Forces of darkness were emboldened; they felt empowered and legitimised as justice was suspended and denied to the Matabeleland nation; international human rights bodies sacrificed their credibility and looked away in the face of injustice. Everybody including the law, fell silent as the predominantly Shona government of Robert Mugabe falsely labelled Ndebele people dissidents to justice activating an exclusive and especially trained armed militia – the Fifth Brigade – to liquidate unarmed civilians in Matabeleland and the Midlands between 1983 and 1984.

Mugabe and his allies named the operation ‘Gukurahundi’ – a term derived from the Shona language, which translates loosely to “the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains”. In the grotesque military operation that defined Gukurahundi, for who they were, Ndebele people were stripped of their dignity, stripped of their liberty, stripped of their freedoms and all human rights. Communities were physically and mentally tortured; people denied access to food, women raped before their children and husbands, unborn babies ripped out of their mothers’ wombs and crushed to death. Community members spared life were forced to watch life being denied to close neighbours and relatives.

Gukurahundi Atrocities