Remains of Zimbabwe atrocity victim exhumed

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Remains of Zimbabwe atrocity victim exhumed

6:12 CAT | 30 Apr 2019

The remains of a 21-year-old villager who was killed during what became known as the Gukurahundi atrocities in Zimbabwe have been exhumed, following the peace and reconciliation initiative launched by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the state-owned Herald newspaper reports.

Thembi Ngwenya was shot dead in 1983 and buried near a railway line in Matabeleland North Province, during a brutal crackdown on the opposition just a few years after independence in 1980.

Her remains were finally exhumed on Sunday by a non-governmental organisation, the Ukuthula Trust, in the presence of members of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission, a statutory body.

“We were invited by Ukuthula Trust to witness the exhumation exercise… [The] remains of one person were exhumed and they’re set for reburial,” commission chairman Sello Nare told The Herald.

“President Mnangagwa said people should talk freely about Gukurahundi. This will help us move on as a nation,” he added.

Mr Mnangagwa was Zimbabwe’s spymaster at the time of the Gukurahundi atrocities, when the North Korean-trained Fifth army brigade killed thousands of civilians as it dealt with an alleged insurgency in the south of the country.

Mr Mnangagwa took power in Zimbabwe after the forced resignation of long-serving ruler Robert Mugabe in 2017.

Source: BBC