Zimbabwe hearings over Mugabe-era massacres delayed

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Much-anticipated hearings on 1980s massacres by elite Zimbabwean soldiers failed to start on schedule amid reports of logistical problems and threats of a court challenge, sources told AFP on Friday.

Tens of thousands of people were killed over several years in the so-called Gukurahundi massacre under former leader Robert Mugabe, a few years after Zimbabwe's independence from Britain.

Starting in 1983, Mugabe deployed an elite North Korean-trained army unit to crack down on a revolt in the western Matabeleland region.

Critics say the soldiers targeted dissidents loyal to Mugabe's rival, fellow revolutionary and nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo. Most of the victims belonged to the minority Ndebele tribe.

Current President Emmerson Mnangagwa had announced that survivors would be interviewed in village hearings starting on Thursday, in a bid to settle longstanding grievances and tensions.

But on Friday, the president of the Chiefs Council leading the hearings told AFP the start was delayed, mainly because a number of traditional leaders had been busy at a state function.

However, everything was in place "except for a few things", Chief Mtshane Khumalo said.

Two other chiefs, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the delay was because they had not yet been given promised "fuel and money" and there was "confusion" about the programme.

Mnangagwa pushed for the initiative despite some survivors and human rights activists saying they had not been consulted.

Politician Sibangilizwe Nkomo, son of Mugabe's late rival Joshua Nkomo, told AFP that his party had approached the High Court for a halt to the proceedings.

'Heavily politicised'

Among the concerns is whether the chiefs have a legal mandate to preside over the hearings.

Musa Kika, executive director of the pan-African Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, said there were also questions over the objectivity of the traditional leaders.

"The chiefs as traditional leaders... do have legal standing to deal with Gukurahundi," Kika told AFP. But, he said, they "are heavily politicised and... not neutral arbiters".

The Gukurahundi massacres killed an estimated 20,000 people over several years, according to the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, whose toll is backed by Amnesty International.

The operation took place in a region where support for Mugabe's rival Nkomo was strong among the minority Ndebele group.

The name Gukurahundi is a term in the majority Shona language that loosely translates as "the early rain that washes away the chaff".

Mugabe, who died in 2019, never acknowledged responsibility for the massacres, only referring to them as a "moment of madness".

After taking power in 2017, Mnangagwa, who was security minister at the time of the massacre, promised to deal with the issue.