ZIMBABWE BLOCKS PLANNED GUKURAHUNDI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL EVENT, SET FOR SATURDAY 24 JANUARY 2015 Once again the police and the Zimbabwean government have blocked a planned Gukurakundi Genocide Memorial in Bulawayos Stanley Hall, Matebeleland, organized by a famous Matebeleland human rights group Ibhetshu likaZulu. Mbuso Fuzwayo a member of Ibhetshu likaZulu and one of the organizers of the event informed our paper that the Zimbabwean police have refused today to give clearance for the Gukurahundi Genocide Memorial to go ahead as planned for this coming Saturday, 24th of January 2015. Asked about the reasons given by the police for the refusal to give clearance for the Gukurahundi Genocide Memorial, Mr Fuzwayo had this to say, They say it (Gukurahundi Genocide Memorial) will cause disunity. Mr Fuzwayo says that they had made preparations for the event and invited a lot people. Mr Fuzwayo was asked what would be Ibhetshu likaZulus next step since the police have refused to give them clearance to go ahead with the Gukurahundi Memorial. Mr Fuzwayo would only say, We are going to court tomorrow to challenge this unfair decision. It remains to be seen how the usually partisan Zimbabwean judges will handle this very sensitive case. In the past few weeks a Herald columnist by the name of Nathaniel Manheru believed to be George Charamba, Mugabes spokesperson has written extensively and provocatively dismissing Gukurahundi Genocide as a myth. A lot of Matebeleland human rights activists and scholars have reacted to Nathaniel Manherus dismissal of Gukurahundi Genocide as a myth and accused him of being a Gukurahundi denialist and a tribal supremacist who has no respect for the victims of Gukurahundi Genocide that was committed by the government he represents. A columnist for uMthwakazi Review , a Mr Khumbuani Moyo asked Nathaniel Manheru in his article entitled: Gukurahundi Genocide: A response to Manheru and his political handlers why his government and its security apparatus were stopping. …mass graves identifications, reburials and commemorative events to take place in uMthwakazi He further questioned why the Zanu PF government has failed to release the Chihambakwe Report that was carried out by the Chihambakwe Commission that was set up by the then Prime Minister of Zimbabwe , Robert Gabriel Mugabe to investigate the Gukurahundi atrocities in 1983. The Matebeleland Liberation Organization (MLO) led by Paul Siwela came out guns blazing declaring that Nathaniel Manherus articles on Gukurahundi were a declaration of war against the Matebele while the youth wing of Mthwakazi Liberation Front (MLF) called upon the arrest and prosecution of Gukurahundi Genocide perpetrators and for Matebeleland people to commit to the agenda of the restoration of Matebeleland as a state so as to restore their freedoms and dignity as a people. A prominent Matebeleland scholar Dinizulu Macaphulana has had a tug of intellectual war and intellectual combat with Nathaniel Manheru dismissing him as a Gukurahundi denialist and asking him, in his recent combative article entitled, Zimbabwe: Memory, Knowledge and Future pains why Nathaniel Manheru is keen for the victims and survivors of Gukurahundi to remember, …their colonial wounds and forget their Gukurahundi wounds after Nathaniel Manheru had written extensively about the fact that Zimbabwe is still paying a huge bill due to the Wests colonial adventures in Southern Africa. In a peeved response to Matebeleland human rights activists and scholars who have taken the Gukurahundi narrative to the wire, Manheru cried foul and bemoaned the fact that.he was being challenged on his Gukurahundi denialism, frustratingly stating that Today no one talks about the war of liberation and its horrendous casualties. We are transfixed on Gukurahundi. Ibhetshu likaZulu was formed in 2005 by a group of Matebeleland human rights activists with the sole aim of memorizing and commemorating the victims of the Gukurahundi Genocide, where a conservative estimate of the casualties of this Genocide is put at just over 20 000 by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace investigative Report that was conducted under a heavy cloud of state intimidation and threats of disappearances if the Commission continued to reach all corners of Matebeleland investigating this Genocide. It is believed a credible investigation carried out without such threats would reveal that close to a million people might have died during Gukurahundi. The government of Zimbabwe has kept a tight lid on any commemorations or planned memorizations of Gukurahundi hence the police have denied Ibhetshu likaZulu to go ahead with the commemorations this coming Saturday. Source-bulawayo24 See image below of the key men behind the horrendous Gukurahundi Massacres: Robert Mugabe (President), Emmerson Mnangagwa (then State Security Minister) and Perrence Shiri (then commander of the 5th Brigade)-source nehandaradio
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 05:32:48 +0000
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