Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda Wednesday called for the closure of the gukurahundi chapter to allow the nation to peacefully plan for the 2023 elections.
Mudenda made the remarks to the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) Commissioners during their induction on the role and functions of Parliament. He took them to task and urged them to engage the Chiefs Council.
He informed the commissioners to contact Chief’s Council president, Fortune Charumbira, who, in 2021, was assigned by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to lead the dialogue.
“Parliament is desirous to see how the NPRC leverages its constitutional mandate vis-à-vis the salutary efforts by the Council of Chiefs, as guided by His Excellency, the President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, in bringing closure to the Gukurahundi unfortunate historical antecedent before 2023 harmonised elections,” Mudenda said.
Mudenda urged the NPRC to promptly work on complaints received from the public, take appropriate action or secure appropriate redress without delay, and establish special reports on cases reported than wait for the annual report.
“The mandate of the NPRC to receive and investigate complaints is also underscored in the Act, wherein NPRC “shall, in regulations, prescribe the general manner in which complaints to it should be made, including the particulars required to be completed in a form specified by the Commission in those regulations”. This is and must be the clarion call to national duty by the NPRC. Dare you not fail in this apostolic calling,” he noted.
Mudenda has in the past called for perpetrators of the genocide to publicly apologize for their wrongdoing to allow the country to move forward.
He said there is a need for truth-telling so that there can be cultural expatiation ceremonies, especially in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces where the Gukurahundi massacres occurred.
More than 20 000 civilians in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces were, in the 1980s, massacred as former president, Robert Mugabe, unleashed violence on ZAPU supporters.
