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Love and defiance in Zimbabwe
BBC News
June 04, 2007

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6718277.stm

Zimbabweans who married across political and ethnic lines were some of the many victims of violent repression under the rule of Robert Mugabe's in the 1980s. Here, some of them talk about their experiences for the first time.

Eugenia is ethnically Ndebele and her husband is Shona. They first met at school. After they married, they settled in Eugenia's home.

Their marriage is not unusual. Zimbabwe has a long tradition of inter-marriage between ethnic groups.

The trouble began after the end of the war against white Rhodesia, when newly independent Zimbabwe staged its first elections in 1980.

The couple shared a good-natured political rivalry. Like many Ndebele, Eugenia voted for Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU while her husband supported Robert Mugabe's ZANU.

But after ZANU won the election, the rivalry between the two political groups spilled into violence, and some ZAPU fighters went back to the bush.

Mr Mugabe was determined to deal with these so-called dissidents, and for much of the 1980s, politically-inspired violence swept Matabeleland and the Midlands.

Most of the thousands killed were Ndebele-speakers. Their attackers were mostly Shona-speaking soldiers - the notorious Fifth Brigade.

Mr Mugabe had engaged the North Koreans to train this new military outfit. He gave them the name "Gukurahundi" - a Shona word meaning "the rain that blows away the chaff before the spring rains".

'Torture'

Eugenia will never forget the night the Fifth Brigade soldiers in their red berets came to her village: "They came in the middle of the night. They took everybody from their homes," she said.

"My husband was asked to strip off together with me and the other Shonas.

"We were beaten up. Then they tried to make us have sex. The soldiers told my husband - you came to live in this area for sex, so you do it now. The people were told to sing for that. We couldn't do it, so we were beaten again."

According to Eugenia, one man was killed that night and her husband never fully recovered.

Although most of those affected by the repression were Ndebele-speakers, Eugenia's Shona husband was targeted because he was married to her.

"The soldiers didn't trust him. They tried to make him say he would leave me and get married to a Shona woman.

"Once he was taken for three weeks. He told me about the torture and killings he saw. Some bodies weren't even buried."

The prevailing political atmosphere and the activities of the Fifth Brigade soured relationships.

'Escape'

Radical - a Shona man - began to go out with an Ndebele woman in spite of opposition from his clan. But on his only visit to her house he was attacked and tied up by her family.

They sent a messenger to the so-called dissidents to come and get Radical.

"My girlfriend's family accused me of spying for the military," he said. "They said I wanted to have them killed.

"They had already lost a lot of family members to the Fifth Brigade, and they said that if I was killed, it would amount to only a tiny percentage of Shona people who had died compared to the thousands of Ndebele who were killed by the soldiers."

Radical escaped before the dissidents arrived. He stopped seeing his girlfriend. But after several months he met another Ndebele woman who would become his wife.

They faced entrenched opposition from both their families. Radical was undeterred.

He says: "I told myself I didn't want to be affected by this Shona-Ndebele rift - we're all Zimbabweans.

"And I could see other families had inter-married before Gukurahundi. So I chose to defy them because I wanted to make a difference and show people there's nothing wrong with inter-marriage."

In 1987, the political conflict ended with a Unity Accord between Mr Mugabe and Mr Nkomo. But the Gukurahundi years remain an indelible stain on Zimbabwe's post-independence history.

Eugenia is still married. So is Radical. But a different era of political repression has separated them from their partners.

Neither of them currently feels able to live in Zimbabwe.

You can hear more about Zimbabwe in Sleeping with the Enemy online at BBC Radio 4's Listen again page.

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