VICTIMS of the 1980s Matabeleland and Midlands massacres, known as Gukurahundi, have challenged President Emmerson Mnangagwa to openly apologise for the killing of over 20 000 innocent civilians, saying half-hearted acknowledgement would not yield the desired results.

In March this year, Mnangagwa met the Matabeleland Collective (MC) — a grouping of the clergy and civic society groups in the region — at the Bulawayo State House where he was pressed to shed light on what his administration was doing to deal with mounting calls for closure to the emotive issue.

On April 8, Mnangagwa, through the MC and his Justice, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs ministry’s permanent pecretary Virginia Mabhiza — pledged he would facilitate the exhumation and reburial of Gukurahundi victims, issue identity documents and provide post-physical and traumatic medical assistance to victims as government begins a process of finding redress to the mass killings.

To Susan Sibanda, now 60, Mnangagwa’s initiative is not enough without an apology, acknowledgement and truth-telling process by the perpetrators.

“How do we take him seriously when he is avoiding us, the victims? Why is he and other perpetrators avoiding us, but are able to meet the MC? Are those MC members Gukurahundi victims? Did they suffer the physical torture? Did they witness the cutting of lips, noses, beatings and so forth?” queried Sibanda, who still vividly remembers the severe beatings, multiple rapes, extra-judicial killings and mutilated bodies as if it was yesterday.

Sibanda was in her mid-20s when the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade was deployed to Matabeleland to crack down on alleged armed dissents against former President Robert Mugabe’s rule.
Other than the emotional pain, Sibanda still nurses an ankle injury from the beatings she suffered from the Fifth Brigade and walks with a limp.

“I don’t want their money, but an apology, and an acknowledgement of the evil that visited us. It irritates me to hear him saying people are free to discuss Gukurahundi when he is not ‘free’ to come and meet us the victims, and tell us why this had to happen to us”

Sibanda is not alone in demanding an apology, and acknowledgment.
Arnold Mpofu, a Zimbabwe People’s Liberation Army (Zipra) ex-combatant, and activist Charles Thomas also nurse physical and emotional injuries.

“We were beaten severely. Our hands and legs were tied with barbed wire. The torture went on for days, without food and water, at Bhalagwe detention camp in Maphisa,” Thomas, who still has scars on his legs from the barbed wire, said.

Maphisa is one of the districts that bore the brunt of the Gukurahundi massacres. Today there are mass graves at Bhalagwe Mine where victims were killed and thrown.
“I was saved by Dr Boyd who privately attended to us since victims were being dragged from the hospital by the soldiers to be killed. I lived to narrate my ordeal, and it is an ordeal I want to ask the perpetrators why they were tormenting and killing our people,” says Thomas.The Standard