OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday 7.30pm
ZIMBABWE plans to compensate victims of atrocities committed by its troops who crushed a rebellion in western Matabeleland province in the 1980s, a cabinet minister has said.
Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa told the state-owned Sunday Mail that the government has made an undertaking to compensate the victims in the affected areas to ensure political stability.
“The government will help all those cases requiring assistance,” Dabengwa said. The announcement came days after President Robert Mugabe publicly apologised for the first time for the atrocities in which thousands of innocent civilians were killed.
The conflict began in the years after independence in 1980 when Mugabe, head of the ruling Zanu(PF), sacked the late vice-president Joshua Nkomo, then leader of the rival Zimbabwe African People’s Union, from his coalition government. A small number of guerrillas became active in Nkomo’s home province of Matabeleland and the government sent troops of the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to crush them.
Two rights groups, Zimbabwe’s Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Legal Resources Foundation, compiled by a report on the civil strife. It contained harrowing accounts of atrocities, including incidents in which government troops forced villagers to dig their own graves, pregnant women were bayonetted and families were made to dance on the tombs of their dead.
Dabengwa said the government has sought assistance from the CCJP for the compilation of lists of names of victims. The 260-page report on the conflict, entitled “Breaking the Silence”, has received no formal government response since it was submitted to Mugabe in person more than two years ago.
Nkomo returned to Mugabe’s government in 1987 as vice-president after a peace pact. His death last week sparked fears that the unity he helped forge after the civil strife might crumble. — AFP
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