tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/lancaster-house-42482/articlesLancaster House – The Conversation2019-05-30T11:07:31Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1179862019-05-30T11:07:31Z2019-05-30T11:07:31ZA tribute to Zimbabwean liberation hero Dumiso Dabengwa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278494/original/file-20190607-52748-jxtqi0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A fitting way to pay tribute to Zimbabwean liberation war hero <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/sacp-sacp-expresses-its-heartfelt-condolences-to-the-dabengwa-family-the-people-of-zimbabwe-and-southern-africa-for-the-great-loss-encountered-2019-05-24">Dumiso “DD” Dabengwa</a>, who has died aged 79, is to depict a snapshot history of the late 1970s and the 1980s that shows the stresses of his job during and just after Zimbabwe’s war of liberation.</p>
<p>As the head of intelligence for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zimbabwe-Peoples-Revolutionary-Army/dp/1436361559">Zimbabwe African People’s Revolutionary Army</a>, the armed wing of Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu), he faced two enemies in the late seventies: the Rhodesian forces and those of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean African National Union (Zanu), the nationalist party that split off from <a href="https://www.academia.edu/38948000/The_split_of_ZAPU_2_">Zapu in 1963</a> and would eventually lead Zimbabwe. In the 1980s South Africa and the United Kingdom joined those antagonists. </p>
<p>Only psychologists could discern how Dabengwa maintained his legendary composure. He kept his head while everyone was losing theirs: a necessary trait for an intelligence supremo. </p>
<p>This tribute is inspired by a picture – probably taken in 1981 at the New Sarum airfield outside what was Salisbury – that’s making social media rounds following Dabengwa’s death. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1131547396960399361"}"></div></p>
<p>Dabengwa is shown standing with Rex Nhongo, commander of the newly integrated Zimbabwean military forces. The two young soldiers symbolise the unity to be forged out of Rhodesia’s and the two nationalist parties’ security forces as they entered Zimbabwe’s democratic dispensation. </p>
<p>That task’s difficulty is shown by the possibility that the two were on their way to Entumbane to calm the battles raging between the two nationalist armies, in which over 300 soldiers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/obituaries/dumiso-dabengwa-dead.html">were killed</a>. But they would fail in these efforts and would land on different sides of Zimbabwe’s post liberation story. Dabengwa would be jailed by his erstwhile comrades. Nhongo would retire early, rich and still a power-broker in his party – until his fiery death in mid-<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331776137_Political_Accidents_in_Zimbabwe">2011</a>.</p>
<h2>Internecine violence</h2>
<p>About five years before 1981, an effort <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589001.2012.639655">emerged</a> to create a united “people’s army” out of Zanu’s guerrilla forces, Zanla and Zipra.</p>
<p>Nhongo had once been a Zipra soldier, but left during Zapu’s devastating internecine disputes in the early 1970s. With Zanla’s commander in Zambia’s jails suspected of <a href="https://allnewsnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/who-killed-josiah-tongogara-and-herbert-chitepo/">murdering the national chairman of Zanu, Herbert Chitepo</a>, Nhongo was by 1976 at the head of Zanla. Thus he became the commander of the Zimbabwe People’s Army (Zipa), supposedly an attempt to unite the two nationalist armies. </p>
<p>But his heart was not in it. He ordered his soldiers on engaging the Rhodesian forces to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/57/1/79/675840">kill Zipra fighters first</a>. There were battles between the two armies in training camps. What should Dabengwa have done?</p>
<p>Zipra withdrew a good number of troops, but adhered to the agreement to unite the armies. As it happened, before too long Robert Mugabe (on his way to the top) and Nhongo sidelined the group that really believed in the unity project. Dabengwa told one of us (Moore) many years later that Zipa was too militaristic, ignoring democratic processes. He took a wait and see approach.</p>
<p>With the adherents to unity gone, Zanu’s anti-Zapu sentiments opened further. The party’s <a href="http://www.archives.gov.zw/">1978 political education</a> tract claimed that Zipra forces planned to let Zanla smash Rhodesia’s “racist state machinery” single-handedly. Once victory was achieved, Zipra would “crash (sic) Zanla and seize political power…” </p>
<h2>Gukurahundi</h2>
<p>These and <a href="https://cul.worldcat.org/title/march-11-movement-in-zapu-revolution-within-the-revolution/oclc/13564369">other Zanu-related imbroglios</a> made life very difficult for Dabengwa, a man entrusted with Zapu’s intelligence. </p>
<p>Yet with “freedom” – hastened by <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2017.1275108">Soviet assistance to ZPRA</a> – Zimbabwe became even more central to Cold War and South African intrigue. As Zimbabwean political scientist Miles Tendi <a href="https://www.zimlive.com/2019/05/27/dumiso-dabengwa-a-military-czar-without-peer-in-making-of-the-zimbabwean-state/">attests</a>, Dabengwa and Josiah Tongogara, then the top Zanla general, played a key role with the “Patriotic Front” (another effort at unity between the two main liberation parties) at the late 1979 <a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5847/5/1979_Lancaster_House_Agreement.pdf">Lancaster House negotiations </a> that led to Zimbabwe’s new dispensation. </p>
<p>Dabengwa himself said in a <a href="http://www.cite.org.zw/videos/interview-with-dumiso-dabengwa/">mid-2018 interview</a> that he and Tongogara thought they could push the unity idea beyond an agreement to maintain unity at diplomatic negotiations, but remaining separate for all other purposes. They wanted <em>political</em> unity. They carried out research among the soldiers, who indicated agreement. Yet Tongogara’s <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-152947.html">suspicious death</a> as he drove to a Mozambican camp only days later killed that dream: <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Gukurahundi</a> mass killings and atrocities in Matabeleland were only steps away. </p>
<p>Dabengwa’s interview leaves little doubt about Gukurahundi’s roots:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At independence the British had already made a decision with Mugabe to carry out this genocide. (They) had already decided to ensure that that no one of the Ndebele nation would be allowed to be leader in this country. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Conspiracy and persecution</h2>
<p>On 9 May 1980, just weeks after Zimbabwe’s 17 April freedom celebrations, Mugabe visited British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-%20guides/prime-ministers-office-records/">complained that</a> “some” in Zapu did “not accept the new situation”. They wanted to continue the fight and the government might have to act against them soon.</p>
<p><a href="http://researchdata.uwe.ac.uk/104/240/roh-oh-sta-da1-appr.pdf">Danny Stannard</a>, Rhodesia’s Special Branch director, stayed on during the new era. With then Minister of State Security Emmerson Mnangagwa, he organised the transition of Zimbabwe’s security services – precisely to keep the region Communist-free, Stannard told one of us in 2014. He thought Mnangagwa was the perfect man for that job. Stannard held Dabengwa in venomous disregard and was dead certain that in February 1982 his Soviet allies were rolling to the Entumbane barracks. </p>
<p>In March the Zapu cabinet ministers, Dabengwa, deputy armed forces commander Lookout Masuku, and four other Zapu officials were arrested and charged with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/25/world/a-fateful-trial-witty-ex-guerrilla-v-zimbabwe.html">treason</a>. Arms caches had been “discovered” on Zapu properties. </p>
<p>In December 1982 a Whitehall officer wondered if the British should reconsider support for a régime seemingly hell-bent on eliminating Zapu and its potential supporters. No, he wrote, “if we refuse military sales and aid” Mugabe might approach the USSR – albeit reluctantly. Other reasons to keep Mugabe on side included selling arms and jet fighters, as well as paving the road to Namibian and South African <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561">settlements</a>. </p>
<p>Treason charges for all but Dabengwa were dismissed in early April 1983. But, as he and the others walked out of court they were jailed again under the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/25/world/a-fateful-trial-witty-ex-guerrilla-v-zimbabwe.html">Emergency Powers Act</a>. </p>
<h2>Peacemaking</h2>
<p>By this time, the Fifth Brigade had been in Matabeleland for several months: Gukurahundi was underway with its terror, mass starvation, and murder. When they were released in 1986 Zapu had to stop the carnage, agreeing to be absorbed into Zanu (PF). Dabengwa’s reluctant agreement was essential; it took his authority, and that of Zapu leader <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Joshua_Nkomo">Joshua Nkomo</a>, to persuade the Zipra ex-combatants and the Zapu youth to merge.</p>
<p>The Cold War was on its last legs. Zanu (PF) had won its war for a one-party state. During the 1990s, with Nkomo as vice-president in the revised Zanu (PF) government, Dabengwa took on posts ranging from Home Affairs minister to managing the long-gestating but never funded <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2011/01/06/matabeleland-zambezi-water-project-urgent/">Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project</a>. </p>
<p>He left government in 2000. In 2008 he abandoned the Zanu (PF) politburo and revived Zapu. </p>
<p>There cannot be a man deserving more to rest in peace than Dabengwa.</p>
<p><em>David Galbraith, a retired Professor of English at University of Toronto and who spent the early 1980s in Matabeleland, contributed to this article</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only psychologists could discern how Dumiso Dabengwa maintained his legendary composure, a necessary trait for an intelligence supremo.David B. Moore, Professor of Development Studies and Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, University of JohannesburgNqobile Zulu, Lecturer in Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1078402018-12-05T12:09:51Z2018-12-05T12:09:51ZLiberation hero Mugabe evokes polarised emotions among Zimbabweans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247966/original/file-20181129-170250-1fqyfc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The end of Robert Mugabe’s rule was greeted with momentous national celebration. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Robert Mugabe’s name is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mugabe">synonymous</a> with both Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle and its post-colonial politics. His role and that of his Zanu-PF party have been central to the country’s dynamics since the early 1960s – and could well set the tone for the foreseeable future. </p>
<p>For much of his political life Mugabe has often been viewed, in the words of one of his biographers <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=vQY4DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT23&lpg=PT23&dq=Martin+Meredith,+Mugabe+%22secretive+and+solitary%22&source=bl&ots=DmCK97xurM&sig=PymYcd-DCAyFl-2WFRS18fAIbao&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijmNmroPneAhWQsKQKHZANDhAQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Martin%20Meredith%2C%20Mugabe%20%22secretive%20and%20solitary%22&f=false">Martin Meredith</a>, as “secretive and solitary”, an “aloof and austere figure”.</p>
<p>However he is described, there’s no doubt that Mugabe’s political legacy is highly contested. To understand how this happened, it’s necessary to examine his personal history; his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/17/its-been-one-year-since-zimbabwe-toppled-mugabe-why-isnt-it-a-democracy-yet/?utm_term=.11c978401892">political demise</a> in 2017; and Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/19/zimbabwe-needs-aid-to-prevent-further-crisis-warns-ruling-party">deepening political and economic crisis</a> more than a year after Mugabe’s ouster.</p>
<p>For the faction that has succeeded Mugabe, led by President Emmerson Mnangagawa, moving beyond the highly problematic legacy that they helped to create remains a daunting task.</p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>Robert Mugabe was born 94 years ago at Kutama Mission in Zvimba District, west of what was then called Salisbury, the capital of then <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Rhodesia">Southern Rhodesia</a> (today’s Zimbabwe). He received a <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/africa/robert-mugabe">Jesuit education</a> and was by many accounts an exceptional student.</p>
<p>In 1945 Mugabe left Kutama Mission with a teaching diploma. He won a scholarship to South Africa’s Fort Hare University in 1949. There he met other emerging nationalists and was <a href="http://www.channelafrica.co.za/sabc/home/channelafrica/news/details?id=7aa25498-9448-4324-89c2-e4f62a324e17&title=The%20rise%20and%20fall%20of%20Mugabe">introduced to Marxist ideas</a>. </p>
<p>Armed with a BA degree in history and English Literature, Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952. He soon moved to the Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia) in 1955 to take up a teaching post. In 1958 he moved again, to a teacher training college in Ghana. There, a year after Ghana’s independence in 1957, he experienced the thrill and sense of possibility of a newly independent African state. It was a seminal political moment for him.</p>
<h2>Making of a revolutionary</h2>
<p>Mugabe returned home in 1960 on extended leave to introduce his new wife <a href="https://www.zambianobserver.com/the-forgotten-story-of-sally-mugabe-the-beloved-mother-of-zimbabwe-robert-mugabes-first-wife-and-true-love-the-woman-whose-death-changed-president-mugabe-forever/">Sally Hayfron</a> to his family. Instead of returning to Ghana, he became entangled in nationalist politics. This included the turmoil that the two major nationalist parties, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30035743?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) and Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu)</a>, split. </p>
<p>In 1963 he was arrested, along with many other nationalists. He was <a href="https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2011/10/dtente-the-release-of-nationalist/">released</a> after 11 years. </p>
<p>Mugabe and his colleague <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Edgar_Tekere">Edgar Tekere</a> escaped to Mozambique in 1974 to join the liberation war against the regime of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ian-Smith">Prime Minister Ian Smith</a>, conducted from bases in that country. There have been different accounts of Mugabe’s rise to the top of the leadership in Mozambique. As liberation war veteran <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/a-real-zimbabwean-war-veteran-speaks-97206">Wilfred Mhanda tells it</a>, their support for Mugabe was premised on his commitment to building unity between the rival nationalist movements. </p>
<p>But he reneged on this, instead pursuing the supremacy of his own party Zanu.</p>
<p>Following the Lancaster House settlement and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40395186?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">1980 elections</a>, Mugabe’s Zanu emerged as the dominant party. He set out his policy of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hd4n.7?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">reconciliation with the white population</a>. This allowed the existing property and economic relations from the Rhodesian period to continue, while the politics of state control was transferred to Zanu. </p>
<p>This period witnessed the consolidation of Mugabe’s control of both his party and the state. The massive violence committed against the competing party of liberation, <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Zimbabwe_African_People's_Union">Zapu</a>, through the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Gukurahundi massacres</a>, signalled Zanu’s violent intolerance of opposition. </p>
<p>However, the 1980s were also evidence of Mugabe’s commitment to social policies such as health and education. Mugabe’s government greatly expanded the state expenditure in these areas in the <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/zimbabwe.-the-political-economy-of-transition-1980-1986">first decade of independence</a>. </p>
<p>The hostilities between Zapu, led by Joshua Nkomo, and Mugabe’s Zanu officially ended with the signing of a <a href="https://pindula.co.zw/Unity_Accord">Unity Accord</a> by the two leaders on December 22, 1987. Zapu was effectively swallowed by Zanu PF. The ruling party had used the acronym since the end of the brief Patriotic Front coalition (1976-79) between the two liberation parties, on the eve of the 1980 elections. </p>
<h2>Things go south</h2>
<p>During the 1990s, opposition to Mugabe <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300366769_The_Movement_for_Democratic_Change_MDC_and_the_Changing_Geo-Political_Landscape_in_Zimbabwe">grew</a> in size and influence. Faced with the real possibility of political defeat – and dissent from the war veterans – Mugabe drew on <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/zimbabwe/ZimLand0302-02.htm">longstanding land grievances</a> to reconfigure the politics of the state and Zanu-PF. </p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358530500082916">Fast Track Resettlement</a> programme radically reconstructed the land relations from the settler colonial period. There is a continuing debate about the effects of the land redistribution exercise. It resulted in the violent allocation of land to a combination of large numbers of small farmers and the ruling party elite, and its long term impact on the country’s economy remains problematic.</p>
<p>The process also created a massive rupture between <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/111691/P202.pdf">human and redistributive rights </a>. By legitimising the Fast Track programme, Zanu-PF emphasised economic redistribution and settling the colonial legacy around the land question. </p>
<p>But in doing so, the ruling party opportunistically labelled the fight for human and democratic political rights – which had long been central to the anti-colonial struggle – as a foreign <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/sunday-times/20180218/282342565314857">“regime change agenda”</a> pushed by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civic movements. </p>
<p>The politics of the land reform process unleashed many questions around citizenship, belonging, and assertions of identity. Mugabe’s often valid critique of imperialist duplicity was accompanied by an unacceptable authoritarian intolerance of dissent within Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>The armed forces were <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-mugabe-why-the-role-of-zimbabwes-army-cant-be-trusted-87872">central to his stay in power</a>. The push in his final years to have his wife Grace succeed him heralded a <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/mugabe-announces-appointment-of-controversial-wife-grace-to-a-key-post-20170915">longer term reign for a Mugabe dynasty</a>. To further his wife’s ambitions, Mugabe first moved against Vice President Joyce Mujuru, the favoured contender to succeed him, in <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/clues-to-successor-as-mugabe-names-vice-president/a-18122886">2014</a>.</p>
<p>Next, the Mugabes, with the support of a faction of Zanu-PF known as the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-politics-g40-factbox/factbox-key-figures-in-zimbabwe-first-lady-grace-mugabes-g40-faction-idUSKBN1DF1DX">G40 group</a>, took on another potential successor, Vice President Mnangagwa. He was dismissed from his state and party positions in <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/mnangagwa-fired-disloyal-disrespectful-deceitful2/">early November 2017</a>.</p>
<p>This set off a dramatic series of events. In mid- November 2017, following military chief Constantine Chiwenga’s warning of <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/counter-revolutionaries-want-to-destroy-zanu-pf-army-chief-tells-mugabe-20171113">“counter-revolutionaries”</a> in the ruling party, the armed forces <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-military-coup-is-afoot-in-zimbabwe-whats-next-for-the-embattled-nation-87528">effectively took power</a> away from the executive. </p>
<p>This was followed by the initiation of an impeachment process against Mugabe. But, on the day the process began, in November 2017, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42071488">he resigned</a>. </p>
<h2>End of an era</h2>
<p>For many Zimbabweans Mugabe remains a contested figure. For those who lived through the humiliations of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/720978?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">settler colonialism</a>, his strident critique of its legacies still ring true. But others will find it impossible to accept his exclusivist assertions of <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-129803.html">national belonging</a> and authoritarian intolerance of dissent.</p>
<p>When combined with the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249599119_Zimbabwe_Now_The_Political_Economy_of_Crisis_and_Coercion">deep economic crisis</a> over which he presided, it is little surprise that the end of Mugabe’s rule was greeted with such momentous national celebration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Raftopoulos is a Research Fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, and Research Director of Solidarity Peace Trust a Human Right Organisation working on Zimbabwe . </span></em></p>For many Zimbabweans Robert Mugabe will remain a contested figure.Brian Raftopoulos, Research Fellow, International Studies Group, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/815742017-09-17T10:44:01Z2017-09-17T10:44:01ZBritish policy towards Zimbabwe during Matabeleland massacre: licence to kill<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183734/original/file-20170829-10409-jl5ttt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's clampdown on dissent in Matabeleland claimed up to 20 000 lives. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Aaron Ufumeli/ Pool</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In January 1983 Robert Mugabe’s government launched a massive security clampdown in Matabeleland. It was led by a North Korean-trained, almost exclusively chiShona-speaking army unit known as the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sabelo_Ndlovu-Gatsheni/publication/237426294_The_post-colonial_state_and_Matebeleland_Regional_perceptions_of_civil-military_relations_1980-2002/links/573ddabf08aea45ee842d9ad.pdf">Fifth Brigade</a>. They committed thousands of atrocities, including murders, gang rapes and <a href="http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/breakingthesilence.pdf">mass torture</a>. </p>
<p>Mugabe’s government called the operation <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false"><em>Gukurahundi</em></a>. This is chiShona for “the rain that washes away the chaff (from the last harvest), before the spring rains”. </p>
<p>It is estimated that between <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561?scroll=top&needAccess=true">10 000 and 20 000</a> unarmed civilians died at the hands of Fifth Brigade.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561?scroll=top&needAccess=true">analysis</a> by the author of official British and US government communications relevant to the Matabeleland Massacres has shed new light on the British Government’s wilful blindness to Operation Gukurahundi, including its diplomatic and military team on the ground in Zimbabwe during the atrocities. The information was obtained via <a href="https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/what-is-the-foi-act/">Freedom of Information Act </a> requests to various British government ministries and offices and to the US Department of State. </p>
<p>The unique dataset provides minutes of meetings and other relevant communications between the British High Commission in Harare, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s office, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence in London, as well as the US Department of State and the US Embassy in Harare. </p>
<h2>The brutalities</h2>
<p>The attacks’ ramifications continue to be felt by survivors and their families. The children born of rape at the hands of the Fifth Brigade face ongoing discrimination and generally find themselves in hopeless situations.</p>
<p>The catalogue of brutalities committed by the Fifth Brigade include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>One man learned that his child was abducted from school by the Fifth Brigade and forced to catch poisonous black scorpions with his bare hands. He was stung and died before being buried in a shallow grave (interview with survivor TH, 2017). His only “crime” was to be Ndebele. </p></li>
<li><p>Entire families were herded into grass-roofed huts, which were then set alight (interview with survivor AN, 2017).</p></li>
<li><p>In Mkhonyeni a pregnant woman “was bayoneted open to kill the baby”. Also, “pregnant girls were bayoneted to death by 5th Brigade in Tsholotsho”, <a href="http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/breakingthesilence.pdf">killing the unborn babies</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>Young Ndebele men between the ages of 16-40 were particularly vulnerable. They were frequently targeted and killed or forced to perform demeaning <a href="http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/breakingthesilence.pdf">public sex acts</a>. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Unique dataset</h2>
<p>The data provides a unique insight into the British government’s role in Gukurahundi. It also establishes what information was available to the British government about the persistent and relentless atrocities; what the British diplomatic approach was in response to this knowledge; and what the British government’s rationale was for such policies. </p>
<p>The data evidences, for example, that the British Foreign and Commonwealth offices were aware that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>there was much talk – and evidence – of widespread brutality by the Fifth Brigade towards [Ndeble] villagers. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a cable forwarded to the US embassy in Maputo and Dar es Salaam, then-US Secretary of State <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/shultz-george-pratt">George Shultz</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>what we are addressing is not simply a bad policy choice by the GOZ [Government of Zimbabwe] to deal with a difficult security situation in a section of their country. What is involved is the very fundamental issue of relations between the two parties, between the Ndebele and the Shona.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The West German ambassador to Zimbabwe, <a href="http://www.ohr.int/?ohr_archive=ambassador-dr-richard-ellerkmann-curriculum-vitae">Richard Ellerkmann</a>, thought it “ominous” that “Mugabe, in his latest speech in Manicaland, had used the Shona equivalent of ‘wipe out’ with reference to the Ndebele people, not just ZAPU people, if they didn’t stop supporting the dissidents”.</p>
<p>However, “most poignant for Ellerkmann was the remark of a German Jewish refugee in Bulawayo who said the situation reminded him of how the Nazis treated Jews in the 1930s”. (Cable American Embassy, Harare to Secretary of State Washington DC, 11 Mar. 1983). </p>
<p>There could be no doubt in the minds of the British that Gukurahundi was Zimbabwean government policy. On 7 March 1983 Roland “Tiny” Rowland, a British businessman and chief executive of the Lonrho conglomerate with heavy economic commitments in Zimbabwe, met Mugabe. The documents indicate he subsequently reported to the American ambassador in Harare that he was convinced Mugabe was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>fully aware of what is happening in Matabeleland and it is Government policy. Mnangagwa (Zimbabwean Minister of State Security) is fully aware and he was in the meeting when they discussed the situation in detail. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The author’s analysis provides clear evidence that the British diplomatic and military teams in Harare during Gukurahundi were consistent in their efforts to minimise the magnitude of Fifth Brigade’s atrocities.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The remains of a victim of the massacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anonymous/Supplied by author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is indisputable that this is the general theme of the available cables that were forwarded from the British High Commission in Harare to London during the period analysed. </p>
<p>The analysis also clearly proves that, even when in receipt of solid intelligence, the UK government’s response was to wilfully turn a “blind eye” to the victims of these gross abuses. Instead, the British government’s approach appears to be have been influenced solely by consideration for the white people who were in the affected regions but were not affected by the violence. </p>
<h2>Rationale for realpolitik</h2>
<p>The rationale for such naked realpolitik is multi-layered. It is expressed clearly in numerous communications between Harare and London. One cables notes that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zimbabwe is important to us primarily because of major British and western economic and strategic interests in southern Africa, and Zimbabwe’s pivotal position there. Other important interests are investment (£800 million) and trade (£120 million exports in 1982), Lancaster House prestige, and the need to avoid a mass white exodus. Zimbabwe offers scope to influence the outcome of the agonising South Africa problem; and is a bulwark against Soviet inroads… Zimbabwe’s scale facilitates effective external influence on the outcome of the Zimbabwe experiment, despite occasional Zimbabwean perversity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One can but assume that “occasional Zimbabwean perversity” refers to Gukurahundi.</p>
<h2>Accountability</h2>
<p>In a more general sense it is quite clear that, apart from the immediate perpetrators, external bystanders also have to be held accountable at least to some extent for the unbridled atrocities that took place in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>With the end of Mugabe’s long reign drawing ever closer, it is imperative that the international community help develop strategies to help Zimbabweans address the prevailing impunity and lack of accountability for the crimes of Gukurahundi. That is critical for the establishment of truth, justice, and accountability for the victims, survivors and their families.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Cameron receives funding from the University of St Andrews (a research grant)</span></em></p>The effects of President Mugabe’s post-independence security clampdown that led to the murder of between 10 000 and 20 000 Zimbabweans, known as the Matabeleland massacre, continue to be felt.Hazel Cameron, Lecturer of International Relations, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.