I Am Unable To Pardon Mugabe’s Army – Victim Of A Massacre

Thabani Dhlamini’s house is surrounded by an astonishing amount of mass graves in southwest Zimbabwe.

One that was shown is located next to the restroom at a primary school in the Salankomo village of the Tsholotsho area. In the 1980s, teachers were murdered and disposed of there.

A short distance from Mr. Dhlamini’s residence, 22 family members and neighbors are laid to rest in two separate graves; they were all murdered by the Zimbabwean military, which was commanded at the time by Robert Mugabe.

Even though Mr. Dhlamini was only ten years old at the time, the soft-spoken, modestly built farmer is still troubled by the recollections.

Between 1983 and 1987, when Mugabe unleashed the North Korean-trained Five Brigade on the strongholds of his arch-rival Joshua Nkomo, they were all the victims of ethnic massacres.

Some refer to what happened thereafter as a genocide. The exact number of fatalities is unknown, while some estimates place it around 20,000.

More than 20 years after his passing, Nkomo, a seasoned independence warrior from the southwest province of Matabeleland, is still warmly referred to as “Father Zimbabwe.”