The human rights group recently petitioned Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who later raised the issue of compensation in parliament. Zupac national chairperson Zwangendava Reason Sibanda said the group embarked on this initiative after realising that the country has a huge mineral resource base and government can afford to compensate each of the victims.
He said government must compensate victims of Gukurahundi and and also those of the 2008 politically motivated violence, in the same spirit that it rewarded war veterans for their role in the liberation struggle. He said victims of the 2005 clean-up campaign, termed operation Murambatsvina, must also be compensated.
“Although the money will not bring back our dead relatives or restore the hurt and pain that we suffered at the hands of elected leaders and government, each family or individual should be compensated as a starting point of mending our violated lives,” said Sibanda.
Sibanda said the petition to Tsvangirai was the second after the first one sent to President Robert Mugabe and his deputy Joice Mujuru in September last year was ignored by the presidency.
Efforts to get a comment from Tsvangirai’s spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka were unsuccessful yesterday. Zupac was formed in 1997 under the name Movement for Matabeleland Genocide (MMG). However, the organisation changed its name last year to Zupac after the realisation that the former name had tribalistic implications.
Zupac claims to have 4 712 000 members comprising victims of Gukurahundi, Operation Murambatsvina, communities displaced by diamond mining in Manicaland province and those affected by the 2008 politically-motivated violence.
