanisms for protection, security and safety
for witnesses who testify before it. This happens the world over. This Commission
seems to have failed to institute such mechanisms and therefore it has failed to offer
protection, security and safety of those who testified before it.

That this sort of thing or shenanigans happened in front of a supposedly
“Independent” Commission headed by your good self, a Commission whose duty
has been to investigate the extra-ordinary public execution of protesters in Harare
post the disputed Zimbabwean election of 2018, makes a mockery of the
Commission itself, its work and its outcomes. This event and a series of other events
that continue to unfold as court trials of Matebelaland Gukurahundi Genocide
witnesses in Zimbabwe, undermined and continue to undermine the Commission’s
integrity and credibility and the credibility of its individual Commissioners and for
all intents and purposes the integrity and credibility of a perceived statesman of
your calibre.

In light of the foregoing or aforementioned issues, the 1893 Mthwakazi Human
Rights Restoration Movement therefore calls on you Sir, as a Chair of the
Commission, to make guarantees in writing to the Movement and the people of
Matebeleland that the witnesses who testified before your Commission and their
relatives are not going to be further harassed and harmed by the state of Zimbabwe
or made to disappear. As you may well be in the know, Matebeleland, since the
1980s has been a land of “rivers of blood” of the people of Matebeleland as well as
a land of unaccounted disappearances of its sons and daughters as a result of the
5th Brigade of Zimbabwe under the command of Robert Gabriel Mugabe and the
current President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Therefore this sort of
treatment of the people of Matebeleland provokes the reliving of traumatic events
of the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide of the 80s.

The Movement also calls on you Sir, as the Chair of the Commission, to make
guarantees in writing to the Movement and the people of Matebeleland that your
Commission will intervene to stop, as a matter of urgency, the current and on-going
persecution and victimization of witnesses who testified before your Commission
by the state of Zimbabwe.

We would appreciate your attention and immediate resolution of this matter.
Yours Sincerely

The 1893 MHRRM-UK Leadership