The Gukurahundi genocide of Zimbabwe can be understood as a historical episode of political evil that did not end but continues in effect as the victimisers remain victimisers and the victims remain victims that are paying the price of the large-scale violence.
It is political evil that the present-day government of Zimbabwe led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was the State Security minister at the time of the genocide, continues to promise, but not actually take tangible action towards the resolution of the genocide that left thousands dead, many thousands displaced, and others dispossessed of their property. Death, displacement, and dispossession define the victimhood of those that are on the receiving end of political evil.
Perpetrators of the Gukurahundi genocide advance their denialism of the genocide by deploying a certain politics of naming where the Genocide is not named as a genocide but is given such political nicknames and monikers as ‘disturbances,’ the ‘ dissident era’ and ‘political conflict.’ Political evils that are not correctly named may not be properly resolved.
In the natural, and perhaps original, order of things, the word “politics” was not meant to appear in the same sentence as the word “evil”.
Politics was intended to be a festival of sharing resources and power by happy citizens of any polity.
However, since conquest, where one person dominates another colonially, culturally and imperially, politics and evil have become so intertwined that they are seen as natural and normal together.
Consequently, political evil has become the identity and character of the world as we know it.
So naturalised and normalised are they that “political evil” has become a phenomenon to reckon with. World history, if one may observe, is driven more by political evils than by good, benevolence, liberation, and human happiness.
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Political dystopia has replaced political utopia on a global scale. This is why today, the statement that “politics is a dirty game” has become too true to even be mentioned.
Young people today, across the globe, are growing up with the belief that being a politician inevitably equates to being a deceitful, violent, and unethical trickster.
Indeed, promoted by the Euro-American Empire that currently dominates the world, politics has been theorised and practised as a “dirty game” by unscrupulous individuals and parties.
This stands in contrast to the observations made by some Euro-American thinkers, such as Max Weber in 1919, who argued that societal leadership should be regarded as “politics as a vocation” rather than a profession characterised by violence and deceit.
The true decline of the world, along with the degradation of both men and women occurred when politics became infested with hate, violence, fraud, and malice.
When politics devolved from a noble vocation into an immoral profession, the world descended from grace to grass. Politics shifted from what Enrique Dussel described as the “will to live” to what the nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche referred to as the “will to power,” which glorifies conquest and domination, even if it requires the shedding of blood, massacres, genocide, and terrorism.
The conception of politics as the “will to power,” in contrast to the “will to live,” has normalised and rendered acceptable political evil in the form of Genocides, crimes against humanity, terrorism, and massacres.
Like other Genocides before it, Gukurahundi began before the actual killings.
The perpetrators planned the genocide decades before the killings began.
The late professors Masipula Sithole and John Makumbe wrote about how Zanu PF came from the war of liberation intoxicated with a ‘one-party state psychology’ whose desire was to rule Zimbabwe in perpetuity under the life-presidency of Robert Mugabe.
In the scheme of the one-party state political psychosis and the desired life-presidency of Robert Mugabe, Zapu, its leader Joshua Nkomo, and ZAPU’s armed wing Zipra became candidates for political elimination and erasure.
Violence as political evil was deployed to enforce the desired one-party state and the life presidency of Mugabe.
This dream of political evil was fortified in 1987 when Nkomo and Zapu surrendered into a much inconvenient and precarious political union with Zanu PF.
A de facto one-party state was actualised in Zimbabwe at that point when Zapu was politically swallowed by Zanu PF and political opposition was silenced in Zimbabwe until the emergence of ZUM, and later the MDC.
As a Genocide, Gukurahundi was political evil most foul. The evil political ideology of tribalism was deployed as Ndebele-speaking Zapu supporters and former Zipra cadres became the prime targets.
The victims were not only shot dead, but some were burnt, and others were buried alive. Most Zimbabweans are not aware that as part of the Gukurahundi genocide some ritualistic killings of a witchcraft nature were conducted.
The victims were frequently asked to chant certain incantations in praise of Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe before they were shot, burnt or buried alive. Witchcraft, terrorism, and crimes against humanity as political evils punctuated the Gukurahundi genocide, which remains unresolved and, therefore, continues today even though the actual killings seem to have stopped.
It is a character of political evil that it begins before the actual killings of people, and continues after the killings, haunting both the victims and their victimisers.
The perpetrators of the genocides that continue perpetrating the genocide through denialism are themselves captives of the genocide who are haunted by guilt, fear and bloodied consciences.
These perpetrators also remain perpetrators and victimisers in the way in which they continue to harvest the proceeds of the genocide where the people of Matabeleland and the Midlands remain politically cowed and terrified.
Zanu PF uses that for political profits of different kinds, including forcing electoral victories where the victims of genocides are repeatedly threatened into voting the party that is responsible for their enduring victimhood.
As political evil, genocides cannot be solved because the many dead victims cannot be brought back to life.
But genocides as political evils can be resolved in a manner that leaves both the victims and their victimisers with some semblance of peace.
Transitional justice mechanisms are the modern and trusted method, globally, of resolving genocides.
Truth seeking, truth finding and truth telling by both the victims and the victimisers are central to transitional justice.
Equally central are material and symbolic reparations that are advanced to compensate the victims for their losses in the form of bereavement, displacement, dispossession and loss of life opportunities.
Memorialisation through ceremonies, holidays, monuments and other performances and artefacts should be permitted to allow victims to openly grieve and remember their loved ones.
Finally, transitional justice involves institutional changes where individuals who were involved in committing genocide are not allowed to occupy offices or lead institutions that may allow them to repeat their crimes or cover them up.
Tragically, it seems that the Gukurahundi genocide will not be resolved any time soon because the perpetrators that are still in power seem to believe that the victims will forget and forgive.
Unfortunately, victims of political evil who forget do not forgive and those who forgive do not forget. Political evil does not die by itself, but should be resolved through courageous transitional justice procedures.
Transitional justice mechanisms, such as those mentioned above, might be the only option that can liberate the victims and victimisers of the Gukurahundi genocide, and graduate both parties into survivors of a dark and bloody history of political evil.
- Dr William Jethro Mpofu is a senior researcher at Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mpofu is also a senior research fellow at Good Governance Africa, responsible for the Sadc region.
