Staff Reporter | Contrary to all other opposition parties, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), President Professor Welshman Ncube says that there is nothing wrong with President Robert Mugabe having his birthday celebrations in the Gukurahundi atrocities sites in Matobo.

Speaking in an interview with journalists over the weekend, Ncube said that Zimbabwe is a free country and Mugabe is free to hold his birthday celebrations anywhere he sees fit in the country including the Matobo district where thousands of Gukurahundi atrocities victims lie buried in shallow graves and disused mines.

According to Ncube, the venue of Mugabe’s birthday celebrations can never erase the brutality which Mugabe inflicted on Zimbabweans which is what should be of concern and not the venue of the birthday.

“Zimbabwe is one indivisible whole. Mugabe is free to party and feast in any corner of Zimbabwe and equally his cronies are free to join him in celebrating the anguish he has inflicted on the people of this country throughout his rule,” he said.

“Whether the celebrations are done in Zvimba, Chiredzi, Nyanga, Matopo or Tsholotsho is neither here nor there and does not change an iota of anything relating to his cruel rule which is marked by the many mass graves in many parts of the Southern Provinces,” Ncube emphasised.

Ncube’s sentiments came amidst a huge hullabaloo from other opposition parties and pressure groups against Mugabe holding the celebrations in the district not far from Balagwe Mine which was used as a Gukurahundi concentration camp and where thousands of people were killed and thrown down the disused mine.

The pressure groups viewed the move by Mugabe as being arrogant and disrespectful of the people he killed during his Gukurahundi era which he calls a moment of madness. The pressure groups eventually forced Mugabe to move his venue from within the Gukurahundi sites to near by Cecil John Rhodes Estate.

Professor Ncube urged Zimbabweans to instead unite to bring the perpetrators of the atrocities to book.

“Our task should not be to castigate Mugabe and ZANU PF over where they hold their celebration but to unite and work together as a people to bring his rule to an end and to put on trial and punish all those guilty of the Gukurahundi atrocities. Nothing else matters except justice for the victims and their relatives.”