Mnangagwa Denies Saying ‘Dissidents Are Cockroaches That Need (DDT-Five Brigade) To Exterminate Them’

Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa  has thrown himself into the deep end for denying  uttering inflammatory statements that could have stoked tensions during the Gukurahundi era.

The Monday denial could trigger questions on his role during the 1980s killings.

Mnangagwa said statements attributed to him that dissidents were cockroaches that needed DDT was to exterminate them were total fabrications and that he had never uttered those words.

In a statement Mnangagwa said: “The Vice President and Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Honourable E.D Mnangagwa, has noted with concern the contents of an article entitled ‘Coltart Shines Light on VP’s Gukurahundi Role’ which appeared in the Southern Eye section of the NewsDay edition of 17th March 2016.

“The article purports to be quoting extracts from Mr David Coltart’s recent autobiography. The NewsDay article reports that Mr David Coltart alleges in his autobiography that the Honourable Vice President E.D Mnangagwa addressed a rally in Lupane on a date that is not specified, but sometime in the 1980s and said that the Government had the option of ‘burning down?all villages infested with dissidents’ amongst others statements inciting violence against civilians.

“The Vice President E.D Mnangagwa wishes to communicate that all the statements attributed to him in this article are a total fabrication and that at no stage during the 1980s did he address a rally in Lupane nor did he at any other venue utter those words in the article in question.

“The Vice President’s legal practitioners are currently perusing Mr David Coltart’s autobiography to ascertain the accuracy of the report in the NewsDay newspaper before considering appropriate action to be taken to address these false and malicious statements.”

However, in newspaper articles that are likely to further embarrass the Vice-President, the Chronicle of March 5, 1983 reported Mnangagwa uttering those exact words.

“Likening the dissidents to cockroaches and bugs, the minister (Mnangagwa) said the bandit menace had reached such epidemic proportion that the government had to bring in DDT (Five Brigade) to get rid of the bandits,” the Chronicle quoted the Vice-President saying at a rally Victoria Falls.

He added ‘Blessed are they who will follow the path of government laws for their days on earth shall be increased.

“Woe unto those who choose path of collaboration with dissidents for we will certainly shorten their stay on earth’.

Then Mnangagwa was the Minister of State Security.

The article said the government had two options to deal decisively with the dissidents, with the first being to burn down all the villages “infested with the dissidents and the other was in the Five Brigade. The government chose the latter”.

Mnangagwa has not challenged the statements in the past after they were published in Breaking the silence, a report that lifted the lid on the Gukurahundi killings. source-Byo24