Silenced genocide voices in Zimbabwe’s archives: Drawing lessons from Rwanda’s post-genocide archives and documentation initiatives

Abstract

Archives are a very important part of any given community, yet they may be silent on some critical histories. Perpetrators of genocides have usually resorted to denying or even trivialising such atrocities. They go on to silence genocide voices and these silences translate to the absence of records and archives on such topics. Like Rwanda, post-independence Zimbabwe fell victim to a genocide which was executed by the ZANU PF government in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces. The post-genocide experience has seen the ZANU PF government silencing genocide voices by criminalising or even denying the killing of people. The silencing of voices and the muteness of the national archival institution on the Gukurahundi genocide in Zimbabwe stands as a cause for concern. This study sought to assess the state of silencing of voices on the Gukurahundi genocide and also draw lessons from the documentation of the Rwandan genocide. This conceptual study also reviewed relevant literature. A manual document search and an online search were conducted.

State Crime

“…But genocide can also be a "peace-time crime" (Basaglia 1987;Scheper-Hughes 2002). Indeed, there is a growing body of literature and documentary film, which characterizes as genocide, mass atrocities perpetrated during a peace-time joint state military and intelligence campaign known as Operation Gukurahundi in the newly independent Zimbabwe between 1983 and 1987 ( Khumalo 2019). To date there has been no rigorous criminological study of the mass atrocities of Operation Gukurahundi, during which rape and sexual violence were rampant.…”

No AI After Auschwitz? Bridging AI and Memory Ethics in the Context of Information Retrieval of Genocide-Related Information

“…Some of these challenges are applicable to archival research in general, for instance, the potential damages to individual privacy [23]. However, other challenges are more specific to the case of genocide and include, for instance, the possibility of using archives to subjugate knowledge about the past atrocities [41] or impeding the processing of genocide-related trauma by encouraging specific types of testimonies and silencing others [42]. The need to address these challenges stimulates the discussion of how these ethical challenges can be addressed.…”

“…In some cases, it is attributed to politicisation of archives, which can lead to the release of information (e.g. in the form of archival documents) supporting certain political agendas [47] or silencing of information which can be viewed as damaging for a ruling regime [41]. In other cases, the unequal treatment can be related to the belief that some types of information can be less reliable (e.g.…”