Child Survivors, Witnessing and Memories of Gukurahundi: An Analysis of The Children of the Genocide (2021) Documentary Film

In 1983, the Zimbabwean government deployed a military force to Matabeleland and Midlands regions under the guise of quelling a ‘dissident’ movement. Through this operation code-named Gukurahundi, this counter-insurgency unit of the national army went on to kill, torture, abduct and rape civilians, whom it accused of supporting ‘dissidents’. By the time these mass atrocities ended in 1987, at least 20,000 civilians, predominantly from the Ndebele ethnic minority group, had been killed by the government forces. Efforts by affected communities to commemorate, exhume and rebury Gukurahundi victims are being thwarted by the perpetrators who are still in power. In the midst of this state-imposed amnesia, there are growing demands in Matabeleland for accountability, commemoration and mass graves exhumations of Gukurahundi victims. The Centre for Innovation and Technology, a media start-up, has produced documentary films such as The Children of the Genocide which are keeping alive the memories of Gukurahundi atrocities. Drawing on the concepts of ‘witnessing’ and ‘postmemory’, and using The Children of the Genocide as an entry point, this chapter examines the experiences and memories of child survivors of Gukurahundi. Findings demonstrate that the documentary film is mediating the experiences of a generation born during and just before the Gukurahundi atrocities. Through the documentary film, survivors are bearing witness to the atrocities as they recount how they experienced Gukurahundi as children. In this way, documentary films are playing a key role in shaping and strengthening intergenerational transmission of memories.