By Dr Masimba Mavaza | Zimbabwe once again is in mourning after the death of two national heroes. Nobody can never get used to death. Death is painful anytime. The National Hero Edzai Absolom Chanyuka Chimonyo was a Zimbabwean military general and commander of the Zimbabwe National Army. He assumed his position on the 18th of December 2017 when he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General by President Emmerson Mnangagwa. He took over from General Philip Valerio Sibanda, who was promoted to be the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. Before he was appointed as the Commander of the ZNA, Chimonyo was on secondment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Tanzania.

Chimonyo participated in the liberation struggle.

In March 2018, at a ceremony held at One Commando, the Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander General Philip Valerio Sibanda, officially handed over command of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) to Commander Lieutenant-General Edzayi Chimonyo. Vice President, Retired General Constantino Chiwenga witnessed the ceremony and indicated : I, therefore, call upon you to maintain the same vigour, dedication and allegiance in your new assignment as Commander ZDF. To the incoming Commander ZNA, your promotion and appointment was based on distinction and merit as you have shown great visionary leadership as a distinguished liberation fighter, decorated military commander and shrewd ambassador. As you assume a higher and more challenging assignment, I have no doubt that you take a leading role in further developing the ZNA into a reputable, competent, professional and highly disciplined force.

In December 2020 it was reported that Chimonyo had been airlifted to India. He was reportedly suffering from lung complications. He has been not hundred percent well since that time.
Since the death of General Chimonyo we have seen a lot of irresponsible reporting by several online and opposition papers. Many people have reported that General Chimonyo was supposed to be in Prison for the role he played during the Zimbabwean Civil war which has become to be known as Gukurahundi.
The Gukurahundi was a war between the armed ZIPRA renegades who became to be known as dissidents and the Zimbabwean National Army from early 1983 to late 1987. It derives from a Shona language term which loosely translates to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains. Gukurahundi was not the name given to the war but it was the name of the brigade which was sent to face the highly trained and heavily armed dissidents. Gukurahundi became Part of aftermath of the Rhodesian Bush War. This war started on the 3rd January 1983 and officially ended on the 22nd December 1987.

During the Rhodesian Bush War two rival nationalist parties, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), had emerged to challenge Rhodesia’s predominantly white government.ZANU initially defined Gukurahundi as an ideological strategy aimed at carrying the war into major settlements and individual homesteads. This 1978 was gore re Gukurahundi which was followed by gore Revanhu the Gore re MASIMBA Evanhu. Following Mugabe’s ascension to power, his government remained threatened by “dissidents” – disgruntled former guerrillas and supporters of ZAPU.

In early 1983, the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, an infantry brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), began a crackdown on dissidents in Matabeleland North Province, a homeland of the Ndebele. Over the following two years, thousands of Ndebele were detained by government forces and either marched to re-education camps or summarily executed. Although there are different estimates, the consensus of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) is that more than 20,000 people were killed. But to date there is no official figure as to how many people were killed.

Zimbabweans have been afraid to express their view and to tell the truth of what happened during this period. Many prefer to keep silent when this topic is introduced.
All what can be done has been done to try and rally the country to move on after the Dissident war. This idea of keeping silent has given one side an upper hand in telling their distorted side. The new generation has been fed with inaccurate views on Gukurahundi to an extend that once one gives his view which is different from the lies peddled in some regions of Zimbabwe he will be called a tribalist.

But each time a hero passes on and the hero is from the other side of the tribe people start writing insulting our heroes and invoking the pains of Gukurahundi. In diaspora Zimbabweans are divided on Shana and Ndebele and the narrative of Gukurahundi is out in a disposable lying smelling way.
Some shameless writers wrote:
“GUKURAHUNDI victims are concerned that perpetrators of the early 1980s human rights atrocities are dying without facing justice for the heinous crimes they committed during Zimbabwe’s darkest hour.”

This follows the death early Thursday morning of Zimbabwe National Army Commander (ZNA) Edzai Chimonyo after a long battle with cancer.

It’s not only Chimonyo whose death has been disrespected by these tribalist a who do not wish to move on, who are prepared to label every one who defends his heroes as a tribalist. There must be a change in our attitude towards our heroes.
The change will auto heal the wounds that have taken damage on defense.

It is maturity for all of us to let to move on.
Many of us have felt moments similar to our feet collapsing through the floor, when our stomachs decide to become gymnasts inside of us and where we suddenly are at a loss for words. None of these feelings can accurately describe how we feel knowing my childhood hero Edzai Chimonyo is no longer with us on Earth.

Some accused him for taking part during Gukurahundi and many do not want me to talk about this. Well I will talk about it. In 1983 I lost my uncle my mother’s brother sekuru farmer. He was a Zanla member having his lunch in Bulawayo Enthumbane camp. A group of ZIPRA forces were armed secretly and ambushed sekuru farmer and many ZANLA combatants who were on lunch. Hundreds were killed. Many people who spoke Shona were killed some had their youngest cut out for speaking Shona in Bulawayo. Shona teachers and agricultural officers were murdered for being Shona. Not only Shonas where killed. Ndebele were murdered by dissidents for siding with shonas. It was a dark moment for the nation. We can never glorify it and we must never always throw a victim card each time we get a chance. This was the time of madness and indeed Zimbabwe must move on. We can never grow if we stand on the sticky blood of Gukurahundi.
Edzai Chimonyo and all soldiers who fought the dissidents where not fighting for ZANU PF. They were fighting for Peace. There was supposed to be war foe Zimbabwe to gain peace.

Zimbabwe has psychological avenues to reconciliation between groups. It used the psychological changes in survivors, perpetrators, and passive bystanders in the course of the evolution of increasing violence and points to healing from the psychological wounds created as an essential component of reconciliation. Zimbabwe identified the role of understanding the roots of genocide, and of violence between groups in general, in contributing to healing, to the creation of a shared history in place of the usually contradictory histories held by groups that have been in violent conflict, and to reconciliation in general.

The role of processes that have been emphasized in the literature on reconciliation, such as truth, justice, and contact between groups are discussed at highest level. Bottom up approaches focusing on the population and top down approaches involving leaders and the media, and the importance of changes in institutions and structures to allow Zimbabwe to move on.

Political Psychology is an interdisciplinary aspect of life dedicated to the improvement of the interrelationships between psychological and political processes. We are aware that
National reconciliation is a vague and ‘messy’ process. In post-genocide nation it presents special difficulties that stem from the particular nature of the crisis and the popular participation that characterized the atrocities.

In the wake of violence on a societal scale, finding the right balance between justice and healing, retribution and forgiveness, tribunals and truth commissions, remembering and ‘moving on’ is a messy if not impossible goal.

No response can ever be adequate when your son has been killed or your uncle or brother when you have been dragged out of your home, interrogated, and raped in a wave of “ethnic cleansing”; or when your brother who struggled against a repressive government has disappeared and left only a secret police file, bearing no clue to his final resting place. If anything, this is all the more true in cases of genocide, where one has to factor in the “terrifying existential crisis faced by survivors of genocide”, their brush with the attempted annihilation of “not only your self, but also everything that constitutes your world, everything that makes your life worth living – your work, your family, your children – all that was on the point of being wiped out, too.

Reconciliation is a vague concept. In the wake of mass violence, there is no goal post past which ‘reconciliation’ has been achieved.

Indeed, silence makes us complicit bystanders to the perpetrators of yesterday. Secondly, inaction is unacceptable because it leaves grievances, fears of reprisals, and cultures of impunity to fester, encouraging cyclical outburst of violence by the perpetrators of tomorrow.

A key question facing democracies emerging from civil conflict is how best to deal with the painful legacy of past—and in many cases all too recent—violence, while at the same time maintaining the fragile social harmony that often characterizes post-conflict societies. Should priority be given to bringing the perpetrators of past human rights violations to justice, thereby combating the culture of impunity that has come to characterize many civil conflicts? Or is it more important to start by focusing on measures designed to ensure that peace and stability, and with them the prospects for a country’s longer-term recovery, are bolstered?

Dwelling on the past will never rebuild our nation.
Chimonyo fought for equality.

Equality!  You all pay lip service to it, but who really believes it?  Why should people who produce and contribute the most receive the same treatment as people who do little or nothing?  You love to denounce the hypocrites who say they believe in equality but fail to deliver it.  But I say to you: Those hypocrites keep you alive!  In a totally equal society, there’s no incentive to do anything but kvetch.  If you’re tired of hypocrisy, remember that there are two ways to end it.  You could strictly implement this monstrous ideal of equality.  Or you could proclaim the truth: Equality is a monstrous ideal!  Let’s raise the banner of meritocracy, and thank our greatest heroes instead of scapegoating them.

Freedom We all say we believe in it.  We know it’s the right path.  Yet we are a den of hypocrites!  We pay lip service to the ideal of freedom but when inequality glares at us from every corner, we avert our eyes.  Shame on us!  Shame!  I say unto you, we must practice what we preach.  Let us live the equality we love.  Put apathy aside, my brothers and sisters.  Stop these tribalist actions clothed as selling for Justice. Let us tear down all the inequalities we see.  Let us remove the wrong doctrines peddled by those selfish idiots hiding behind Gukurahundi. Then let us ferret out every lingering pocket of tribalism. We must tear power from the grasp of all the corrupt leaders who casually say they oppose tribalism but never do anything about it.  Together we can, should, will, and must build a totally equal society!

Zimbabwe does not need these inflammatory ideas.
We must move on and unite as we go.

We must not be divided by lies. The Gukurahundi error must be let to go. Do we have to stand up and fight for murders rapes abductions and killings perpetrated by Lobengula on our fore fathers. Shall we stand up and demand justice for our sister who were captured and taken to Bulawayo as wives. No we must not. We have to learn to be one as a nation we must hold hands and never look back. The ugly parts of our history must never make us.

Those who invite other on tribal grounds shame on you.

Zimbabwe must move on. We must unite as one.
Chimonyo represents peace loving people of Zimbabwe.

Those who seek to soil his legacy must be ashamed. Jonathan Moyo must tell us what role did his father play in killing shonas in his area. Doe s he remember the Mbezo man of Plumtree. Fighting for freedom is another thing but fighting for tribalism is something else. Zimbabwe must be United by the deaths of her ores not to be divided by it.

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