Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Justice now or never
Youth Forum
April 02, 2009

We note with concern the pattern which politically motivated violence is taking in Zimbabwe from the colonial era to this date and it is up to us to bring to an end such a normalised abnormal trend whereby multitudes of people are murdered, maimed, displaced and victimised in all the possible forms in a bid to cling to power by individuals and their cronies. Those in power normally do not accept any form of opposition, the only remedy which has proved to be effective is to ruthlessly crush any dissenting voice.

Ian Smith, the prime-minister of Rhodesia got away with brutalising multitudes of Zimbabweans as they demanded their independence. When it finally dawned there was simply reconciliation and no form of justice took place in order to deal with the perpetrators neither was there any effort to deal with compensating and giving solidarity to the victims.

The change of leadership in 1980 with Mugabe now at the helm even worsened the levels of brutality to the dissenting voices as evidenced by the ruthless crushing of emerging divergent political views such as those from the workers union, students and opposition parties with the worst case scenario being Gukurahundi which saw about 20 000 people in Matebeleland and Midlands being butchered to death as a way of silencing Zimbabwe African People's Union, Zimbabwe's main opposition by then, led by the late Joshua Nkomo.All the atrocities committed the by the ZANU PF government were shelved up to this date after the signing of a unity accord between the leadership of the two parties, the people in Matebeleland up to now still expect that justice will prevail.

With the coming of Movement For Democratic Change in 1999,the same methods to silence opposition were applied and it also saw many people suffering the similar negative consequences. There was a violent land grab in which many MDC supporters were targeted and they succumbed to various consequences of such acts, student leaders and youth activists were the main targets of the regime and obviously the leadership and membership of the party. Names which quickly come to mind are Gift Tandare, Talent Chiminya, Better Chokururama, Batanai Hadzizi, Godfrey Kauzani, Cain Nyeve, Tonderai Ndira, to mention just a few. The climax of torturing, murdering and displacing MDC supporters was reached after the March 29 harmonised elections when MDC scooped most of the votes in the overall election. Zimbabwe Electoral Commission after 'collation and meticulous verification' announced that there was going to be a run-off since the election did not produce an outright winner.

In a desperate bid to cling to power Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF party embarked on massive violence which saw more than 200 people being killed,300 000 being displaced and several others being injured. To bring this to an end a government of national unity with the erstwhile rivals was formed with Robert Mugabe, the ZANU PF leader at the helm despite having lost the last election to be held in this country. The two parties in the spirit of inclusiveness have temporarily shelved the crimes committed by ZANU PF thugs in the run-up to the run-off which never was and the multi-million dollar question is, will political violence ever end in this country, given the idea of talks between leaders after a thorough fight which sees many innocent people dying on behalf of their dear leaders.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP