Will survivors of Zimbabwe’s Gukurahundi massacre finally get justice?
Al Jazeera
President Mnangagwa launched initiative to foster healing over 1980s killings, but survivor communities are sceptical.
Many survivors say the ghosts of Gukurahundi are not yet at rest.
For decades, justice has eluded the thousands of people who were killed by a feared army unit in Zimbabwe’s southwestern and central provinces in the 1980s.
The murders – which some call have termed a “genocide” – are believed to have been committed on the orders of late former President Robert Mugabe, who ruled the Southern African country for more than 29 years, as he targeted political dissidents.
Some 40 years after the murders, Zimbabwean authorities last week launched a “community engagement” programme that officials say will promote “healing, peace and unity” in the survivor communities.
However, many of those affected are sceptical, and say justice cannot come from a government made up of officials who are alleged to have been involved in the killings, and one they say has not yet fully recognised the weight of the atrocities committed.
