3. Severe Conflicts: Frustration-Deprivation
4.2. Ethnicity: pre-Colonial Era – Narratives of ‘Victor and Vanquished’
4.5.4. Inter-Generational Transmission of Ethnic Antagonism
Of grave concern for those researching the impact of the Matabeleland violence of the early 1980s, is the apparent transmission of these ethnic animosities in both the
415 Interview: FN1, Johannesburg, South Africa - 26/10/07 – (Ndebele Finance Manager and former employee of the ZANU-PF Ministry of Finance and the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe in the early 1980s).
416 Ibid.
151 Ndebele and Shona communities to the next generation with an unwitting degree of emotional veracity and fervent antagonism. This inter-generational transfusion of hate is even more alarming when it is discovered to be emerging in diverse social sectors outside of the parameters of politics, such as in the media and entertainment industry, the arts and culture (music, drama and dance) and sports arenas.
“I was amazed the other day on the 22nd of January which has now been officially declared by the victims to be the Gukurahundi Day; the people organizing that occasion were very young people, very, very young people who never really experienced Gukurahundi. If they were there, it was when they were still [young]
they’ve been hearing the stories. So if they are the people who are going to
spearhead the commemoration, then what does that mean to the future generations that will remain; the unfinished, unsolved curse.”417
This narrative of ethnic animosity surfaced with a vengeance (from young patriotic ZANU-PF members) during the internet debates that resulted from the 1997 release of ‘Breaking the Silence’418, a detailed documentation of the violence unleashed on Matabeleland in the 1980s. What was surprising to the researchers who were
analyzing this Internet debate was the degree to which people were willing to emotively justify the overriding narrative interpretation propagated by ZANU-PF ten years earlier, and not only that, express deep sentiments of ethnic prejudice and hatred in the process.
One must bear in mind that many of these respondents were young professionals and self- consciously saw themselves as future leaders in Zimbabwe.419 A vivid case in point follows in a direct quote from a Shona respondent:
“The extermination of the support base, although unfortunate, was one of the alternatives that worked. I sympathise with the victims, but for the victors it was a question of life and death as well…Was dissidentry necessary? Was it
anybody’s fault that you [the Ndebele] lost elections? Was that the only option?
Now…the strategies…decided to hammer the support base and you cry for a human rights inquiry. Do you want us to also cry for a human rights inquiry for the [nineteenth century] warriors (thieves) who roamed Mashonaland?...Our [the Shonas’] only sin was that we toiled the soil and had better produce. Don’t the
417 Interview: JN1, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe - 29/03/07 – (Ndebele teacher and activist working for the Catholic Commission on Peace and Justice – CCJP in the 1980s).
418 Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and Legal Resources Foundation (LRF). 1997.
Breaking the Silence – Building True Peace: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980-1988. Harare: CCJP / LRF.
419 Alexander, J & McGregor, J. 1999. Representing Violence in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe: Press and Internet Debates, in Allen, T. & Seaton, J. (Eds.) The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and
Representations of Ethnic Violence, London & New York: Zed Books, 248.
152 Matabeles beat their chests with pride for having stolen Mashona produce, women and children[?].”420
The insinuation here (both spoken and unspoken), being that the Matabeleland massacres perpetrated by the ZANU-PF (Shona majority) government in the 1980s represent a justified revenge for the Ndebele raids in Shona territories in the 1800s.421
For the Ndebele youth, sporting events (in this case soccer) have functioned as a public place in which they could diffuse their pent-up malcontent on their Shona
counterparts. The sports field and stadium provide a bounded area yet one that supplies a sufficiently physical and competitive space in which to express and find release from explosive emotions of rage: “An inherited hatred of the Shona people is portrayed in soccer matches through songs that make reference to the 1980s genocide. A popular one goes like, ‘Curse the Shonas who killed my father.’”422 Other interview transcripts agree:
“But unfortunately the politics of Ndebele and Shona, it still haunts everyone in every organization in Zimbabwe. It’s everything. It even goes to the sports…So what they have done in Matabeleland is they have just turned to the soccer team, Highlanders. I mean for them, you know, they will tell you it’s an arena where they are able to express their anger, because if you sit in the crowd you’ll hear all sorts of obscenities against the Shonas.”423
“Well, (sigh) what I have discovered is that soccer matches actually present Ndebele people with a safe environment to vent their frustration and anger towards the Shonas…They would be singing songs that are insulting to Shonas, you know. They turn to traditional songs and one of them is…I think it used to be a war song but basically part of the lyrics go like, ‘here are the Shonas killing me’… ‘Please intervene, here are the Shonas, they’re killing me.’”424
Refusing to be confined to the spheres of diplomatic intrigue or the annals of historic archives, the angry voices of the next generation of secondary victims from the Matabeleland massacres persist in seeking out other social settings of mutinous expression.
420 Alexander, J. & McGregor, J. 1999: 249.
421 This insinuation gained increased credence after the release of a document threatening Ndebele genocide written anonymously under the title of ‘The Inner Circle’ in 1979 and recirculated again in the 1990s.
422 This quote is taken from hand-written notes responding to this research proposal made by Zimbabwean (Ndebele) friend and colleague who grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. (November 2005).
423 Interview: DL1, Johannesburg, South Africa - 11/08/06 – (Ndebele Journalist and business editor for a prominent newspaper).
424 Interview: DN3, Johannesburg, South Africa - 30/10/07 – (Ndebele NGO peace worker facilitating trauma healing and reconciliation among rural Matabeleland communities and survivors of Gukurahundi violence).
153
“…because the way you sit, what I’ve seen them do is; maybe the Shona guys would support the other team, sit on the other side, and they will just be a
minority. And all they can do is just hope maybe ‘it’s a draw, or their team loses’.
Cause if their team wins, then coming out of there is going to be war, it’s going be war. I mean [they] just vent their anger on you. So it’s been elevated to the status of a count, it’s like a rallying point for Ndebeles now that ‘okay, we’ll rally around this team because we have lost faith in all political institutions.’”425
“ So yes, so I’m saying it’s paradoxical in the sense that they’re singing about Shonas, but there are Shonas that they know are playing for Highlanders, they don’t really regard them as Shonas…As far as the Ndebeles are concerned, Highlanders is the last institution that they have, you know, that belongs to them as Ndebeles. Everything else has been taken away from them including their jobs, including their country, or should I say the part of their province because, you know, you will find Shonas in all the positions and they are subservient to them.
So, it’s all tied in to, you know, to the issues…into history, particularly after Independence.”426
Here, in the above treatises one sees the irrationality of ethnic-hatred when Ndebele fans of the Highlanders can be aroused to sing songs of prejudice and violence against the Shona people, while at the same time being fully aware those Shona players make up part of that team. Also, when dealing with the issue of ethno-sports, it is of interest to note that the polarizing narrative of the Ndebele-Shona segregation is exceptionally caught up in the discussion of ownership or ‘faith’ in a political process and its institutions. For Matabeleland, as long as there is no public political domain made available for the collective emancipatory venting of historical pain, the children of the survivors of Gukurahundi will continue to nurse their rage; allowing vengeance to simmer just underneath the tentative veneer of social sensibilities.