From an abandoned mine shaft near Mount Darwin, 150km north of Harare, nearly 1Â 000 bodies are being pulled to the surface.
To drumming and the singing of struggle songs, workers in latex gloves sort them into hundreds of plastic bags, which they tie at one end before piling them up in a canvas shed.
Zanu-PF says these are the bodies of liberation war fighters and women and children killed by Rhodesian forces 32 years ago. The find has become the latest fuel for Zanu-PF’s anti-West propaganda machine. But while Robert Mugabe’s party aims to use the find to its advantage, the exercise may open unwanted windows into the country’s more recent violent past.
Some in the opposition fear the bodies may include those of supporters killed during the violence of the 2008 election and want independent pathologists involved. Others have charged that the state of some of the bodies brought out of the mine for the cameras suggests that they could have been buried there after independence. Deepening suspicion is the fact that journalists have been barred from interviewing any of the locals; only those approved by officials have been allowed to speak.
Zanu-PF is aware of the scepticism aroused by its massive publicity campaign around the exhumations. Mount Darwin was the scene of some of the fiercest battles between liberation fighters and forces defending Ian Smith’s rule. But it also remains a Zanu-PF stronghold.
Ladders lower visitors 15m into the mine shaft, where the dead lie in huddles at the end of the dimly lit passageways. Schoolchildren from the nearby Ruya village were led down the narrow mineshafts, crawling past the dead. “This is so that they never forget what happened here,” one official said.
Defending the sacrifices
At the site Zanu-PF officials took turns reminding villagers and reporters what the discovery means. Jabulani Sibanda, head of the militant War Veterans’ Association that is fiercely loyal to Mugabe, said these people had not died in vain. His group would “defend their sacrifices” by ensuring that Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai was kept from power.
“He is standing in front of a train that will not stop. Also, any other person who dares to play with the lives of our people is an enemy of this country,” Sibanda said. Minister of Empowerment and local MP Saviour Kasukuwere said: “After taking our resources, they had the audacity to throw our people in the mine shafts. It’s an insult. We need to understand that the white people are not here for charity.”
More than 30 years after independence the liberation war still evokes deep emotions in Zimbabwe. The security forces remain dominated by war veterans, many of whom still see the MDC as puppets of white, foreign interests. And with elections expected this year Zanu-PF is exploiting the grim find to raise temperatures.
Its spokesperson, Rugare Gumbo, said the fact that the MDC had stayed away from the site was “not surprising, considering their association with the Rhodesians and the West”.
For two weeks the spectacle of hundreds of dismembered remains being lifted from the mass grave has led the main news bulletins on state television, with accompanying commentary berating the MDC and calling for the prosecution of former members of the Rhodesian forces.
Zanu-PF has rejected the claims that recent upheavals may account for some of the deaths, saying DNA tests will be conducted to allow identification of the remains so that they can be handed over to relatives for reburial. The exhumations have stirred activists who have long pressed for a state inquiry into Gukurahundi, a 1980s military campaign in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in which an army brigade was used to flush out armed dissidents. Activists say thousands were killed and still lie in hidden mass graves.
Minority party Zapu, from the Matabeleland region, said the exhumations had been “engineered by Zanu-PF to stir emotions among the people towards elections”, adding that it would be “happier if there was also an exposure and exhumation of mass graves of our supporters massacred by Zanu-PF’s Gukurahundi forces between 1982 and 1987”.