President Emmerson Mnangagwa has promised to provide Gukurahundi victims with national identity documents which has resulted in systematic marginalization of the people within the region.
Mnangagwa is highly regarded as one of the kingpins who allegedly masterminded the torture and brutal killing of Matebele people soon after independence. over the years, he has faced numerous calls for him to apologize to the people but has not heeded, which has made more unpopular in the region.
In his weekly column in the Sunday Mail, Mnangagwa said the vitcims, who have been sidelined for long due to them not having national identity dicuments, were right to yearn for more as they are being left out in key economic activities.
“In my interaction with many rural communities, especially in those areas affected by disturbances which visited us in the early years of our Independence, it became very clear to me that many of our citizens did not have birth certificates, or identity cards, let alone passports.
“Those affected felt they lived on the margins of citizenship, and rightly so. For families in communities affected by the early disturbances, this amounted to a healing delay, indeed a painful reminder of the trauma they had endured and lived through, a pain which continued to manifest through their failure to access these key national documents,” Mnangagwa said.
He said the people in the region are subjected to onerous and rigid registration requirements the authorities demanded in issuing these vital documents , which has created an unhappy state of affiards.
“The other reasons related to costs which both a centralised and city-centred service imposed on those who needed the service the most, yet afforded the costs of getting it the least.
“We resolved the matter through a series of decisions which, among other measures, simplified requirements for issuance of documents; measures which brought the service closer to communities through mobile registration and issuance units, and through decentralisation and making the registration process free’ Mnangagwa added.
