AG Mabhiza to sensitise journalists on issues relating to Gukurahundi

BULAWAYO- GOVERNMENT will host a sensitisation conference in Bulawayo on January 28 with local media editors and senior journalists on programmes it has set in motion to address the Gukurahundi massacre which has been a subject of debate since the 1980s.

The meeting will be held at a Bulawayo hotel and is being organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.

This was revealed n a statement issued by Attorney General Virginia Mabhiza.

She wrote:

“Please be advised that the Gukurahundi steering committee is scheduled to convene a Media Sensitisation Meeting with editors from media houses in Zimbabwe.

“The purpose of the meeting is to sensitise the media sector on issues relating to Gukurahundi.”

The Second Republic has made the Gukurahundi issue an open discussion and the government has held meetings with traditional leaders in Matabeleland region to gauge their views and also train them on how to conduct public hearings on the matter.

The Gukurahundi massacres were between 1983 to 1987, during which government forces allegedly killed about 20,000 people in predominantly ethnic Ndebele areas.

During the Gukurahundi massacres, special forces from the Fifth Brigade are said to have killed more than 20,000 people in predominantly ethnic Ndebele areas of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces, and forcibly displaced tens of thousands more.

The massacres concluded a decade and a half of factional fighting between Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and its armed wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), and the late Joshua Nkomo’s opposition Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and its Zimbabwean People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), whom ZANU officials accused of supporting dissidents in the country.