MAGGEMM 2000 

MTHWAKAZI ACTION GROUP ON GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING IN 
MATEBELELAND AND MIDLANDS 2000 

P.O. BOX 22141 
LONDON SE18 6WP Email: maggemm@aol.com 
UNITED KINGDOM Website: http://member.aol.com/maggemm 



 
IMBIZO SERIES: 7 17 SEPTEMBER, 1999 

 

ETHNIC CLEANSING AGAINST THE 

NDEBELE PEOPLE OF 

MATEBELELAND AND MIDLANDS 1980-1999 

 

1. According to the United Nations Ethnic Cleansing report, ethnic cleansing is defined as 
"rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a 
given area persons from another ethnic or religious group". Therefore, alongside the genocide 
committed against the Ndebele people, Robert Gabriel Mugabe's regime has simultaneously been 
implementing a complete programme of ethnic cleansing aimed at ensuring Shona hegemony in 
areas of education, employment, economic development, culture and various others. These areas 
of great concern are addressed in turn. 

2. With regard to education, the regime of Robert Gabriel Mugabe has for the last 18 years been 
systematically implementing an exclusive education policy aimed at benefitting the Shona 
people, at the expense of the Ndebele people. This strategy has been effected along the following 
lines: 
a) promoting only the Shona teachers to positions of General Certificate of Education (GCE) 
Examiners at both Ordinary and Advanced levels, who then fail Ndebele pupils and students, 
b) forcing higher institutions of learning such as Teacher Training Colleges, Polytechnics and 
Universities to adopt an admissions policy based on a list system of names of students supplied 
by the ZANU-PF Party of Robert Gabriel Mugabe; such students can only be Shona, c) posting 
Shona-speaking teachers to teach pupils who do not understand Shona in primary schools 
throughout the whole of Matebeleland and Midlands, and 
d) providing educational scholarships both within the country and abroad to only Shona 
people. 

3. Similarly, employment policies have been designed and implemented to maximum 
exclusionary effect during the last 18 years. The exclusionary mechanism is implemented as 
follows: 
a) promoting only the Shona-speaking people to managerial positions in factories, banks, Post 
Offices and any other fixed capital investment and production units throughout Matebeleland 
and Midlands regions, 
b) allocating key administrative positions in all Government Departments, even those dealing 


with the registration of births and deaths, or tea jobs, to Shona people within the Matebeleland 
and Midlands regions. 
c) denying Ndebele people employment opportunities in hotels, bars, restaurants, bakeries, 
and wherever possible, by importing labour from Mashonaland and Midlands, even for menial 
such jobs as street cleaning, security and delivery of postal mail, 
d) allocating powerful and key managerial positions toShona people in the civil service, such 
positions as permanent secretaries and under secretaries who are charged with the formulation 
and implementation of government policy, in all the various ministries and government 
departments, 
e) allocating and posting of Shona people to various ambassadorial and diplomatic posts in 
foreign missions regionally and abroad (so-called Zimbabwe's embassies/high commissions) 
throughout the world, 
f) allocation and promotion of only the Shona people to key jobs within the three state 
security institutions: the army, police, and intelligence services; only the Shona command 
positions of power in these key structures, and 
g) allocation of key posts or jobs in the aviation industry to Shona people (only the Shona can 
become pilots and fly Air Zimbabwe), 

4. In the Health Service the situation has reached catastrophic proportions. There is compelling 
evidence which suggests that the health service is used as yet another mechanism by Robert 
Gabriel Mugabe's regime and ZANU-PF for annihilating the Ndebele people. Hospitals in 
Matebeleland and Midlands have become death traps and abattoirs for hundreds of thousands of 
Ndebele people. Those admitted (even for very minor illnesses) in these hospitals usually do not 
survive beyond a few hours, the maximum survival time period is usually two days. 

5. In all the various hospitals in Matebeleland and Midlands, there are no mechanisms of 
establishing the cause of death for thousands of suspicious deaths, let alone any deaths. It has 
become an astonishing norm for thousands of these deaths to be simply recorded as having been 
caused by AIDS/HIV. As a result of these deaths, the mortuaries within these hospitals can no 
longer cope, hence thousands of the dead are usually buried the following day after their deaths. 
The effect of this has been that bereaved families, relatives and friends, no longer have any 
opportunity of paying their last respects to the dead, since by the time they receive news about 
these deaths, the dead would have already been buried. The saying that the Ndebele people dare 
not fall ill these days, has added to the psychological genocide on the people of Matebeleland 
and Midlands. It is no longer the fear of only the Fifth Brigade, but that of the Butchering 
Hospital Brigades which is gripping the Ndebele nation. Every Ndebele person in Matebeleland 
and Midlands knows that being admitted to hospital for any kind of illness is a sure death 
sentence. 
6. Significantly, economic development during the last 18 years in Zimbabwe has been skewed 
in favour of Mashonaland and Manicaland regions at the expense of Matebeleland and Midlands 
regions. Undoubtedly, there is irrefutable evidence that whilst economic development has been 
accelerating in Mashonaland and Manicaland regions, it has been in continuous decline in 
Matebeleland and Midlands areas. The process of de-industrialising Bulawayo in Matebeleland, 
whilst promoting the industrialisation of Mutare and Maswingo in Manicaland and Mashonaland 
has been in effect since Zimbabwe gained independence. A large number of Bulawayo based 


companies and firms (with a long history in the city) have since been compelled for their own 
survival to relocate to those regions, including Harare. Only a minor services sector industry 
such as banking is visible in Bulawayo. 

7. Access to loans from the banking industry has benefitted only the Shona people, and thus 
enabled them to operate small scale business concerns throughout the whole of Matebeleland and 
Midlands. The desire to control every economic activity is also evident in the transport industry. 
Only the Shona people have access to loans from banks that enables them to operate commuter 
buses within Bulawayo, as well as linking all the rural areas and other cities in Zimbabwe with 
Bulawayo. 

8. Ndebele people have also been denied access to land in their indigenous Matebeleland and 
Midlands regions. In addition, the land resettlement programme (within these regions) initiated 
by Mugabe's regime during the past few years has also benefitted only the Shona people. 
Similarly the much talked about land grabbing of white farms by Mugabe's regime within the 
Matebeleland and Midlands regions will benefit the Shona people. 

9. The plans of the Ministry of Local Government and National Housing of resettling 4 million 
Shona people in Matebeleland and Midlands have recently been uncovered. A system of 
commercialisation of all the land within these regions has also been introduced through a 
mechanism of compelling all the villagers to buy stands (pieces of land) on which their homes 
are constructed or built. There is evidence on the ground already that Shona-speaking people 
have begun settling and building homes in Matebeleland and Midlands in large numbers. Other 
evidence includes the acquisition of property (farms and retail business outlets) throughout these 
regions. This evidence points only to a single outcome: the alteration of the composition of the 
indigenous populations of these regions, and as such represents overwhelming and compelling 
evidence of ethnic cleansing. 
10. Fundamentally, it is the promotion and export of the Shona language (with its object of 
destroying indigenous local languages) in all areas of Matebeleland and Midlands which 
provides further irrefutable evidence of a grand strategy of ethnic cleansing of the Ndebele 
people by Robert Gabriel Mugabe's ZANU-PF regime. This grand strategy, as has already been 
shown above, has been effected through a mechanism of importing and deploying Shona 
personnel in all the key private sector jobs, as well as in government departments, so as to 
administer all the peoples of Matebeleland and Midlands. 

11. This grand strategy of ethnic cleansing by Mugabe's ZANU-PF regime, has had the 
following effects on the life chances, well being and employment opportunities of the Ndebele 
people: 
a) several thousands of Ndebeles have been forced to flee Zimbabwe and seek refuge in 
neighbouring countries (such as Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Namibia), and to a number of 
Western countries (such as the UK, USA, Canada, Netherlands, and Australia), 
b) thousands more of Ndebele people have become enforced semi-slaves of the Shona in 
various business activities within the Matebeleland and Midlands regions, and c) hundreds of 
thousands more have been forced to seek employment and other survival strategies outside 
Zimbabwe: particularly in South Africa. Thousands of Ndebele people from the different areas 


of Matebeleland and Midlands regions have been killed by crocodiles while crossing the 
Limpompo river to seek employment in South Africa; still many more are arrested by South 
African authorities for illegal entry and deported back into Zimbabwe after spending several 
months in prison, 


12. For the ZANU-PF regime of Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the Zimbabwean question has always 
been to create a mono-linguistic state (their own Shona village) using whatever available means 
at their disposal. This obsession by ZANU-PF of creating a mono-linguistic Shona village within 
the imposed colonial unitary boundaries of Zimbabwe has also included a programme (in 
addition to inflicting genocide and ethnic cleansing) of outbreeding the Ndebele people through 
the natural biological reproduction mechanism. Under this outbreeding programme, the Shona 
males were fuelled to impregnate Ndebele women specifically in order to render their historic 
indigenous areas mono-linguistic or Shona speaking. This outbreeding programme represents a 
callous and contemptible deliberate strategy of rendering to extinction a particular group of the 
human species through the sexual destruction of their genes. It is also designed to upset the 
historic normal loving interrelationships and marriages between the Ndebele people and Shona 
people. 

13. It was only after Mugabe came into power that their grand strategy of rendering the whole of 
Zimbabwe ethnically homogenous and mono-linguistic, including this programme of 
outbreeding Ndebele people through (contemptible) natural biological processes came into force. 
The late Herbert Ushewokunze (former transport minister) will always be remembered within the 
Ndebele sections of the population for his public callous remarks in which he urged on the Shona 
males to contemptuously impregnate Ndebele women who would reproduce and multiply 
offspring with Shona blood. 

14. Unfortunately, not only has this outbreeding programme resulted in thousands of failed 
marriages and relationships, including "date rapes", but also to hundreds of thousands of 
illegitimate children whose fathers' whereabouts are not known. The deliberate exclusion of the 
Ndebele males from virtually all meaningful economic activity from which they could derive a 
livelihood, including wealth has exacerbated the plight of Ndebele women. These women have 
been forced for their own survival to enter into such relationships in which they have been 
transformed into semi-compliant "sex slaves". There seems to be no end in sight of the sexual 
genocide and cleansing abuse of these Ndebele women, given that Mugabe's ZANU-PF regime 
has exported hundreds of thousands of Shona males into all the areas of Matebeleland and 
Midlands to occupy virtually all socio-economic, political and cultural positions at the expense 
of Ndebele males. 

14. The list of grievances is so strong that in other countries it would have long led to calls for 
some form of federalism or complete secession. It has become intolerable (more than a human 
rights issue) since it entails the survival of a people in areas of, the survivability of genes, 
education, economic and business activity, language and culture. 

 BAYETHE CAMPAIGN 2000 FOR THE RECLAIMING OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS TO LIFE, IDENTITY & 

 EXISTENCE OF THE NDEBELE PEOPLE, RELINQUISHED BY ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE'S ZANU PF 

 REGIME FROM 1980 TO 1999