Statement on the Gukurahundi Massacres and the Failing “Peace Process” in Zimbabwe

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention & Human Security is deeply concerned about the Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Programme, launched in July 2024 by Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa, a guerrilla fighter in Zimbabwe’s independence struggle, was also Minister of State for National Security during the Gukurahuni genocide (1983-1987), when he was in charge of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), which is responsible for the killing of an estimated 20,000 Ndebele people. Critics of the Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Program have noted that it lacks a legal foundation, a victim-centered structure, and authentic community involvement. Given that no perpetrators of the Gukurahundi genocide have ever been held accountable, the Lemkin Institute rejects the idea that a genuine peace process is underway. We urge Zimbabwean authorities to engage with Zimbabwean civil society as well as international and regional states, organizations, and mechanisms that are devoted specifically to restorative justice proceedings after mass atrocity. There can be no healing without justice; politicized efforts that attempt to paper over the past are more often a continuation of genocidal violence by other means than genuine attempts at reconciliation.

“I was barely five years old when the soldiers came to our village [...] I remember the sound of gunfire and the sight of women running with babies strapped to their backs, crying, “They’re killing the children!”
- Survivor testimony shared with the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention -


These words from a Kalanga survivor capture the terror that swept through Matabeleland and Midlands during the Gukurahundi massacres, carried out by the Zimbabwean state between 1983 and 1987. This genocidal campaign, implemented by the elite North Korea-trained “Fifth Brigade” of the national army under the direct control of then-Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, left 20,000 Ndebele people dead and subjected thousands to systematic torture, rape, public executions, and forced displacement. Despite recurring claims that casualty figures are incorrect and inflated, independent investigations, including those by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, which drew on over 2,000 interviews, forensic observations, and eyewitness accounts to identify approximately 20,000 deaths as a conservative estimate, and later scholarship by J.Alexander and N.Kriger, consistently substantiate the scale of the killings.

In the 1980s, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) sought to eliminate the perceived opposition from the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and its supporters, who were largely Ndebele- and Kalanga-speaking communities in Matabeleland and the Midlands. Under the pretext of suppressing dissidents and insurgents, the massacres were presented as a necessary part of legitimate military operations. Contrary to claims that the atrocities were isolated excesses by undisciplined soldiers, abundant evidence indicates central planning and direct oversight by the state. As pointed out by Kriger, the operations of the Fifth Brigade followed consistent geographical and ethnic patterns, systematically targeting civilian populations in regions identified with ZAPU support rather than active insurgent zones, demonstrating that the massacres were a coordinated campaign rather than spontaneous acts of violence.

In August 1984, then-Prime Minister Mugabe proclaimed that it was “time to declare ZAPU an enemy of the people and to show them that ZANU-PF can bite.” Employing more starkly genocidal language, Enos Nkala, then-Minister of Home Affairs and Defense, warned that the people of Matabeleland would be “crushed like lice,” while then-Minister of State Security Emmerson Mnangagawa affirmed that the “Gukurahundi storm” would “leave nothing but the bones of sell-outs”.

This dehumanization of the Ndebele is a clear case of genocidal rhetoric, propagated to portray civilians as legitimate targets and justify their destruction as a political necessity – a pattern that closely parallels the exterminatory language that international tribunals have repeatedly treated as evidence of genocidal intent.

In December 1987, the signing of the Zimbabwean Unity Accord officially ended the Gukurahundi massacres. While putting a halt to the mass killings of the Ndebele, the Accord failed to recognize the violence they had suffered and offered no path towards justice and reconciliation. Instead of confronting the crimes or offering redress to the victims, the state opted for a blanket amnesty that effectively shielded all perpetrators from accountability and are antithetical to transitional justice norms because they foreclose truth and hinder reconciliation.

Until today, no apology has been issued for the atrocities of Gukurahundi, and the Ndebele and Kalanga communities continue to bear the consequences. Survivors and their descendants face persistent economic, educational, cultural, political, and linguistic discrimination, compounded by unfair land redistribution that treats them as second-class citizens. Many lost their livelihoods during the massacres, including businesses, schools, clinics, and places of worship. The effects of these losses are still felt across generations. Research by J. Alexander and S.J.Ndlocu Gatsheni documents this ongoing marginalisation of survivors and situates these inequities within a broader project of ethnonational homogenisation under ZANU-PF, underscoring the need for structural reform and reparative justice.

“To this day, many of us must change our names to pass job interviews. We must downplay our accents, hide our surnames, and endure "minority jokes" in Parliament and cabinet meetings. When a Venda child in Beitbridge cannot write exams in their language, when Kalanga isn’t even an option on a government form, when Ndebele-speaking soldiers are overlooked for promotion in the military - then reconciliation is a hollow word.”
- Survivor testimony shared with the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention -


In today’s Zimbabwe, victims are still denied justice, and the ongoing human rights abuses continue unabated. Even as they try to gather and speak out against injustice, Matabeleland communities encounter constant interference, censorship, and intimidation. Media coverage of their activities is systematically blocked, and the police repeatedly deny attempts to hold public meetings or press conferences. In September 2025, the Zimbabwean government once again, for the second time within the course of a month, halted a public meeting organized jointly by various political parties and civil society to discuss the Gukurahundi killings. Such systematic silencing of survivors not only perpetuates the marginalization of affected communities but also actively shields perpetrators from accountability, leaving the scars of genocide unacknowledged and unhealed.

As victims are denied the space to speak and organize, the government introduced its own Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Programme in July 2024. President Mnangagwa launched the initiative after multiple delays caused by an alleged lack of resources, presenting it as a forum for reconciliation and closure.

It is hard to imagine, however, that a Programme launched by one of the very perpetrators of the genocide would ever provide a meaningful forum for survivors to seek truth or justice. Rejecting the governmental initiative, Dzikamai Bere, National Director of ZimRights, Zimbabwe’s largest grassroots movement for human rights, called the process “a whitewash over the atrocities” and criticized that it lacked any “authentic participation of the victims.” In fact, since the initiation of the Programme, three activists have been displaced from Matabeleland for voicing their criticism, demonstrating the government’s stance towards any real and meaningful confrontation with affected communities.

The Gukurahundi Programme blatantly violates the Guiding Principles for Transitional Justice Policy and Practice adopted by Zimbabwean civil society in 2015. According to these Principles, any transitional justice mechanism must include genuine victim participation, be independent from partisan or governmental control, be characterized by transparency, and offer victims reparative measures. The government-led programme, which has been referred to as a “backyard show for the Ministry of Justice”, lacks all these essential pillars.

Instead, it is controlled by the very structures and figures responsible for the original atrocities and silences genuine victim participation. It offers no real accountability, reparations, or transparency, reducing truth-seeking to a state-managed exercise in narrative control. For these reasons, the initiative has been widely rejected by the survivors it is meant to serve:

And now they tell us to accept private Gukurahundi hearings led by the very architects of our suffering? I reject this insult to memory, to justice, and to the future of this country.
- Survivor testimony shared with the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention -

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention calls for a comprehensive and meaningful justice process for the people of Matabeleland. We wish to amplify the suggestions made by Heal Zimbabwe Trust that the process be independent, victim-centred, locally empowered, and include access to witness protection and other resources that are necessary for a safe and effective restorative justice process.

Those who planned and carried out the Gukurahundi massacres — including President Mnangagwa — must be held accountable through an independent and impartial tribunal. A restorative dialogue between the state and affected communities must take place, and reparations must be provided to address the deep material and psychological wounds inflicted over decades.

However, perpetrators cannot be expected to hold themselves accountable. Given the entrenched political realities in Zimbabwe, it is unlikely that those responsible for the Gukurahundi atrocities will face justice within the current domestic framework. For this reason, the Lemkin Institute calls for an independent international investigation into the Gukurahundi massacre and the establishment of an ad hoc tribunal under regional and international auspices.

The Lemkin Institute urges the Government of Zimbabwe to demonstrate a genuine commitment to international justice by signing and ratifying the Rome Statute and, until then, by accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction over the Gukurahundi massacres.

As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Zimbabwe bears an ongoing obligation to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, regardless of time, place, and perpetrator status.

The path toward collective healing and genuine transitional justice cannot proceed while state-sanctioned genocide continues to be denied. Publicly recognizing the Gukurahundi massacres as genocide and offering a genuine apology is the first step toward accountability, restoration, and reconciliation. Only through an honest reckoning with historical and ongoing injustices, a commitment to truth-seeking, and material as well as non-material compensation can the people of Matabeleland begin to heal. To ignore this is to let the cycles of violence, marginalization, and impunity persist, allowing both colonial legacies and the genocide of Gukurahundi to continue haunting the present.

Reparations must be paid. Memorials must be erected. The stories of our grandmothers and uncles must be in schoolbooks, not just whispered in dark corners. Our languages must be respected. Our stolen assets must be returned.
- Survivor testimony shared with the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention -