Gukurahundi Remembered: The Police,Opacity and the Gukurahundi Genocide in Bulilimamangwe District,1982–1988

Introduction and background

It was a difficult time, my child. My son (an ex-Zipra cadre) was arrested by the police in Plumtree, in February 1984, and sent to Bhalagwe detention camp. Madabe Police station was my second home for the better part of 1984 as I was always asked to report to the police station where I got beaten up and interrogated by the police. They would come during the day dressed in military uniform and at night they would pretend to be dissidents. We were confused; so, when they asked us about the dissidents, we would simply say we did not see them; but at times, we would lie and tell them that the dissidents passed by to avoid being beaten up. (Melita Sibanda, 2018, personal communication)

The above statement was articulated by Melita Sibanda, a survivor of the Gukurahundi genocide whose son was arrested, tortured and eventually detained for a year at Bhalagwe (a notorious detention camp located in the Kezi area, Matebeleland South) in 1984. It refers to the police approach in dealing with the civilians in their quest to ‘discipline’ the ex-Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army cadres (ZIPRA), an armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) during the Gukurahundi (the rain that sweeps the chaff early during the spring season) genocide. As Dube (2020: 338) argues, scholars writing about the Gukurahundi have avoided the term genocide. In 2010, the organisation Genocide Watch labelled the killings during this period as genocide. This term is appreciated as it describes the extent and intention of the state and its security forces to eliminate the ZAPU and its supporters in the 1980s. Alexander (1998) notes that the term Gukurahundi had been used by the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1979 in its slogan, ‘The Year of the People’s Storm’ or Gore re Gukurahundi. Although it has become associated with the Matebeleland and Midlands genocide, Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2012: 12) traces its origins to the formation of ZANU in 1963 with its philosophy of confrontation which entailed embracing violence as a legitimate political tool of fighting for independence and the destruction of opponents and enemies. He further argues that the Gukurahundi strategy has been used by ZANU-PF whenever its hegemony is threatened (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012: 13).

Nonetheless, the genocide caused a lot of suffering which is still vividly remembered by the victims. Melita Sibanda’s statement echoes these sentiments of suffering she underwent during the period at the hands of the police. In order to explore and flesh out the role of the police during Gukurahundi the author conducted semi structured formal interviews with residents of Plumtree who suffered at the hands of the police, witnessed the atrocities and had their relatives killed during the Gukurahundi genocide. They comprised of teachers, nurses, villagers and ex-combatants (their age group ranged from 37 to 88). Informal conversations were also part of the study. These tended to provide more detail than the formal interviews. The life history approach was deployed as it helped to understand the background of the interviewees and also to provide a broader understanding on how the police operated during the Gukurahundi in Bulilimamangwe. Due to the sensitivity of the research, all participants’ identities were concealed. The research draws from these interviews, books and articles were also used in order to nuance the discussion and also to flesh out the role of the police, although most of this literature focused more on the Fifth Brigade and dissidents.

In writing about the experiences of the people in Bulilimamangwe during the genocide, I seek to make two points. The first is that, when we look at the narratives of the civilians about the Gukurahundi atrocities, it can be argued that the police played a pivotal role during this period. Moreover, they carried out operations before the deployment of the Fifth Brigade in Matebeleland South in January 1984. Therefore, this means the government had other security forces such as the police, whom the civilians in Bulilimamangwe remembered as the most active government security forces throughout Gukurahundi. Although the Fifth Brigade was released in the area in February 1984, dissident activities can be traced to 1982. Dissidents were armed bandits who operated in Matabeleland and Midlands region. The term dissident was coined in early 1980 and referred to guerrillas of both ZAPU and ZANU who left Assembly Points (Dube, 2020: 340). As Dube (2020: 340) argues, ‘in the post-election period, the term was officially used by ZANU politicians to refer to ZAPU following ZANU PFs victory in March 1980.’ Post 1980, dissidents also included Super ZAPU and some criminals.

Once the Fifth Brigade had been unleashed, the police worked with them to deal with the dissident issue until the Fifth Brigade was withdrawn from the Matebeleland South region in 1986. The emphasis in this article is not so much on the number of innocent civilians who died at the hands of the Fifth Brigade or the police as on the fact that the police, too, played a central role during the Gukurahundi. It was the police who exercised violence during the periods of ‘absence and presence’ of the Fifth Brigade soldiers. Violence and the victimisation of the civilians after 1986 were, therefore, carried out by the police, and this continued until 1988, a few months after the signing of the Unity Accord of 1987 (an agreement that led to the end of the Gukurahundi genocide). I also engage with accounts of dissident attacks on civilians in various parts of Bulilimamangwe district from 1986 to 1988 to illustrate how police failure to protect civilians served to echo Mugabe’s interest in eliminating not only ZAPU but the entire Matebeleland region.

The second point which this article makes is that opacity as rule played a pivotal role during the genocide in Bulilimamangwe. In this article, opacity refers to the lack of transparency by the government on handling the dissidents allowed the two security forces to expose the civilians to horrendous killings, beatings, interrogations, the disappearance of many, arresting of the supporters of dissidents and harassment. Because of this opaque nature, civilians too were forced to adopt opacity as a strategy of protecting themselves from the police. I draw from Glissant (1997: 52) who stipulates that tragic action is progressive and carried out within opacity because the violence linked to filiation (the absolute exclusion of the other) cannot be faced head-on nor at all once. In the light of the above, this article thus engages with the narratives of people from Bulilimamangwe; it demonstrates the role of the police during the genocide and explores the various strategies used by the civilians to protect themselves from the two forces, albeit with little success.

Police partnership with the military in exercising violence against the masses during the Gukurahundi genocide set the tone for years to come, where the police also partnered with the military and other state security organs in persecuting the masses (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012; Williamson, 2010). Ndlovu- Gatsheni (2012) notes that ZANU-PF has continued to use the strategy of Gukurahundi whenever its hegemony is threatened. He argues that,

Military-style operations such as Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Urban Clean-Up) of 2005, Operation Mavhoterapapi ("Where did you put your vote?") of April-August 2008 and Operation Chimumumu, which involved abductions of opposition and civil society figures, testify to the consistent use of the strategy of Gukurahundi against those identified as threatening its hegemony. (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012:13)

To some extent, this partnership has made it difficult to distinguish the police functions from military objectives. Under the Joint Operations Command (JOC), the police too turned from their duties of enforcing law and order to enforcing violence. ¹ Williamson (2010: 397) notes how the JOC members remember the Gukurahundi massacres and most importantly, how they succeeded in not only preserving but also expanding their power. The case of Gukurahundi atrocities in Bulilimamangwe attest to the fact that the police have also been used as a tool of political violence and indeed collaborated with the Fifth Brigade soldiers during the Gukurahundi genocide in most of the Matebeleland region, and in Bulilimamangwe in particular. In the next section, I engage with some scholarly work on the genocide, most of which tend to focus on security forces such as the Fifth Brigade and with very few studies focusing on the role of the police.

Scholarly writings about Gukurahundi

Before moving on to the operations carried by the police and Fifth Brigade soldiers, it is of paramount importance to look at how scholars have written about this genocide, which resulted in the killing of approximately 20,000 civilians in the name of trying to suppress dissidents. There has been a surge in interest in the history of the Gukurahundi among scholars (Alao,1995; Alexander et al., 2000; Coltart, 2016; Doran, 2017; Dube, 2020; Hodder-Williams, 1983; Kriger, 1995; Msindo, 2012; Muzondidya and Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2008; Ohlson and Stedman, 1994; Ranger, 1989; Werbner, 1991). This broad literature viewed the war from different angles. The pro-ZANU literature characterises the genocide as the product of an ill-judged bid on the part of ZAPU to claim the victory it had failed to gain through the elections (Makambe, 1992; Martin and Johnson, 1986). On the other hand, the pro-ZAPU literature presented it as a cynical attempt by ZANU PF to use the incidence of violence in the early 1980s as a pretext for crushing ZAPU which was the only real obstacle to its total supremacy (Nkomo, 1984; Sibanda, 2005; Spring, 1986). Also, the genocide has been understood by some scholars as an attempt by South Africa to exploit tensions between ZANU PF and ZAPU, whites and blacks, to destabilise its newly independent neighbour (Dzimba, 1998; Engel, 1994; Hanlon, 1986a, 1986b; Scarnecchia, 2011).

Human Rights groups such as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (1986) and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (1997) have focused on civilian experiences and the violence and repression imposed on the civilians during the Gukurahundi genocide. A great number of the scholars mentioned above attribute the causes of the genocide to deep ethnic struggles between the Ndebele and the Shona (Alexander, 1998; Alexander et al., 2000; Hanlon, 2007; Muzondidya and Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2008, 2011). Msindo (2012) viewed this genocide as a political crisis, where being Ndebele was conflated with being supporters of ZAPU. Lindgren (2005) who studied ethnicity among the Ndebele, argued that the Gukurahundi genocide solidified the feeling of Ndebele-ness among the people of Matebeleland, which is making national integration very difficult to achieve. It is interesting to note that this literature emphasises the role of the Fifth Brigade soldiers, while other security forces such as police seem to have played a minimal role. By focusing on the narratives from the survivors of the Gukurahundi in Bulilimamangwe, I demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between the police and Fifth Brigade in unleashing violence on civilians.

Coltart’s (2016) biographical account chronicles the excessive abuse of power by successive regimes spanning from the 1950s to the post-independence period. In his chapters on Gukurahundi, he demonstrates how the civilians, both in urban Bulawayo and in various parts of the Matebeleland region, suffered at the hands of the Fifth Brigade, Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and to some extent the police (Coltart, 2016). He stresses the role played by the Bulawayo Legal Practitioners Association BLPA and Catholic bishops in trying to serve the masses who were persecuted by the state as they were dubbed dissidents. Relatively recent, Doran (2017) offers a detailed account of the Gukurahundi massacres, their magnitude, how they were organised and who was responsible for these massacres. By focusing on the formative years of Zimbabwe’s independence, he explores the key events that marked these years and probes the continuities and causes that underlie the episodes (Doran, 2017). Although he covers various state security forces such as the Fifth Brigade, CIO and the police, he gives too much power to the Fifth Brigade, thereby presenting other forces such as the police as better devils.

Apart from the above-mentioned studies, there are fictional accounts on the Gukurahundi genocide (Hleza, 1991; Khumalo, 1995; Magagula, 1993; Masundire, 1991; Vera, 2002). These writers view the genocide as an ethnic war targeted at the Ndebele people by the Shona under the auspices of Fifth Brigade soldiers. A Shona novelist, Masundire (1991) also attributes the emergence of war to the unruly ex-ZIPRA cadres who wanted to disturb the gains of independence. He, therefore, views the unleashing of the Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland as a necessary strategy by the government to discipline the enemies of independence. However, his novel should be read with caution as the writer was himself a policeman serving under the ruling party (ZANU PF) during the years of the Gukurahundi genocide, hence his tendency to view the genocide as necessary to discipline the wayward dissidents. Although this is a fictional biographical account, it pushes us to rethink the role of the police during the genocide. In the following sections, the article engages with the narratives of the civilians of Bulilimamangwe about the Gukurahundi and their suffering at the hands of the police and to some extent, the dissidents. More than anything else, the accounts recall the violence and the suffering that they endured in the hands of the police and the Fifth Brigade.

Partners in crime: The police and Fifth Brigade in Bulilimamangwe, 1982–1984

Following the discovery of the arms cache and the violence between the ZIPRA and ZANLA forces, the post-independent ZANU-PF led government deployed both the army and a special militia unit –the Fifth Brigade to suppress a few rebels who were labelled dissidents. The Fifth Brigade was first unleashed in Matebeleland North and the Midlands region. Here, brutality was administered by the security forces which comprised the Fifth Brigade, a special military branch trained in North Korea, the police and CIO. This article is concerned with the perpetrators of this genocide in Bulilimamangwe district in Matebeleland south. After committing horrendous atrocities that saw the death and disappearance of many in Tsholotsho, Bubi and Lupane, the Fifth Brigade was unleashed into Matebeleland South in February 1984 (Coltart, 2016; Dube, 2020). Before the arrival of the Fifth Brigade, in this area, violence towards the civilians was carried out mostly by the police and CIO, who arrested and detained while claiming that they were looking for dissidents who had abandoned the army and became state rebels. But prior to that, there were disturbances in the region and these were handled mostly by the police until the end of 1983. Bulilimamangwe occupies a strategic position because of its proximity to the Dukwe refugee (Botswana) camp where, it is alleged, some dissidents were being trained and accommodated.

Consequently, after the discovery of an arms cache at a ZAPU farm in Ascot, the Entumbane clashes between the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), an armed wing of ZANU and ZIPRA forces, some ex-ZAPU cadres who had been integrated into the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), decided to quit. According to December Moyo (2018, personal communication), an ex-ZIPRA cadre, most Ndebele speaking cadres were forced to quit due to the discrimination within the army. Animosity towards these cadres escalated after July, forcing the ex-ZIPRA cadres to desert the army. Most went back to their homes. However, they became the victims of the state and, hence, dubbed dissidents. In Bulilimamangwe, the police played a pivotal role in the arrest and the harassment of these ex-cadres between 1982 and 1984. December Moyo (2018, personal communication) described how his family, was always targeted by the police. In one incident, he described how he sought refuge at a house that had a newly born baby and her mother when he was pursued by the police. After failing to find him, the police (Support Unit branch) turned their anger towards his wife and his mother, who were thoroughly beaten. December Moyo’s fate is not unique; two other ex-ZIPRA cadres also described their encounter with the police from the July to December 1982 period. These harassments escalated in 1983 when the Fifth Brigade was unleashed in the northern parts of the Matebeleland region. While the massacre of civilians was administered by the Fifth Brigade and the CIO in this region, violence in Matebeleland south was mostly carried by the police, although the extent of violence cannot be compared to the Fifth Brigade.

Another victim of the police was Enoch (Enoch Moyo, 2018, personal communication) an ex-ZIPRA cadre who also deserted the army in 1981. He did not define himself as a dissident because, after he left the army, he had gone back to his home in Plumtree. However, due to his association with ZAPU, he also suffered at the hands of the police, who frequently visited his home to interrogate him about his involvement with the dissidents. Apart from the above, villagers also recalled the presence of the police between 1982 and 1984, although systematic killings and disappearance began in 1984 after the arrival of the Fifth Brigade. Nonetheless, this does not in any way suggest that the Fifth Brigade was carrying out the violence against the civilians on their own. The police were also implicated in the narratives of the villagers who recalled that the Fifth Brigade soldiers had the information passed to them by the police, who had operated in those areas before 1984. The Support Unit branch is well remembered by the villagers, who often associated it with the clandestine violence and arrests of those suspected to be supporters of the dissidents (Sindiso Moyo et al., 2018, personal communication). This included beatings, detention, arrests and sometimes killing of the people suspected to be supporting the dissidents. A retired policeman who also served during this period attested to these narratives:

I was a police officer in Plumtree. I remember in 1983 where it became mandatory that we were supposed to ‘eliminate’ any dissidents and their supporters. My uniform was always red with blood and this was evidence that we had eliminated the enemies of the state. I could not continue doing this, I had to resign; it was too much for me. (John Garai, 2018, Personal communication)

Opacity as rule: The state, police, Fifth Brigade and the civilians

The Mugabe regime was not transparent and also lacked a clear strategy of suppressing the dissidents. This lack of transparency was laden in Mugabe’s speeches and other high ranking ZANU officials such as Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, who was by then the Minister of State and Security (later becoming president of Zimbabwe after ousting Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup d’état) and Enos Nkala (later the Minister of Home Affairs after the sacking of the high ranking ZAPU officials). Initially, the unleashing of the Fifth Brigade was justified along the lines of maintaining peace and security within the independent state. Hence the Fifth Brigade was tasked with ridding off the so-called enemies of the state who were the dissidents. However, the Fifth Brigade and other state security forces such as the police soon directed their violence towards the civilians. To this effect, Mugabe justified the attacks on civilians as follows: ‘We do not differentiate when we fight because we cannot tell who is a dissident and who is not’ (Msindo, 2012: 221). Mugabe’s speech points to the issue of opacity as rule, as it was unclear whether the genocide was aimed at the so-called dissidents or the Matebeleland civilians. In the same vein, responding to the letter about excessive violence compiled by the Catholic Bishops such as Henry Karlen and Mutume, the late Robert Mugabe denied the torture and death of civilians and went on to label the bishops as follows: ‘a band of Jeremiahs which included reactionary foreign journalists, nongovernment organisations of dubious status in our midst and sanctimonious prelates’ (Coltart, 2016: 145). More statements of the intention to wipe out the entire Matebeleland were also made by Enos Nkala. In his description of dissidents, he said, dissidents were ‘Ndebeles who were calling for a second war of liberation’. He further added that they should be shot down (Alexander, 1998). He called for the Zapu leader, Joshua Nkomo-the ‘self-appointed Ndebele king’ to be ‘crushed’ (Alexander, 1998). Similarly, Emmerson Mnangagwa uttered statements that also point to this opacity in handling the Gukurahundi issue. This is well captured in a statement cited by Coltart (2016: 134), where he said:

Blessed are they who will follow the path of the government laws, for their days on earth will be increased. But woe unto those who will choose the path of collaboration with dissidents for we will certainly shorten their stay on earth.

Contrary to the above statements, Mugabe, Nkala and Mnangagwa all claimed to be dealing with the dissidents without hurting the civilians. For example, Nkala dismissed Amnesty International’s report of torture of civilians by the government officials when he said, ‘Zanu was not in government to preside over a torture chamber’ (Doran, 2017: 623).

The above opaque statements uttered by the mentioned government officials serve to illustrate that the ZANU PF government used the dissident issue as an excuse to eliminate their political opponents and the ethnic groups perceived to be supporters of those political opponents. The food embargo which was imposed on Matebeleland South in 1984 was also another strategy used by the state to starve the villagers. The state also dismissed the claims of the food embargo, with state media presenting happy villagers receiving maize meal while, in reality, thousands were starving in this region. Moreover, the Fifth Brigade raided homesteads and confiscated food because it was kept for ‘dissidents death’ due to starvation and yet Mnangagwa, the Minister of State and Security argued that there had not been a single death in Matebeleland South from hunger (Doran, 2017). This was exacerbated by the curfew and roadblocks imposed in 1984. The suffering of many civilians in the Matebeleland South led them to devise tactics of survival under an opaque regime that violated its citizens. The disappearance of civilians was also common during the roadblock operations. For example, Figtree roadblock was remembered by most villagers as a notorious spot where most men between the ages of 16 and 40 years old were captured and sent to Sun Yat Sen police station and then to Bhalagwe detention camp in Kezi. To this effect, Beauty (Beauty Dube, 2018, personal communication) recalled:

I was a nurse at Ntoli between 1983 and 1985; one afternoon a number of villagers came to the clinic looking for their sons thinking they had been beaten up and might be in the clinic. Attending to these villagers, one old woman reported that they were last seen in Figtree and were taken away by the police.

Also, Sun Yat Sen police station is mentioned in the works of Doran (2017) and Coltart (2016) who observe that it was a holding camp before the villagers could be transferred to Bhalagwe detention camp. In the southern part of Bulilimamangwe, Madabe police station is remembered as one of the places where the civilians were sent before they were transferred to Bhalagwe. Moreover, Plumtree police station also played a crucial role in capturing those suspected to be dissidents. Elijah Maphosa (Elijah Maphosa, 2018, personal interview) and Mini Ishmael Dube, for example, were arrested in Plumtree and then sent to Bhalagwe detention camp. Upon their disappearance, their wives went to report at Madabe police station where they did not get any help except being told that they should report to the police once they found their husbands. Qedisani Dube (Qedisani Dube, 2018, personal interview) the widow of Mini Ishmael Dube said:

It was tough; I had two children under the age of three. He was arrested in February 1984 and came back in December 1984. Meanwhile, in mid-June rumours circulated that they had been killed. The Headmaster of the nearby school reassured us that they were still alive. Upon release in 1984, they left the country and went to South Africa.

The narrative above gives us an indication of the role of the police as willing perpetrators of violence against civilians. Moreover, villagers noted the presence of the police, which had bases in most parts of the villagers. Since the villagers were in remote areas, without any knowledge or access to the legal system, police took the law into their hands and brutally dealt with the villagers. This does not in any way suggest that the people in the urban areas suffered less. For example, many suffered under the hands of the police. Coltart (2016) gives a detailed account of the Stops police station and its violence against the civilians in Bulawayo. All these accounts demonstrate the cruelty and opaque nature of the Mugabe regime in dealing with the dissident problem. As has been indicated above, the police and the Fifth Brigade too used the opacity of the regime as ammunition to carry out the gross violence against the civilians. This opacity also manifested itself in the changing of identity by these state security forces.

In the absence of the soldiers, the police took over or at times the two worked together. At times both state security forces disguised themselves as dissidents. To underscore this interchange of identity, Solani (Solani Nkomo, 2018, personal interview) commented:

The dissident war had far-reaching impact on us. What pained us the worst was that the government made us believe that our children were dissidents yet those dissidents also spoke the Shona language and we could see them in either police or soldiers’ uniform.

This was reiterated by Mbona Matiwaza (Mbona Matiwaza, 2018, personal communication) who remarked, ‘what really surprised us was the fact that we could also see the so-called dissidents during the day operating as the Fifth Brigade soldiers or at times as policeman.’ The above statements also demonstrate that some of these dissidents were Shona speaking people who were soldiers during the day and dissidents during the night. ² Yet, the ZANU PF led government gave the impression that it was ex-ZAPU Ndebele speaking cadres who perpetrated the violence in Bulilimamangwe. These shared experiences of being attacked by the Fifth Brigade, police and the dissidents contributed much to a lack of trust and hatred of the Mugabe regime which to some extent continued until his exit through a military coup in November 2017.

State opacity drove the people in Bulilimamangwe to adopt and devise strategies to escape being beaten up, arrested or killed by the police. In many instances, this manifested itself when asked about the whereabouts of the dissidents. They often told the police that they had not seen the dissidents. Melita Sibanda (Melita Sibanda, 2018, personal communication) said:

We would say asibabonanga, meaning we did not see them (dissidents). At times we said badlule khonapha izolo, meaning, they passed by here yesterday. We had to do this because the soldiers and the police were harassing us. If you admitted that you saw them, you would be interrogated and at times beaten up. In the same vein, one could be beaten up for saying he/she saw them. We did not know how to respond. One could be beaten or get detained on false accusations.

Thus, opaque became a strategy of surviving the opaque and oppressive regime and its security forces. It became evident that the police were in cahoots with the Fifth Brigade in terrorizing the civilians in this part of the country. Therefore, opacity as a rule which characterised these formative years of independence became a norm under the Mugabe regime.

Beyond the Fifth Brigade: Dissidents, civilians and the police

A focus on the attacks by the dissidents in the Bulilimamangwe district serves to reveal that dissidents also took advantage of the government’s lack of transparency towards civilians – especially government workers such as nurses, teachers and those working in government infrastructure. As has already been said here, dissidents comprised the ex-ZIPRA cadres, Super ZAPU and some bandits and criminals who took advantage of the situation to carry out banditry activities. In a report compiled by the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (1986: 16), the aim of the dissidents was ‘to destabilise the economy and undermine support for the government by rendering large portions of Matabeleland ungovernable.’ In light of this, it is vital to look at some of the attacks by the dissidents and how dissidents took advantage of the Mugabe regime’s opaque rule to attack civilians who were viewed as government supporters, hence sell-outs (abathengisi). Scarnecchia (2012: 225–240) argued that during the Liberation struggle, leaders used the sell-out label to motivate followers to acts of violence against their rivals. He showed the important role played by sell-out politics in both ZANU and ZAPU during their negotiation with American diplomats for financial assistance during the early 1960s and the violent consequences of sell-out politics amongst the rural and urban dwellers. The term ‘sell-out’ was used by ZANU and ZAPU parties during the liberation struggle and it referred to someone who betrayed the unity of the resistance movement. Scarnecchia (2012) further explored the continued role of the sell-out logic in contemporary Zimbabwe and how this helps to perpetuate forms of exclusion political violence predicated on the sell-out logic.

In this context, ‘sell-out’ was used by the dissidents to refer to people who were perceived to be collaborating with the government. These included mostly government workers such as teachers, nurses and other government workers. Dissident attacks increased from 1986 when the Fifth Brigade was withdrawn from Matebeleland South. After 1986, the dissident issue was mostly handled by the police, who according to the interviews, were not interested in protecting the civilians from the dissident attacks. Instead, villagers argued that the police pursued the villagers and accused them of supporting the dissidents. As Melita (Melita Sibanda, 2018, personal communication) remarked, ‘It was useless to report clandestine attacks by the dissidents because the police did nothing to protect us from the dissidents.’ Due to lack of support from the government security forces such as the police, the dissidents were able to commit brutality against the citizens which ranged from murder, beatings and disappearance of many who in most cases were accused of being sell-outs. Dissidents attack on civilians was also encouraged by the state’s opacity in suppressing the dissidents. On 15 August 1985, Sazi Lubimbi, a farmer at Izimnyama was murdered by the dissidents, apparently for supporting the government in the erection of the fence that divided the purchase area and communal area. ³ The dissidents’ hatred of the government seems to have motivated this attack. Anyone who was seen to be supporting the government was severely dealt with by the dissidents. In the following month, the Nswazi clinic was also attacked by these dissidents and they took large quantities of medicine. The vehicle belonging to the Ministry of Construction was set on fire and destroyed during the same night while the medical staff and locals were thoroughly beaten up. ⁴ In some of these dissident attacks, some people in Bulilimamangwe sought support from government security forces such as the police.

The year 1986 was the most terrible one for the people of Bulilimamangwe district. Several dissident attacks were witnessed in various parts of the district. Izimnyama Secondary School was burnt down by two dissidents who forced the school pupils to commit the atrocity. ⁵ As a result, the teachers lost their property, including cooking utensils, furniture and perishable foodstuff. The headmaster fled the school to safety. On 15 February 1986, the heir to the Manguba headmanship was murdered together with the Village Development Committee (VIDCO) chairman, Mr Ndebele. ⁶ The two were accused of being sell-outs as they were reported to have visited the District Administration offices in Plumtree town. In the same month, Kungubo School closed down as the teachers had run away. Again, on 17 February 1986, two dissidents burnt down Tjankwa Secondary School. The teachers were often accused of being sell-outs who forced parents to pay school fees as well as the building fund. ⁷ The locals in the area are said to have collaborated with the dissidents and even supplied the names of the school board members who were responsible for making the parents pay school fees. The school board was drawn from the parents of the pupils who attended Tjankwa School. The whole year witnessed a lot of attacks, especially on teachers. Many were raped while others were brutally killed by the dissidents. ⁸ The dissidents’ destruction of the infrastructure and attack on teachers and other government agencies can be viewed as a deliberate attempt by the dissidents to sabotage the fraudulent ‘Shona’-led ZANU PF government.

Moreover, the strategy of selling out fellow neighbours reflected the social relations and tensions that were prevalent in an opaque post-colonial regime. Some people were even intimidated by the presence of both the police, dissidents and Fifth Brigade and hence ended up giving false information about their neighbours (Mbonisi Sibindi, 2018, personal communication). In the end, the villagers became victims of the above-mentioned trio. One person who became a victim of police, the Fifth Brigade and dissidents was Mbonisi Sibindi (Nkosana Sibindi, 2018, personal communication). He provided the dissidents with food while accommodating them in his home. As a result of his cooperation, the dissidents in return trusted him to such an extent that they would give him money to buy the dissidents’ clothes in Francistown, Botswana. Apparently, he used the money for his poultry project. He was, then, thoroughly beaten up by the dissidents. In the same vein, he was sold out by his fellow village men to the police and Fifth Brigade and was subsequently killed by the latter for supporting the dissidents (Nkosana Sibindi, 2018, personal communication).

Notably, dissidents continued to harass people in Bulilimamangwe despite the presence of the police. On 9 February 1987, dissidents robbed the Sindisa bottle store in the Empandeni area and burnt down J Skinner’s store. ⁹ In the same month, the District Development Fund (DDF) equipment was burnt in Bezu area and the teachers at Gwambe School were also harassed. Dissident John Maphepha Mlotshwa robbed the teachers of $32 (Zimbabwean dollars) and warned that he would shoot the head of the school should he report the incident to the police. ¹⁰ Many teachers deserted the schools because of such threats from the dissidents. Jele Khuphe, (Jele Khuphe, 2018, personal communication) who was a teacher at Matjinge (a school located in the northern parts of Bulilimamangwe district) from 1985–1987 also narrated his experiences with the dissidents as follows:

I almost got killed by the dissidents in 1987. My name was on their list. I was accused of being a sell-out. I escaped being killed by the dissidents because a fellow teacher came from the nearby school, Ngwana and alerted me about the dissidents’ plot to kill me. I ran away on that night and that is how I survived. (Jele Khuphe, 2018, personal communication)

During the latter part of 1987, many dissident disturbances continued to be registered in Bulilimamangwe district. In October the same year, two influential citizens, Mr Madida, who was a headmaster and Mr Ngwenya who was a Village Development Committee were killed by the dissidents after they were accused of being sellouts. ¹¹ In December 1987, two homes in Maninji area were burnt down by the dissidents again, accusing the members of being sellouts. Tjankwa and Izimnyama schools were burnt down by dissidents in early February 1988. ¹² On 19 April 1988, dissidents struck again at Empandeni Mission where one missionary, Brother Killian was murdered while Father Johannes Bannings was seriously injured. ¹³ During the attack, several goods which included three cars were taken away, while a motorbike and a bicycle were destroyed. The dissidents continued to disrupt government activities in the district. For example, on 23 November 1988, unarmed dissidents disrupted the rates collection programme at Makumbi School. ¹⁴

The above-mentioned dissidents attacks should, therefore, be seen as a direct challenge to the Government’s whole posture, that is, its Shona domination, marginalisation of those regarded as Ndebele and, above all, its opaque attitude towards victims of the genocide. Moreover, it demonstrates how the dissidents also took advantage of the opaque nature of the regime, which exposed the civilians to all sorts of violence. In most cases, civilians did not report the cases to the police as they were afraid of being interrogated by the police which they thought did not care about the wellbeing of civilians (Melita Sibanda et al., 2018, personal communication). Also, the police did not do much to protect the civilians from these attacks. The silence and lack of support towards dissidents’ attacks in a way served to confirm Mugabe’s statements where he indicated that his security forces would wipe out the Matebeleland region. Therefore, it is not surprising that the state security forces such as the police turned a blind eye to these dissident attacks on the civilians. In most cases, the response to these dissident activities ranged from the closure of schools, clinics and reluctance in assisting the victims. The teachers’ reaction was fleeing to other areas because the police and the other state security forces were not eager to protect them from such attacks.

Conclusion

Since the attainment of independence in Zimbabwe (1980), the police have always been partners in crime with the military in operations targeting civilians in a bid to restore ‘order’. The Gukurahundi genocide was the first of such operations that have continued to haunt the post-independent Zimbabwean state. The genocide was carried out in opacity and led to the death, disappearances, torture and arrests of many civilians at the hands of the police and Fifth Brigade. While the role of the Fifth Brigade during the genocide has been adequately explored by many scholars, the role of the police remains underexplored. The article has, therefore, attempted to capture this role and their collaboration with the Fifth Brigade in Bulilimamangwe district. Using the narratives of civilians, it engaged with the role of the police before the deployment of the Fifth Brigade, their role when the Fifth Brigade was unleashed in Matebeleland South region, until the end of the genocide in 1988. The period after the withdrawal of the Fifth Brigade in 1986 was characterised by dissident attacks on government workers, infrastructure and the civilians who were considered to be sell-outs. Instead of pursuing the dissidents, the police were silent and hence exposed the civilians to dissident attacks. It is this silence on dissident attacks that serves to illustrate police role during this genocide and state opacity. Central to this article is how opacity as rule was deployed by the government on unarmed civilians and the response offered by the civilians as a defence mechanism from the hostile regime.