Leaked Documents Reveal Mugabe’s Hand In Murdering 20 Thousand Zimbabweans

This reign of terror was carried out by
the Zimbabwean Army’s Fifth Brigade,
which ravaged communities in western
Zimbabwe and conservatively saw
20,000 Ndebele murdered. However,
scholars and activists believe the number
dead could go as high as 80,000 dead.
Recently documents were made public
revealing President Robert Mugabe’s of
Zimbabwe role in slaughtering 20,000 of
his own people. The massacre known as
the Gukurahundi Massacre began in
1983 and targeted ethnic Ndebele
civilians in western Zimbabwe.
The Gukurahundi Massacre was one of
Mugabe’s first efforts to eliminate
political opposition to what would be his
35 year reign as President of Zimbabwe.
Mugabe famously said of the political
opposition in the predominant Ndebele
area as “needing to be re-educated.”
According to Stuart Doran, of the Daily
Maverick newspaper in South Africa,
“thousands of historical documents that
appear to expose the perpetrators are
now becoming available in a raft of
foreign archival collections. The
documents are wide-ranging and
include, among others, diplomatic
correspondence, intelligence assessments
and raw intelligence garnered by spies
recruited from within the Zimbabwean
government. These papers—augmented
by the testimony of Zimbabwean
witnesses finding courage in old age—
appear to substantiate what survivors
and scholars have always suspected but
never been able to validate: Mugabe,
then Prime Minister, was the prime
architect of mass killings that were well-
planned and systematically executed.
The most recent documents reinforce
previous investigations and reports that
President Mugabe and “the [ZANU-PF]
20-member-policy-making group spoke
of a decision of the central committee
that there had to be a massacre of the
Ndebels,” according to Eddison Zvobgo,
who spoke to the Guardian UK and was a
member of this group.
This reign of terror was carried out by
the Zimbabwean Army’s Fifth Brigade,
which ravaged communities in western
Zimbabwe and conservatively saw
20,000 Ndebele murdered. However,
scholars and activists believe the number
dead could go as high as 80,000 dead.
Most significantly, these documents also
reveal that these murders were not
orchestrated by outsiders and were “one
component of a sustained and strategic
effort to remove all political opposition
within five years of independence.
ZANU-PF leaders were determined to
secure a victory against a non-existent
opposition in elections scheduled for
1985,” according to the Guardian.
Mugabe is the current President of
Zimbabwe, and he has been Head of the
Zimbabwe state since 1980. Mugabe
refused to accept his loss during against
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in
2008, which provoked violence,
hyperinflation, a destruction of
infrastructure across the country, and
international sanctions.