Gukurahundi

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Gukurahundi" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Gukurahundi was a series of mass killings in Zimbabwe which were committed from 1983 until the Unity Accord in 1987. The name derives from a Shona-language term which loosely translates to "the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains".^[5]

During the Rhodesian Bush War, two rival nationalist parties, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), had emerged to challenge Rhodesia's government.^[6] ZANU initially defined Gukurahundi as an ideological strategy aimed at carrying the war into major settlements and individual homesteads.^[7] Following Mugabe's ascension to power, his government remained threatened by "dissidents" – disgruntled former guerrillas and supporters of ZAPU.^[8]

ZANU recruited mainly from the majority Shona people, whereas ZAPU was neither a tribal nor a regional party. While ZAPU had its greatest support in Matebeleland, amongst the Ndebele, Kalanga, Sotho, Venda, Zhaunda, Tonga, Xhosa and other tribes found in Matebeleland, it also enjoyed significant support within the Shona communities in Midlands, Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo provinces. This is signified by the large number of people of Shona origin within the top ZAPU leadership structures prior to, and after independence in 1980. These included the vice presidents of ZAPU, who originated mainly from Shona speaking areas. In early 1983, the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, an infantry brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), began a crackdown on dissidents in the Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, and Midlands provinces, home of the Ndebele and Kalanga. Over the following two years, thousands of Ndebele and Kalanga were detained by government forces and either marched to re-education camps, tortured, raped and/or summarily executed. Although there are different estimates, the consensus of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) is that more than 20,000 people were killed. The IAGS has classified the massacres as a genocide.^[9]