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————— Angles of Telling and Angles on Reality THAMSANQA MOYO, FAITH SIBANDA, AND MICHAEL MAZURU ————— º Angles of Telling and Angles on Reality Representations of the Gukurahundi Period in Selected Zimbabwean Fiction in Shona, Ndebele, and English A BSTRACT The perception of the Gukurahundi period (the Matabeleland disturbances in the years 1981–87) depends largely on the way the social and ideological forces were aligned during this period. This essay therefore argues that the fictional representations of this particular period are vexed and varied because of the concatenation of the political, ideo- logical, ethnic, and social realities of various writers. It also posits that some of the per- ceptions that informed the ideological inclinations of the period arguably had some residual effect on the contemporary political scene in Zimbabwe. The contention is that the events of the 1980s seemingly continue to have a lasting impact on the socio-political and economic spheres of the nation. Recent developments during elections since 2000 prove that the hegemonic imperatives in ZANU PF were prepondent in the execution of the 1981–87 Gukurahundi, thus tending to retard national development, healing, and cohesion. Introduction HE POST-INDEPENDENCE HISTORY OF ZIMBABWE has its own dark spots and moments of madness, including (as expressed by T Mugabe in 1999) the Gukurahundi period. The Gukurahundi period refers to the era in the chequered history of Zimbabwe when the government dominated by the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front – ZANU [PF]) unleashed its soldiers onto the people of Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands ostensibly in search of dissidents. This was the period be- tween 1981 and 1987 when PF ZAPU was sjamboked, bayoneted, and machine-gunned into an unbalanced Unity Accord. The Shona term ‘Gukura- African Cultures and Literatures: A Miscellany, ed. Gordon Collier (Matatu 41; Amsterdam & New York NY: Rodopi, 2012). 36 THAMSANQA MOYO, FAITH SIBANDA, & MICHAEL MAZURU a hundi’ refers to ‘the spring storms washing away the chaff’.1 By all accounts, it was a dangerous storm, probably inordinately so, given that it pounded and washed away over 20,000 civilians in Matabeleland and Midlands who, according to Ranger et al., were being analogized to ‘chaff ‘.2 These civilians were killed in the search for a few hundred dissidents.3 According to Makum- be and Campagnon, Gukurahundi was the code name given by Mugabe himself for the savage repression conducted in the early 1980s by Zimbabwe National Army’s North 4 Korean trained, and Shona recruited Fife-Brigade against alleged dissidents. What manifestly comes out is the fact that the definition of ‘dissident’ itself is contested, as shown by the quotation. The questions that are prompted by the word are many and varied. Did it refer to the armed man who, for various reasons, took to the bush, or to the civilians who happened to speak the same language as that spoken by the armed men and were therefore seen as collaborators? Was the existence of these armed men an excuse by the establishment eager to set up a one-party state, which proceeded to whip existent opposition into line? After all, the history of intolerance of dissent on the part of ZANU PF is a well-docu- mented fact. In 1997, within the party itself, its leader gleefully stated that “the ZANU axe must continue to fell upon the necks of rebels when we find it no longer possible to persuade them into the harmony that binds us all.”5 That he could eliminate members of Vashandi and ZIPA within his own party is testimony to what he could do to those who belonged to a party that he broke away from. This was the legendary and lethal axe falling on the people of Matabeleland and the Midlands for belonging to ZAPU. Could these armed people not have been the creation of state agents bent on achiev- 1 Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics, ed. Roger Southall & Henning Melber (Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute & Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2006): 126. 2 Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn MacGregor & Terence Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the Dark Forest of Matebeleland (Harare: Weaver, 2000): 198. 3 Legacies of Power, ed. Southall & Melber, 126. 4 John Makumbe & Daniel Campagnon, Behind the Smokescreen: The Politics of Zimbabwe’s 1995 General Elections (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2000): 165. 5 Robert G. Mugabe (1997), in Legacies of Power, ed. Southall & Melber, 126. .
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