SA spies also to blame for Matabeleland massacres

Three South African spies jailed in Zimbabwe have revealed that the former apartheid government sponsored a small dissident group which sparked the civil strife in Matabeleland province in the 1980s, which left thousands of civilians dead. President Robert Mugabe’s government sent soldiers from the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to crush the uprising in Matabeleland.
In an exclusive interview with the government-owned ‘Sunday Mail’, the former South African intelligence agents said the blame for the massacres should not lie squarely on the Zimbabwe government but also on South Africa. Kevin Woods, Phillip Conjwayo and Michael Smith, now in their 13th year of life terms, were imprisoned for a fatal raid on a house belonging to South Africa’s then outlawed African National Congress (ANC) in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo.

The three alleged that South Africa helped create a dissident group out of the then Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) party led by the late nationalist and vice president Joshua Nkomo. They alleged that a small number of the Super ZAPU guerrillas became active in Nkomo’s home province of Matabeleland where thousands of people were brutally killed in the conflict which began around the same time that Mugabe sacked Nkomo from his coalition government.

“(Zimbabwe) government was blamed for atrocities that they did not commit,” Conjwayo told the paper. “In fact Super ZAPU elements did more murders than the Fifth Brigade and the whole episode is blamed sorely on the government when South Africa should also be blamed,” he said. “South Africa recruited, trained and funded Super ZAPU elements to carry out murders while camouflaged as members of the Fifth Brigade and the blame was laid on government,” claimed Woods.