Human rights organisation, Ibhetshu Likazulu, have accused the police in Silobela of stopping a planned community remembrance event for ten locals who disappeared during the Gukurahundi genocide of the 1980s, describing that move as state-sponsored “genocide denialism” and an “orchestrated programme to enforce community amnesia.”
This incident occurred on January 31, 2026, in Ward 23, KoJackson, where community members had organised a peaceful gathering to honour the “Disappeared Ten.”
The 10 who disappeared on 31 January 1985 were known as Enoch Mthelo Tshuma, Mbulawa Mnkandla, Simon Siginya Bhozho Dube, Lambert Ncube, Milton Ndlangamandla, Patrick Mthethwa, Dennis Mabhikwa, Mika Kefasi Ndebele, Clement Baleni and Velile Hlongwane.
These victims were husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, whose disappearance still remains a permanent wound to their families.
Ibhetshu Likazulu Secretary, General Mbuso Fuzwayo, told CITE that the concerned Silobela community and the families of the abducted had gathered to mark the day of the abduction and their disappearance.
The day was planned with a prayer session, laying of flowers and a community soccer match, which was, however, stopped by the police.
Fuzwayo condemned the police intervention, arguing that such community-led acts of remembrance should not require state sanction.
“The police claim the right to sanction all community events. The planned event, as usual, involved a prayer, laying flowers in memory of the disappeared, and a soccer match. These are activities communities do, like prayers and games, without seeking state authorisation,” he said.
The human rights activist framed the police action as part of a broader governmental campaign to suppress memory and shield perpetrators of Gukurahundi.
“It is therefore beyond doubt that the government of Zimbabwe is fighting the memory of the disappeared and other victims of the Gukurahundi genocide. It is forced forgetting and an attempt at erasing history,” Fuzwayo charged, as he contextualised the event within the painful history of the Gukurahundi genocide during the early 1980s.
Gukurahundi was marked by a brutal state crackdown primarily targeting the Ndebele ethnic group where an estimated 20 000 civilians were killed by state security forces, including the notorious Fifth Brigade.
Fuzwayo noted that despite the government’s “half-hearted” attempts to solve the matter, it was disheartening that the Midlands region has been systematically marginalised in official discussions.
“Midlands not only suffered some of the worst excesses of the occupying forces of five Brigade, CIO, People’s Militia, PISI, Zanu PF youths but it remains the undeniable proof that these massacres were planned and targeted at a specific linguistic and ethnic group,” he said.
Fuzwayo said the police’s intervention to stop the remembrance event was not legitimate law enforcement but political revisionism.
“Therefore, the seemingly law-enforcing charade by the police is nothing but an attempt at revisionism and genocide denialism. It seeks to sanitise the perpetrator and criminalise victims.”
Fuzwayo called on “all progressive forces to condemn in the strongest terms this injustice and abuse of the state machinery to further partisan interests, particularly by shielding alleged perpetrators of the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
Weighing on the matter, political analyst, Patrick Ndlovu said the incident in Silobela highlights the unresolved and deeply politicised legacy of Gukurahundi, which remains a “forbidden” topic in many public forums.
“It tells us there is ongoing tension between communities seeking to memorialise their dead and a state apparatus often accused of enforcing silence, raising critical questions about the right to memory, mourning and historical truth in Zimbabwe yet the government said it was willing to address the issue and people were free to talk about it,” he said.
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Quite painful,the purported outreach programs on Gukurahundi are simply half hearted window dressing efforts design to hoodwink the international community into believing that the genocide is being addressed.