Popular Matabeleland North Chief Dakamela (born Mbusi Bekithemba) Dakamela
of Nkayi attended Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo with his party, engaging with exhibitors and visitors to foster community interaction, understanding and explore economic opportunities.
He toured key stands, including the Ministry of Local Government, Public Service Commission, and University of Zimbabwe, to learn about their programmes and to showcase his role in advancing culture, nation-building and
development.
It was an honour meeting @duma_boko this afternoon when he presented @CityofBulawayo with the prize for having the best local authority stand at #ZITF 2026.
I have waited a long time to write this piece. Not because I did not know what needed to be said I have known for decades. I waited because I believed, perhaps naively, that Zimbabwe would find its own reckoning with this history without men like me having to spell it out in public.I was wrong. And the truck near Norton has ended my patience.
The Lie That Started Everything
In 1982, the people of Matabeleland were told that ZAPU the party of the late Joshua Nkomo, the party of General Lookout Masuku, the party of Cde Dumiso Dabengwa was hiding weapons. Arms caches, they called them. A secret arsenal. A planned insurrection. A treasonous conspiracy against the newly independent Zimbabwean state.
It was a lie.
Not a misunderstanding. Not an intelligence failure. Not an honest mistake made in the fog of post-independence uncertainty. It was a deliberate, architecturally constructed lie designed to provide the political pretext for what was always the real objective: the destruction of ZAPU as a political force and the elimination of the Ndebele people's capacity to challenge ZANU's monopoly on power. The man who sat at the centre of that intelligence architecture the man who, as Minister of State Security, oversaw the CIO operation that manufactured and propagated the arms cache narrative was Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa.
Twenty Thousand Dead
What followed that lie was not a security operation. It was a massacre.The Fifth Brigade trained separately from the rest of the Zimbabwe National Army, reporting directly to the Prime Minister's office, operating outside the normal chain of military command descended on Matabeleland and the Midlands. They did not come for weapons. They came for people.
Twenty thousand Ndebele civilians. Men, women, children. Killed. Tortured. Disappeared. Thrown into mine shafts. Burned in their homes. Lined up and shot in front of their families. Twenty thousand lives extinguished because of a manufactured arms cache narrative and the ego of men who could not tolerate the existence of a political alternative.I was a soldier during that period. I carry the weight of that history in ways that those who were not inside the institution cannot fully understand. And I say to you today, without equivocation, without diplomatic softening, without the careful language of political survival
Gukurahundi was not a moment of madness. It was a policy. And its intellectual and intelligence architecture was built in the office of the Minister of State Security.
Nkomo, Masuku, Dabengwa: The Template
Before the Fifth Brigade came the arrests. Before the massacres came the charges.Joshua Nkomo driven from his own country on the basis of the arms cache lie. Lookout Masuku detained, convicted, destroyed. A liberator who had commanded ZIPRA with distinction, reduced to a prisoner whose health was broken by imprisonment. He died before Zimbabwe could fully reckon with what was done to him. Dumiso Dabengwa the most brilliant intelligence mind the liberation struggle produced convicted on evidence so thin that the presiding judge himself expressed reservations.These were not criminals. They were soldiers. They were liberators. They were inconvenient and inconvenience, in Emmerson Mnangagwa's political vocabulary, has always been treated as a crime requiring a pretext.
Forty-four (44) years later, a truck was intercepted near Norton by CIO operatives. It was found empty. The operation designed to plant arms and frame Vice President Constantino Chiwenga on weapons possession charges collapsed because whoever was tasked with filling that truck lost their nerve, or their conscience, or both.
Mnangagwa was abroad in Ghana. The timing was not accidental. The architecture was not accidental. The target was not accidental.
An investigation by CITE has uncovered that nearly US$200,000 in public funds was used by Binga Rural District Council to build a luxury four-bedroom house with a jacuzzi on the shores of Lake Kariba for its long-serving CEO, Joshua Muzamba, despite a government ban on such housing.
This is in a district where hunger forces children out of school and many households still lack basic sanitation.
At this moment it's either you Defend the Constitution or you forever hold your Peace. This is the time to show Leadership. If your leader is acting confused and sophisticated he is FAKE opposition. Hands off our Constitution ‼️‼️‼️.
#ZimDeservesBetter#NoTo2030
It is my honour to present to you our ZAPU candidate for Nkulumane constituency. The experience he has will benefit us all and he will be able to represent residents as a resident of the constituency for years take a look at his CV and vote ZAPU on 20 December
They shall come and go . Some will fall by wayside but we shall remain focused and unmoved in order to answer the national question and deliver to the people of Zimbabwe. Hon Job Sikhala remains the best foot forward now and in the future
#Join NDWG TODAY ‼️‼️‼️
#2028WeLead
#Breaking ‼️‼️‼️
Our Chief Facilitator Hon Job Sikhala to address the European Paliament Subcommittee on 3 December 2025. As a renowned politician, human rights defender and activist he shall participate on behalf of unprivileged Zimbabweans.