Zimbabwe / Gukurahundi (Ndebele Genocide)

"The work of the artist Owen Moseko was blocked from view. The artwork depicts atrocities committed a quarter century ago." (Robin Hammond/The New York Times)

Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe's Past
By Celia W. Dugger
The New York Times, January 23, 2011
"The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper. But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago. 'You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people's hearts,' said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. 'It is indelible.' As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say. In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government -- whether through missteps or deliberate provocation -- has rubbed them ever more raw.
Before the World Cup in South Africa in June, a minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, invited the North Korean soccer team, on behalf of Zimbabwe's tourism authority, to base itself in Bulawayo before the games began, a gesture that roused a ferocious outcry. After all, it was North Korea that trained and equipped the infamous Fifth Brigade, which historians estimate killed at least 10,000 civilians in the Ndebele minority between 1983 and 1987. 'To us it opened very old wounds,' Thabitha Khumalo, a member of Parliament, said of the attempt to bring the North Korean team to the Ndebele heartland. 'We're being reminded of the most horrible pain. How dare they? Our loved ones are still buried in pit latrines, mine shafts and shallow graves.' Ms. Khumalo, interviewed while the invitation was still pending last year, wept as she summoned memories of the day that destroyed her family -- Feb. 12, 1983. She was 12 years old. She said soldiers from the Fifth Brigade, wearing jaunty red berets, came to her village and lined up her family. One soldier slit open her pregnant aunt’s belly with a bayonet and yanked out the baby. She said her grandmother was forced to pound the fetus to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Her father was made to rape his mother. Her uncles were shot point blank. Such searing memories stoked protests, and in the end the North Korean team did not come to Zimbabwe. ..."