By 
By Ross Moyo
Zimbabwe President Dr Emerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa has said the launch of the Gukurahundi Community Outreach program is not about “revisiting grievances” but a “transformative” journey towards healing and national cohesion.
Speaking at the launch of the program in the city of kings yesterday, Mnangagwa said the Gukurahundi Community Outreach Programme will not be a mechanism for “revisiting grievances” but a “transformative” journey towards healing and national cohesion.
“As we share our stories, the wounds of the past will begin to mend, thereby enabling national healing,” he said.
“Let this Community Outreach Programme be a clarion call for unity and a resounding declaration that we choose empathy over animosity and reconciliation over retribution.”
The fifth Brigade led Operation Gukurahundi was launched in the early 1980s, with the government claiming it was an operation to destroy dissidents who had been attacking civilians.
Nevertheless, operation Gukarahundi allegedly mostly targeted the Ndebele in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces, whose killings set the foundation for the ongoing ethnic tensions.
Sunday’s launch of the Gukurahundi community hearings, in which victims and survivors can express their grievances before a 14-member panel led by a Chief, comes 40 years after the genocide occurred, with perpetrators still to account for the heinous crimes.
The late President Robert Gabriel Mugabe called the operation, “a moment of madness,” with current President Mnangagwa, one of the most senior surviving individuals accused of overseeing the genocide consistently denying playing any active role in Gukurahundi. Simultaneously, the government have also dismissed claims that the operation constituted a genocide.
President Mnangagwa described the official launch of the community hearings as a pivotal moment in history where the country demonstrated that it was capable of resolving its disputes as Zimbabweans, “regardless of their complexity or magnitude.”
The Zimbabwean leader stated that when Zimbabwe’s history of the post-independence era is written and read by generations to come, “surely, this day shall not be a footnote in those sacred writings.”
Mnangagwa also noted that the Gukurahundi, which he termed the “post-independence conflict” in Matabeleland serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of unity and the devastating consequences of disunity.
Nevertheless, the president said Zimbabweans “owe a debt of eternal gratitude to the late President Robert Gabriel Mugabe and the late Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, for “defying seemingly insurmountable obstacles and forging the Unity Accord of 1987.”
“Let us turn our attention to a new dawn, a brighter future. A future where the scars of yesterday no longer fester, but become stepping stones on the path to a stronger, more unified Zimbabwe. A nation can only be built by a unified people,” he said.
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