Gukurahundi massacres continue to haunt Mnangagwa but can they cost him the election?

“Mnangagwa is the face of Gukurahundi, he can’t deny that. Mugabe was the body but Emmerson is the face,” said Mbuso Fuzwayo, secretary of a Bulawayo-based group that seeks to preserve sites where massacres occurred. The group is called Ibetshu Likazulu, Ndebele for “Last Hope”.

Mugabe has called Gukurahundi a “moment of madness”.

Asked about it at the Davos meeting of world leaders in January, Mnangagwa said: “What has happened has happened. What can we do about the past?

“Wherever wrong was committed, the government of the day must apologise. Wherever any community has suffered any injury, if it is that injury that has to be repaired, we do it.”

Henry Khabo, 67, from rural Bubi, 70 km from Bulawayo, wants an apology and reparations.

He says he was rounded up by Fifth Brigade soldiers in Bubi and airlifted to Tsholotsho, 200 km away, where he was tortured for days and saw bodies being dumped in a huge pit.

On the final day, together with six other men, he was lined up naked for execution by firing squad. The last thing Khabo remembers is staring at the barrel of a gun and then waking up in a hospital three days later. He had been shot but survived.

“I cannot vote for him,” said Khabo, fighting tears and pointing to a scar on his left cheek where a bullet entered and exited below the ear. –The Source

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