Human Rights
The war may have happened thirty years ago, but the scars have yet to heal.
Mass graves containing thousands of bodies suspected to have been killed during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle in the 1960s and 1970s have been discovered at a mine in Gwanda, capital of the province of Matabeleland South.
Mines and Mining Development Minister Obert Mpofu told journalists here Tuesday the bodies were discovered at Blanket Mine.
“I was in a meeting with an official from Blanket Mine who informed me that areas they are mining have mass graves. They found the graves beneath six to 10 feet when they were blasting in a shaft.”
Mpofu said the bodies were believed to be of people massacred by Rhodesian forces during the liberation struggle.
“These bodies should have been as a result of massacres of the 1960′s,” he said.
He said exhumation of the bodies had begun.
As I watched last night’s extensive coverage about the mass grave on ZBC-TV I recalled an argument I had once with a war vet when in frustration he shouted:
“Where was your ‘human rights’ when they were bombing us at Chimoio?”
Honestly, I don’t know, and, I suspect, neither does the Organ on National Healing and Reconciliation. Maybe we never had them to begin with.