This in-depth report, originally written and published in 1997 by the Zimbabwean Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and the Legal Resources Foundation, remains an amazing testament to those who worked, with very little support and at great personal risk, to document the atrocities carried out by the ZANU-PF government against the people of Matabeleland and the Midlands in Zimbabwe. The legal nature of the document provides a thorough examination of the political context in which the killings of thousands of civilians, the beatings of entire villages, and the rape and torture of many innocent individuals were carried out as part of a planned strategy. The ‘Historical overview’ section (pp. 42–134) remains a comprehensive historical account of the Gukurahundi and should be required reading in African studies courses. Students would gain from it an appreciation of how to carefully build an evidence-based narrative with legal ramifications, and gain an understanding of the indisputable similarities between the implementation of the Gukurahundi and the deployment of political violence against civilians and domestic opposition since the early 1980s, including the ‘war’ against the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) and its supporters, particularly during the summer of 2008.

The Gukurahundi, which translates from chiShona as ‘the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains’, was a military campaign launched in January 1983 against the civilians of Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North, and Midlands provinces by Robert Mugabe and others in the ZANU-PF leadership. In addition to military leaders, the Report suggests it was Enos Nkala and Emmerson Mnangagwa, along with Mugabe, who were most responsible for the planning and implementation of the campaign. As the Report details, two sources of instability had prompted Mugabe to organize the 5th Brigade, a North-Korean-trained force estimated to include between 2,500 and 3,500 soldiers. The first was the presence of dissidents after independence. The Report describes how the growth of dissident numbers had increased after violence broke out between demobilized soldiers of Mugabe's ZANU and Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU at Entumbane, a suburb of Bulawayo in 1980. In addition, South Africa used former ZAPU soldiers to destabilize Zimbabwe in this period, creating a small group of ‘Super ZAPU’ dissidents, responsible for brutal attacks on civilians in an attempt to destabilize Zimbabwe and hamper its use by the ANC and PAC. The kidnapping and killing of six foreign tourists in July 1982 became the catalyst to justify ZANU-PF's unleashing of the 5th Brigade on the civilian population in predominantly Ndebele areas. When the 5th Brigade received their marching orders in January 1983, Mugabe handed them a flag emblazoned with the term ‘Gukurahundi’. He thanked the North Koreans for creating such a disciplined force, and then sent off the soldiers, encouraging them to ‘plough and reconstruct’. Immediately after their deployment, the nature of their training became clear: they were not going to ‘search and destroy’ the estimated 200–400 dissidents active at the time – something the Report points out could have been done by the large number of regular troops already deployed in the area – instead, the 5th Brigade began to terrorize the civilian populations in Matabeleland. Mugabe's call to ‘plough and reconstruct’ soon became a metaphor to describe the attempt to rid Zimbabwe of the opposition ZAPU party's political base, which had its strongest support in the predominantly Ndebele areas of the country.

The Report documents the techniques employed. Entire villages, or ‘lines’ of villagers, were forced by gunpoint to a central location, where women, men and children were then beaten with various instruments of torture. Villagers were forced to dig a deep hole while singing pro-ZANU songs. A group of villagers were then ordered into the grave, and were executed. Other villagers were then forced to cover the grave and dance on it, while singing ZANU songs. These were not isolated incidents. Based on over 1,000 personal testimonies, the Report demonstrates how this process took place over and over again. Case studies from the Nyamandlovu and the Matobo districts drive home the point that these were systematic and planned attacks. The Report argues that protests from Joshua Nkomo, others in ZAPU, and the CCJP itself fell on deaf ears back in Harare. Media blackouts, government denials and the creation of bogus commissions of inquiry were tactics used to cover up the scope and scale of the killings, beatings and torture. The Report's cataloguing of torture techniques by the Zimbabwean Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) shows the extreme forms of violence used by the state. The abduction and disappearance of ZAPU organizers became commonplace. Another tactic was to starve out populations. The closing of rural shops and ending the distribution of food aid during droughts augmented curfews. People risked their lives to get to urban areas, or were reduced to surviving through foraging and other strategies. In 1985, the violence recurred before and after Zimbabwe's second general election, and by 1988, with ZAPU no longer a political threat, the perpetrators of the Gukurahundi were given a blanket amnesty.

The introduction to this 2007 edition, written by Elinor Sisulu, draws the comparison of these tactics to those used during the current assault on the opposition in Zimbabwe. Sisulu, now a leader in the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, reflects on the early 1980s when many in Harare were complacent and ‘too enamoured of our great liberation hero’ (p. xv) to believe that such atrocities were being carried out. She recalls the hushed tones of her relatives and others in the Bulawayo area at the time and people's fear of openly discussing what was happening. Since then, there have been much more open calls for justice for the victims and their families who suffered and lost during the Gukurahundi, and these calls have recently entered the political discourse of the opposition, with Morgan Tsvangarai in his 2008 campaign calling for a ‘truth telling’ commission to help address the open sores of the Gukurahundi.

During the summer of 2008, Mugabe's ZANU-PF leadership and its supporters have shown that they recall very clearly the effective impact the 5th Brigade had in silencing opposition. When the traditional ZANU-PF strongholds in rural Shona districts failed to vote for ZANU-PF, and the MDC made significant electoral gains in the March 2008 parliamentary and presidential elections, the tactics of collective beatings, killings, rapes and disappearances resurfaced to ‘prepare’ for the presidential run-off election at the end of June 2008. While the violence was not on the same scale of the Gukurahundi, these tactics show continuity in the callous strategies used by the ZANU-PF to remain in power, and add to the evidence of the potential for further violence in Zimbabwe. The decision to republish the Report in 2007, and to present it in such a clear and professional edition, will certainly help to call attention to the historical similarities with more recent deployments of political violence, as well as to raise the hope that some form of justice will come to those who lost and suffered so much in the 1980s. This Report is a very significant document in Zimbabwean history and should also be examined and taught by those working in other areas of African history.