{"id":9514,"date":"2013-08-22T08:10:45","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T08:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9514"},"modified":"2013-08-22T08:10:45","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T08:10:45","slug":"zim-genocidaire-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9514","title":{"rendered":"Zim genocidaire dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9515\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9515\" style=\"width: 255px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/nkala.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9515\" alt=\"Enos Nkala\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/nkala.jpg\" width=\"255\" height=\"198\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9515\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Enos Nkala<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Zimbabwean politician Enos Nkala, who co-founded Robert Mugabe&#8217;s ZANU party and was Defence Minister during a massacre of ethnic Ndebele that killed 20 000 people, has reportedly died.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Nkala died at the Avenues Clinic, Harare, this morning after his admission at the hospital on August 7,&#8221; the News Day newspaper reported.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He was 81 years old. The cause of death is still unclear.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nkala co-founded the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party in 1963 to fight against British colonial rule.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">ZANU came to power after independence in 1980 and later joined the Zimbabwe African People&#8217;s Union (ZAPU) to form ZANU-PF, which remains in power.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nkala served various posts in Mugabe governments, including as Finance Minister.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As Defence Minister he oversaw a state-ordered crackdown by North Korea-trained forces on dissidents in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between 1984 and 1987.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Around 20 000 people, including women and children, were killed during the massacre named &#8220;Gukurahundi&#8221;, which means &#8220;the wind that sweeps away the chaff before the spring rains&#8221; in the local Shona language.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nkala sought to exonerate himself, saying Mugabe directed the deployment of the troops.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the late 1990s Mugabe described the killings as &#8220;a moment of madness&#8221;, but stopped short of apologising for them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nkala left government following a corruption scandal in which cabinet ministers and officials bought cars for resale using special privileges.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He later became a staunch critic of Mugabe&#8217;s rule, but last year patched up his relationship with the 89-year-old ruler.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mugabe is set to be inaugurated for a new five-year term on Thursday after winning a disputed election last month to extend his more than three-decade rule. &#8211; SABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zimbabwean politician Enos Nkala, who co-founded Robert Mugabe&#8217;s ZANU party and was Defence Minister during a massacre of ethnic Ndebele that killed 20 000 people, has reportedly died. &#8220;Nkala died at the Avenues Clinic, Harare, this morning after his admission at the hospital on August 7,&#8221; the News Day newspaper reported. He was 81 years &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9514\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Zim genocidaire dies&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5402,5400,5398,5401,179,5399,5397],"class_list":["post-9514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-20-000-people-killed","tag-defence-minister","tag-enos-nkala","tag-massacre-of-ethnic-ndebele","tag-robert-mugabe","tag-zanu-party","tag-zimbabwean-politician"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/nkala.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9516,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9514\/revisions\/9516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}