Zimbabwe: Remains of Suspected Gukurahundi Victims Found in Lupane

Villagers in Lupane last week unearthed remains of what they believe to be victims of the Gukurahundi Massacres, perpetrated by Mugabe's Fifth Brigade army unit.
Moses Mzila Ndlovu, the co-Minister of National Healing, confirmed the discovery of the remains at Silwane Primary School in Matabeleland North Province.
In the eighties the crack army unit, specially trained by North Korean instructors, rampaged through the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces, butchering an estimated 20,000 innocent civilians who were perceived to support the opposition ZAPU party. Lupane was one of the areas that was heavily targeted.
This week Mzila Ndlovu said he had seen remains of human ribs protruding from the ground near a classroom block at the school. This has prompted him to lobby the government to exhume the bodies and provide a decent burial.
Only this year The Fallen Hero's Trust, an obscure group aligned to ZANU PF, claimed to have discovered 19 mass graves in the Mount Darwin district, with the remains of what it said were thousands of people massacred by the white minority regime before independence and thrown into the Monkey William Mine.
But just like the anti-sanctions petition ZANU PF carefully coordinated the exhumations, giving them prime time viewing on national television. They deliberately sought to whip up emotions against the West for past atrocities committed by the Rhodesian regime and tied this with the West's targeted sanctions against members of the Mugabe regime.

Questions were immediately raised about when the victims died, given that some of the bodies exhumed and shown on television still had hair and clothes intact and were dripping body fluids. The manner of the exhumations was also criticized for having no proper pathology or DNA testing to determine the identity of the bodies. The bodies were placed in a heap on the site with no proper handling.

Last week's discovery of the suspected victims of the Gukurahundi Massacre has now raised the question of whether ZANU PF will undertake the same exercise of exhuming and re-burying the bodies while giving the process equal prime time viewing on national television. Despite Mugabe admitting Gukurahundi was a 'moment of madness' his party is still determined to suppress any discussion or investigation of the matter.