3. Severe Conflicts: Frustration-Deprivation
4.2. Ethnicity: pre-Colonial Era – Narratives of ‘Victor and Vanquished’
4.5.1. Revenge Full Circle
145 North-Korean-trained 5th Brigade, I think that’s where most of the Ndebele
realized that Mugabe is really serious about finishing us off.”399
“…they [Shona] were here and they meant to kill all the Ndebeles. Why they didn’t finish us, we don’t know…no one was supposed to be alive at the end of the day, they all were supposed to be killed. So stories like that, when people hear them or when a soldier comes to you who speaks Shona and tells you that ‘I’m here. I’ve been sent to kill you who’s Ndebele’. Obviously, you believe that, that’s where they are, they’ve come to kill you because you’re Ndebele primarily…”400
“…they came, meaning the ZANU-PF 5th Brigade, and said, ‘we are Shonas wanting to destroy the Ndebeles’. That language in itself was couched with such a violent ethos that the people themselves understood it to mean that the Ndebeles as a nation, were threatened, and they are going to be annihilated.”401
Viewed within the historic context of multiple, protracted trauma, ethnic hate-speech coupled with severe state-sanctioned violence, restricted movement through the use of curfews and the denial of food aid during an intense time of drought402, the gravitation by many Matabeleland civilians toward embracing a genocide ideation as the motivational explanation for the ZANU-PF-sponsored Operation Gukurahundi is not surprising.
However, of even more concern are the ripple effects of consequences flowing out of this
‘genocide’ ideology. In the rest of this section, the following four ramifications of the enactment of cyclical revenge, the production of the language of hate, the undermining of ethnic origins and the inter-generational transmission of ethnic antagonisms will be debriefed.
146 all’ when rumblings from the opposition in Matabeleland began to stir. With the onset of
‘dissident’ activity in Matabeleland, the Fifth Brigade hastened to solidify its position of power by flexing its muscles of military and structural rule over Matabeleland. This adoption of a forceful system of hierarchical ranking (ZANU-PF over ZAPU) easily translated into a role-reversal (Shona over Ndebele) of the historic (Ndebele over Shona)
‘victor and vanquished’ narrative of the pre-colonial past. By resurrecting the ancient narrative of Ndebele raids of the 1800s as justification for killings of thousands of Ndebele civilians in the 1980s (estimated at 20,000), the Fifth Brigade sealed the long- held Ndebele suspicion that the Shona have always held a grudge and were awaiting the opportune time to strike back in revenge. In the eyes of the ordinary Ndebele civilian this resuscitating of the age old ethnic animosities of Ndebele injustices by the Gukurahundi violence (regardless of its intended or actual motivation) effectively brought Shona vengeance full circle. The insinuation (both spoken and unspoken) is that the
Matabeleland massacres represent a revenge of ‘genocide’ proportions exercised by Shona malcontents who resent that historically they have been ruled both politically and militarily by the Ndebele.
4.5.2. Production of the Language of Hate
In order to eliminate the ‘dissidents’ and undercut the rural peasant support base for any dissident activity, the Fifth Brigade employed a language re-education
programme that forced Ndebele civilians to speak and sing in Shona or they would be punished or even killed. The Ndebele peasants were coerced to sing and dance to Shona songs and to declare their allegiance and praise of the ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe, while at the same time to denounce ZAPU and Joshua Nkomo in the Shona language.
“This imposition of the Shona language is designed to kill other minority languages and language is a vehicle of a people’s culture. It simply means Shona culture is…imposed on us.”403 The residue of language oppression and its social constructivist power is evident in the following interview transcriptions:
“We were saying this has been very, very successful in many ways; that the Ndebeles actually believe that Shonas are their enemy. They also believe that Shonas actually hate the Ndebeles. So, they actually believed it even though the majority of Shonas could be innocent. It has also been successful in that sense that
403Khumalo, P.Z. 2006:9.
147 it has created animosity between two tribal groups…Without any doubt. The language itself…Let me give you a general world view. If you are in
Matabeleland today and somebody shouts or speaks from the top of his voice, they will say, ‘why do you speak like a Shona?’ You see that in itself carries and it tells you what it is that they did.”404
“I’m not sure whether it will be fair for me to quote my friend…when he went out preaching in the rural areas of Matabeleland, when some people suddenly realized that he was Shona, they kind of switched off. Until he began to check what
exactly the problem was; they said ‘the people who killed our parents, our relatives, spoke the language you are speaking.’”405
“Before this economic problem we never had a lot of Shonas crossing the border illegally, it was mostly people from Matabeleland, because they couldn’t stand going to Harare and listening to Shona, the language that killed them. They’ll rather be eaten by a crocodile in the Limpopo [river border crossing into South Africa], than be reminded of the people that killed your father or mother. So that’s why I was saying we need the Shonas, you know, to understand and to believe and to respect our story.”406
“It was something that was unfortunately taught ‘at home’, you know, it was in the home whereby you where told not to play with Shona kids, you know, that almost ‘the people are killing us’ you know, ‘they want to wipe us out.’ So that unfortunately was the issue that how we were taught. It was tough – it was tough for you to survive. I mean people could…I mean I remember you could be beaten up for speaking Shona. Because I think what happened is; there’s lots of people who probably suffered a lot, who lost of their relatives, so what happens is – they hate the Shona. The Shona language maybe just evokes those memories, you know, they become emotional and just beat up a Shona-speaking person.”407
The efficiency of this social production of the ‘enemy’ through the perpetration of ethnic-hate speech combined with severe violence is quite clearly exemplified above. The first speaker notes that the tone of voice (in this case shouting) is culturally associated with the Shona. Although the ‘shouting’ was the dominant manner in which the 5th Brigade soldiers most likely would have interacted with the Ndebele civilian population,
404 Interview: RM2, Johannesburg, South Africa - 26/02/08 – (Shona NGO peace activist advocating for trauma healing and reconciliation among rural Matabeleland communities and survivors of Gukurahundi violence).
405 Interview: AN1, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe - 12/09/07 – (Ndebele Church Leader and Peace Activist).
406 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).
407 Interview: DL1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 11/08/06 – (Ndebele Journalist and business editor for a prominent newspaper).
148 it is now a trait (representing rudeness) equated with all Shona. The second and third speakers connect the hearing of the Shona language being spoken with the trauma of past violence. In one instance, the content of the Shona speaker (preacher) may have been harmless, even constructive, but for the traumatized rural peasant the actual sound of the language conjured up intrusive memories of pain. The fourth speaker builds the case for the socialization of hate starting with the language used within the family. In this situation because many Ndebele children were forbidden to speak the language of the
‘oppressor’ (Shona) and for that matter travel to Mashonaland, the language itself was cloaked in mystery and internalized as a foreboding evil linked with the horrific violence of the past. In this way language was twinned with hatred scarring the socio-cultural landscape of unity among the diverse ethnic groups living in Zimbabwe today.
“The most persistent charge against the brigade was that it dealt ruthlessly with people who could not speak Shona…this anti-Ndebele image of the Five Brigade took a firm grip of the imagination of the peasants.”408