Online Reporter
Six years of deep thinking, consultations and strategising culminated in the beginning of Gukurahundi hearings in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands provinces yesterday.
Gukurahundi and its aftermath had been effectively closed for 37 years. No one had the courage to talk about the civil disturbances that resulted in loss of life, physical injury, trauma and social harm in Matabeleland South, Midlands and Matabeleland North from 1982 to the signing of the Unity Accord in December 1987.
Even the public use of the literal term “gukurahundi”, the Shona name for the first rains that wash away the chaff of the previous harvest before the onset of the main summer rains, was impossible.
Indeed, our national history had a blank chapter. The Unity Accord was supposed to make up for it.
However, the multifaceted impact of the disturbances demands a more profound solution than the leadership appending their signatures to a document to the clicks of cameras.
The Second Republic has that appreciation. It opened up on Gukurahundi and encouraged the people to openly talk about it as well since February 2019 and, through the hearings which started yesterday, collect testimonies from victims and witnesses of the disturbances. The emotions that had been bottled up over the years will now pour out unhindered as the grassroots speak and propose ways through which they want the issue resolved.
We have no doubt that this is the basis for genuine, more sustainable healing to move the nation forward.
“After extensive preparations, including the training of chiefs and setting up the Command Centre, I can confirm that everything is ready for the long-awaited Gukurahundi hearings, which start tomorrow (yesterday),” president of the National Council of Chiefs, Chief Mtshane Khumalo told us on Wednesday.
“This includes transport for chiefs to rural areas and the secure storage of testimonies, all fully in place and ready for hearings to begin today without any hitches. Chiefs and those who are part of the process are collecting vehicles from the Central Mechanical and Equipment Department Bulawayo depot. Some chiefs have also provided their own vehicles. We are raring to go.”
The strategy that the Government has rolled out will work. The logistics around it, the positioning of the outreach in the hands of traditional leaders; the data collection, its storage and interpretation and what we, as a collective, will do with that evidence. The Government’s decision to fully fund the process was a masterstroke considering how civil society, opposition politicians and some interests have tried to spin Gukurahundi around for political expediency.
With the hearings having started, we implore the Gukurahundi victims and witnesses to come forward and give their testimonies. There is nothing to fear because it is the Government that has allowed them to speak. And they are speaking to their traditional leaders, a dignified group of people who are so close to them, not to some bureaucrats who aren’t emotionally and culturally connected to them.
The hearings and the decisions to be taken thereafter should help the victims and the nation at large heal and reconcile; and forge forward unitedly for sustainable development.
