5
Speaking at St Columbia Mission he said:
“Unless there are real incidents that are brought to my notice I cannot agree that
they are carrying out any excesses at all. The dissident activity we will eliminate
I can assure you, we have treated them with kid gloves all along but we are
going all out now to crush them and we will crush them.” (Source: Film footage
in film entitled A Place for Everybody)
“Who is Nkomo? What is ZAPU after all? The dissident activity we will eliminate I
can assure you.” (Source: Film footage in film Dancing Out of Tune)
Speaking at the funeral of Moven Ndlovu in 1984, he said:
“ZAPU is irretrievably bent on its criminal path. I’m sure the majority of our
people will agree with me when I say that time has now come for us to show this
evil party our teeth. We can bite and we will shall certainly bite.” (Source: Film
footage from film entitled A Place for Everybody)
Responding to a question in Parliament about the possibility of negotiations with ZAPU, he said:
“ZAPU inspires dissident activities, inspires banditry, it inspires lawlessness in the
country and then it comes to us and says let us talk about this banditry, this
lawlessness – what is there to talk about? To talk about criminal activities that
are deliberately caused by a political party? We cannot entertain that type of
discussion at all … It is in their power to bring an end to that banditry, just as it
has been within their power to bring it about. Let them work and work alone to
eliminate banditry in their own way. If they do not, we will eliminate that
banditry and together with it, ZAPU.” (Source: Parliamentary debate 7 August
1985)
Mugabe has refused to accept responsibility or apologise in full for Gukurahundi. Speaking at the
funeral of Joshua Nkomo in October 1999 he did express regret for the Matabeleland violence at
He announced the willingness of the Government to compensate the families of the thousands of
people killed during the insurgency. Subsequently he has called the campaign “an act of
madness” and has said the killings were wrong. No compensation has been paid by Government
to any of the victims’ families, despite President Mugabe’s promise.
Statements by Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa
A few weeks after the deployment of the infamous 5 Brigade in Matabeleland North, in
his capacity as Minister of State Security he told a rally at the Victoria Falls that the
government was considering as one option the burning down of “all villages infested with
dissidents”. He added:
“…the campaign against dissidents can only succeed if the infrastructure that
nurtures them is destroyed.” The dissidents were, in his words, “cockroaches”
and 5th Brigade was the “DDT” brought in to eradicate them. (Source: The
Chronicle 5 March 1983)
Their words condemn them:
The language of violence, intolerance and despotism in Zimbabwe.