Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980 and then crushed his opposition during nearly four decades of rule, pictured in a Feb. 23, 2014, photo, died at age 95 on Sept. 6, 2019, in Singapore, where he often received medical treatment in recent years. (CNS photo/Philimon Bulawayo, Reuters)
For years, families of victims of mass killings and disappearances at the hands of government forces in Zimbabwe during the 1980s have tried to locate the remains of their loved ones for formal reburial. Described by some researchers as a genocide, the violence associated with the late Robert Mugabe’s Gukurahundi campaign continues to be a source of pain and emotional discord in a country where state-sanctioned violence has long been an aspect of power plays between political rivals.