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Human rights activists from Matabeleland have described Gukurahundi remarks by National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) spokesperson Obert Gutu as detrimental to the peace and reconciliation efforts being initiated by the commission.
Gutu was captured on video by an online publication saying the Gukurahundi issue was one tiny fraction of the various disputes his commission was seized with.
“Gukurahundi is a small tiny fraction of various other disputes,” he said in the video.
“We are talking about issues that happened in 2005 — Murambatsvina. We are talking of various other issues, even some dating back to pre-independence times.
“People would say that we were taken away from our ancestral land in Musana and dumped somewhere in Gutu or Chivi, for instance, and we want to be restored to ancestral lands, so there are several disputes.”
Human rights activist Effie Ncube said it was clear that Gutu was delivering his mandate as he was brought in to destabilise the process and turn it into a sham.
Ncube said he believed that Gutu was expressing not only his position, but that of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the government.
“The NPRC is deeply flawed in terms of composition, in terms of the legislation governing it and in terms of the provisions of the Constitution that created it. Its mandate is unclear, its composition tells a story of a body that cannot deliver on any of the mandates it was given,” he said.
Ncube said Mnangagwa and his government did not want to resolve the Gukurahundi issue, but were manipulating the process to buy time and thus escape public scrutiny.
“So commissioner Gutu, in this instance, is expressing sentiments from the appointing authority, who views the Gukurahundi genocide as an insignificant inconvenience to their politics,” Ncube said.
“This (NPRC) is a body that is not at all prepared to address this matter. It is not a priority to it, it is not what it considered to be the most important agenda of its mandate. We should just forget about NPRC and focus on fighting for justice and truth in a more robust, more vigorous way than we have done before.”
Matabeleland Institute for Human Rights co-ordinator Khumbulani Maphosa said the previous NPRC team had resolved to prioritise Gukurahundi but the latter was on reverse gear.
“Now Gutu seems to be singing outside the script, he seems to be writing his own policy position unless they have changed the NPRC position. The issues that Gutu is mentioning after having said Gukurahundi is a tiny portion surely can’t be compared with Gukurahundi,” Maphosa said.
“It’s an insult to the concept of the NPRC and to humanity to compare Gukurahundi and Murambatsvina or 2000 electoral violence or to compare it with relocations of people.”
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