By Wilbert Mukori- “The Government will also start issuing birth certificates to children of some of the people who were killed during the disturbances and have been failing to get the documents and death certificates of those who died,” reported Zimeye.
“The government will next month start exhuming and burying bodies of victims of Gukurahundi.
“The recommendations were part of a high level third (closed door) meeting between President Mnangagwa and civil society groups under the banner of Matabeleland Collective at State House in Bulawayo yesterday.”
It is pleasing that those who have not been able to get birth and death certificates and all the other routine stuff done because of what happened during the madness Gukurahundi are finally going to do these things. It is shocking that it has taken nearly 40 years to have these matters sorted out.
Still, I have to question this Zanu PF government’s competence in the handling of any of the other substantive matters such as the reburial of Gukurahundi massacre victims, paying compensation to the victims, etc. To start with, these matters should be done after all the reports done so far on Gukurahundi have been released and the reburials, etc. are carried out as follow up processes.
There have been at least two official investigations, the Chihambakwe Commission, requested by Mugabe, and when Mnangagwa took over following the November 2017 coup he too set up a body to look into the matter. The two reports must be made public and only then must Zanu PF state publicly what the party propose to do next.
The path Zimbabwe has followed this last 40 years was defined, for better or for worse, by what happened during 1983 to the signing of the Zanu PF and PF Zapu Unity Accord – the Gukurahundi massacre years. Up to now, what happened has remained cloaked in shroud of secrecy and mystery. The shroud must now be lifted and the matter dealt with in an open and transparent manner.
Since Emmerson Mnangagwa and many of those in his Zanu PF government were the principle players in the Gukurahundi saga, it is very doubtful they can be trusted to let the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth come out. It would be better to do nothing regarding Gukurahundi at this point than to open up the old wound and make a complete mess of it!
The other point is; the timing of bringing up the substantive Gukurahundi issues is all wrong give the country is facing a very serious and immediate threat in then form of the corona virus pandemic! With out adding a new distraction, in the form of Gukurahundi, this Zanu PF government is already failing, once again, in its primary duty as the government of saving human lives.
This government’s blundering incompetence and deliberate acts of deception in the handling of the corona virus is putting hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean lives at risk. This is a humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding here and now and demanding our urgent attention!
Zororo Makamba, the country’s first corona virus victim, was allowed to mix freely with the public because a senior Zanu PF official overruled an Immigration Official who wanted Makamba placed in isolation.
South Africa’s corona virus infection rate will be similar to that of Zimbabwe, given the heavy human traffic between the two. SA has 12 843 covid-19 deaths, for example, and Zimbabwe, with 1/4 the population, should therefore have 3 210 deaths. Instead, Zimbabwe has, officially, 151 covid deaths; 20 times lower!
As of end of July 2020, SA had done 3 million test or tested 1 out of every 20 (1:20) of its 60 million population. In the same period Zimbabwe carried out only 145 000 tests out of a population of 16 million or 1:110!
In April the Zanu PF government promise to ramp up the country’s testing capacity and test health care workers regularly. It has not done so and hence the reason some health care workers are yet to have the first test! The biggest price the nation pays for failing to test aggressively is that many people with the infection and should be in isolation will remain to interact freely and thus spread the virus far and wide.
By the time there is a corona virus vaccine and/or cure, in a year or so time; Zimbabwe’s official covid-19 death rate would 2 000 or so. The real figure would probably have soared to a few hundred times higher than to official figure. The corona virus pandemic has the potential to kill 400 000 plus Zimbabweans!
So after 37 years, Zanu PF is finally doing something for the Gukurahundi dead. The tragedy is in attending to the long dead the regime is fostering on the nation a new national catastrophe even costing the nation 20 times more human lives than the Gukurahundi massacre!
The corona virus pandemic constitutes the greatest of our generation threat to human lives and livelihood for not only Zimbabweans across the board but the world over. Zimbabwe’s performance so far in stopping the virus entering our borders and, once in, containing it; is one of the worst in the whole world. Keeping this corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF regime focused on the immediate task of saving Zimbabwean lives and livelihoods from the corona virus and the disruption it is causing is going to be tough.
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies must be told in no uncertain terms ramp up the corona virus testing and all the other activities to help stop the spread of corona virus. The regime and the nation is ill equipped to deal with such matters as substantive Gukurahundi issues at present.
Indeed, Mnangagwa is bring up the substantive Gukurahundi issues to distract the nation from the urgent matters of the worsening economic meltdown, the growing social unrest and most pressing of all the soaring covid-19 infections and deaths! The need for all Zimbabweans to focus on the need to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance has never been greater than it is today because until we end the curse all these problems will only get worse!