IV. Background The close, partisan relationship between the leadership of Zimbabwe’s security forces and the former longtime ruling party, ZANU-PF, goes back to the pre-independence struggle against white minority rule. Beginning in the 1960s, ZANU-PF had a guerilla military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), while the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) was the military wing of the Joshua Nkomo-led Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), the rival political party. At independence in 1980, the newly formed government led by Robert Mugabe (then as executive prime minister) integrated the two military wings – ZANLA and ZIPRA – together with the Rhodesian Forces to form the Zimbabwe National Army led by Gen. Solomon Mujuru, a ZANLA leader.1 The bulk of current leaders of Zimbabwe’s security forces, including defense forces commander, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, air force commander Air Marshall Perence Shiri, the police commissioner, Gen. Augustine Chihuri, and central intelligence organization director, Retired Maj. Gen. Happyton Bonyongwe, are former ZANLA combatants who fought in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle.2 ZANU-PF and ZANLA leaders have often claimed that the armed liberation struggle, not the 1980 elections, led to Zimbabwe’s independence, and that ZANU-PF’s authority to govern is primarily derived from violent struggle. This attempt to delink Zimbabwe’s independence from the 1980 elections undermines basic human rights including freedom of association, and the right to participate in national political processes, as these are viewed as secondary to the armed liberation struggle. The first post-independence overt military involvement in Zimbabwe’s political affairs was during the period from 1983 to 1987 when Mugabe and ZANU-PF deployed a section of the army, the Fifth Brigade (a special army unit trained by North Korean instructors and code named “Gukurahundi” – the rain that washes away the chaff), ostensibly to quell dissident disturbances in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces. The disturbances were characterized by violence between ZIPRA and ZANLA soldiers as well as sporadic attacks on civilians by agents of apartheid South Africa. Instead, the brigade was used to destroy 1 Human Rights Watch interview with Zimbabwe security sector expert, Harare, November 22, 2012. 2 Ibid. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM 8