Gukurahundi

Common card · No. 200744

Gukurahundi, also known as the Matabeleland Massacres, was a series of mass killings and widespread atrocities, widely understood to constitute genocide, committed in Zimbabwe from early 1983 until the Unity Accord in December 1987. The campaign was carried out primarily by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) in the Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Midlands provinces. It targeted mainly Ndebele and Kalanga civilians, as well as perceived supporters of opposition leader Joshua Nkomo and his Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). The name Gukurahundi is a Shona term that loosely translates as "the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains". It was originally used by ZANU during the Rhodesian Bush War to describe an ideological strategy of taking the war into villages and homesteads. After independence the term became associated with the Fifth Brigade's operations. A broad consensus among scholars, local communities, and...

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