Zapu leader and former cabinet minister Dumiso Dabengwa has responded to former president Robert Mugabe’s claims that his hands were clean regarding the Gukurahundi Massacres in the early 1980s. In an interview with the Zimbabwean Independent Mugabe blamed Ndebeles, Zapu, Joshua Nkomo and Dabengwa for the atrocities which killed an estimated 20 000 people. In an interview with the same publication, Dabengwa said,
His (Mugabe) hands can never be clean. His lieutenants, (the now President) Mnangagwa and (Retired Air Marshall Perence) Shiri have all said they were acting under instructions from above them. The only person who was above them is Mugabe. He should have listened to the demands that the people have been making throughout since the end of those massacres.
…The people simply wanted him to come out in the open and acknowledge what had happened. It is at that time that he should have come out in the open and made those allegations he is making today, while Nkomo was still alive and state clearly that it was Nkomo who caused him to do what he did (unleashing the Fifth Brigade). He did not need to wait until Nkomo had died, and after that to say it was a “moment of madness”.
Even after the Unity Accord (between Zanu and Zapu) had been signed in 1987, he should have come out and apologised. It is a fact commissions were set up to look at this situation. The Chihambakwe commission came out with a very huge report and the Dumbutshena Commission also came out with its report. These two reports have not been made public up to this day. Why?
What is there to hide and why hide it? These are questions he (Mugabe) should be asked as to why did he not publish those two reports.
Dabengwa also said that he could not comprehend how President Emmerson Mnangagwa was now absolving himself from the matter when he was the intelligence officer who identified people who needed to be killed.
I don’t know. But I am saying this is what he himself said when he was being implicated in those atrocities. He said, in his own words, he was taking instructions. He said the actual killing was done under the command of the Fifth Brigade which in this case was under Shiri. And he said his role was that of an intelligence officer, which means he was there to point out which people were to be killed first.
He made shocking statements during Gukurahundi. I remember one of the statements he made was in Victoria Falls where he said Zapu and the people of Matabeleland were like cockroaches and the best way to kill them was to apply DDT (a deadly insecticide poisonous to humans and animals). How he can now plead innocence to those statements which are there on record is something I cannot understand.
Davengwa you continue to the perilous way if you’re trying to tell us that Russian made weapons were not moved from Zambia by a railway that goes to Gwai River mine into the Gwai River assembly point this was monitored by the then Rhodesian and British intelligence it was known that you had been planning a civil war after elections because you would not be able to garner enough votes to clinch a majority this is due to Demographics you Ndebeles were twenty percent in fact there were suggestions of Ndebeles forming a coalition with the twenty odd seats reserved for the whites and Bishop Muzorewa in a bid to stop Mugabe from getting into power for some reason you did not want this because like Mugabe you wanted total power this would have been ok but it was also scapered by the overwhelming majority that Mugabe got with Karangas inadvertently thinking he came from Chief Mugabe s area in Masvingo. Yes there is a causative link between your Zapu Entumbane uprising and Gukurahundi although technically you claim that it’s the disgruntled cadres who started it. EMMERSON was working with the old special branch CiD old Rhedesian intelligence to investigate and baby all involved some officer were at Dadaya mission all over you and Lookout Masuku were asked by the exRhodesian Armoured cars and Artillery to go and tell the Gwai River Battalion to go back escorted into camp or they would be blasted and you did because it was known that you were the Russian trained military logistics supremo a d that Lookout had Zipra eating out of his hand if he said let’s go fight and die every Zipra cadre would go with him it’s sad that such a soldier died in prison you I was with lookouts brother in the Army even Rhodesian soldiers respected Lookout Masuku a with tall slender example of a soldier. You took a gamble it failed stop this Zapu nonsense and Become True Zimbabwean you have a place in the future of Zimbabwe