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9 3 Zimbabwe’s Political Mine-Fields here are three regions that I would like to think constitute the political minefields of modern day Zimbabwe. In this piece, I am not trying to say all the other regions I don’t mention here were not important in shaping modern day Zimbabwe but I am looking at the most decisive regions, and their entire effects on shaping modern day Zimbabwe. Matebeleland has been the scene of the first concerted protest against Mugabe’s autocratic rule. After the elections in 1980, the two major parties which won the biggest chunk of the votes, ZANU and ZAPU, agreed to enter into a “loose” unity government. A couple of years later, Nkomo it was said, had to wear a women’s dress as he debunked out of the country to dupe the security establishment that was on his heels, after getting fired by Mugabe. Mugabe was accusing Nkomo and his party of hoarding a catch of military weapons found on a farm that belonged to ZAPU. After the furore surrounding the arms catch, found on this farm that belonged to ZAPU, in the Matebeleland regions, most of the ZAPU leaders, just after less than two years in this government, resigned. They also felt they had been given powerless ministries in this unity government, and also that the government was side-lining its regions. Who planted that arms catch is a question nobody has tried to answer. But I should think Nkomo must have created a comical figure, a big mamma’s figure in that dress. I can’t help asking was it a mini-dress, or skirt? He left for the UK where he stayed in exile. ZAPU left the unity government and became the political face of the struggle, of the Matebeleland regions’ protest and or war against Mugabe; or as others wants to put it, against the Shona ethnic group. Matebeleland regions witnessed the cleansing of over 20 000 of its people by the government, and displacements of millions of people. These people were killed by the secret security operatives and T 10 the disbanded Korean trained Fifth Brigade Army, commanded by Perence Shiri. Who later became the Air force boss and one of the “touted” military junta leaders? Villages were cleansed in a matter of a day, and some people were buried alive in mass graves in the Matebeleland region. In the book, Breaking the Silence, compiled by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Zimbabwe Legal Resources Foundation, there are a lot of recordings, of innocent people who were killed in cold blood, being accused of aiding the rebels. In one of the pieces in this book, a fully pregnant woman is beaten until unconsciousness and losses the baby that comes out as pieces, and her husband is killed. There were accused of aiding the rebels, which they said they were not doing. For the security operatives and the army to accuse these people of this, it meant someone must have thought that the Matebeleland people were backing these rebels, and why is the question? Matabeleland’s leaders and the rebels were waging a recalcitrant war against Mugabe’s alienation politics against the Ndebele people. I know it’s a contentious statement for there are those who believe, or who now believe, that the fight had been about the Shona versus the Ndebele tribal groups. The two regions (Matebeleland and Mashonaland) and these two ethnic groups (Ndebele and Shona) have always fought, going back to generations. Growing up, I remember hearing stories, passed down through the generations from our forefathers, of those fights; the pillaging of the Shona regions by the Ndebele people, way before the white settlers came; taking with them Shona women, food, domestic animals and all sorts of wealth. That, there was always tribal tension between these two tribal places, I have no doubt about that, but I would like to think it had mellowed over the years as the ethnic groups assimilated. To give weight to this argument, we have to look at both sides of a coin. If we say it was because of this tribal bile between these two peoples, it means it’s either the Ndebele people naturally are tribalistic, or that the Shona people are suppressive of other tribal groups. I don’t agree with this observation. In my adult life I have made a lot of friends from this region, and I have never felt they were tribalistic, neither...

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