A former ally of President Robert Mugabe says the Zimbabwean leader alone oversaw a 1980s military crackdown in the south-west of the country that killed more than 20 000 innocent civilians from the minority Ndebele tribe.
Edgar Tekere, a former secretary general of the ruling Zanu-PF party, said Solomon Mujuru, then commander of the army, was also not aware of the crackdown carried out by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, an outfit of Mugabe-loyalists said to have operated outside the formal army command structure.
”Rex Nhongo [Mujuru’s pseudonym] who was in charge of the army at that time was not aware of the [Gukurahundi] operation. He was sidelined,” Tekere told journalists in the eastern city of Mutare at the weekend.
Tekere — once a friend of Mugabe who helped him seize control of Zanu-PF during the struggle years — held senior positions in the government before he was expelled in 1988 from both the government and the ruling party after opposing plans by Mugabe to declare Zimbabwe a one-party state.
He was readmitted into Zanu-PF at the party’s conference in 2006 but was barred from taking up any senior position in the party — reportedly at the orders of Mugabe.
The Fifth Brigade was deployed in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces — home of the Ndebele — ostensibly to crush an armed insurrection against Mugabe’s rule but ended up wantonly massacring innocent civilians they accused of backing the rebels.
The military crackdown only ended after late nationalist and vice-president Joshua Nkomo and his Zapu opposition party agreed to merge into Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party under a unity accord signed in 1987.
Mugabe had accused Nkomo — the father of Zimbabwean nationalism — of sponsoring rebels in a bid to seize power.
Several mass graves of victims of the Fifth Brigade crackdown, also known as Gukurahundi, have been discovered in Matabeleland and the Midlands.
Mugabe has refused to accept responsibility or apologise in full for Gukurahundi although he has called the campaign ”an act of madness”.
Tekere, who was addressing the Mutare Press Club, said Mugabe did not want to step down because he feared he could end up like former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor who was arrested after agreeing to leave power.
”Mugabe is afraid of his crimes,” said Tekere. He added: ”If he leaves offices we will have another Charles Taylor incident. So when Mugabe sits down and thinks of Gukuruhundi, he never [wants to] step down.”
Taylor agreed to give up power under a deal backed by Nigeria and which saw the former strongman leaving Monrovia to settle in Nigeria. But the Nigerians later withdrew protection and gave up Taylor to face trial for crimes against humanity at The Hague.
Mugabe last year told Canadian television he was not afraid of being arrested after leaving office. Political analysts have always speculated that one reason the 82-year old leader will not leave office was that he could not trust whoever succeeds him to protect him from arrest.
Tekere, who has in the past weeks absolved Mugabe of assassinating prominent rival Josiah Tongogara during the last months of the independence struggle, called for those who were behind Gukurahundi to face trial.
”Certain atrocities should not be swept under the carpet. Those involved must stand up against their crimes,” Tekere said.
ZimOnline was unable to get immediate comment on the matter from Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba.
But state-owned media have been on a campaign to dismiss Tekere as unhinged.
Tekere, who has published a book in which he claims Mugabe was a latecomer into the struggle for independence, is seen by some as both a maverick and an eccentric. – ZimOnline