CLAIM: A Gukurahundi mass grave was recently discovered in Bulawayo
Source: A Facebook account by the name of “Operation Dudula Limpopo province.
Verdict: False. No mass grave was discovered recently in Bulawayo.
A Facebook image captioned, “This (sic)are the remains of people from Matabeleland in Zimbabwe who were killed by the Fifth Brigade under the direct instructions of Mnangagwa and Mugabe in the early eighties.
This massgrave was discovered recently in the outskirts of Bulawayo. I urge all the Zimbabweans in South Africa to go back to Zimbabwe and hold Mnangagwa accountable for his atrocities he committed against the Zimbabweans” went viral on social media.
Gukurahundi refers to a period in the early 1980s where an estimated 20 000 Ndebele civilians in Matabeleland and part of Midlands provinces were massacred by the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade troop of the Zimbabwe National Army.
Following the Facebook post, verification was done by this publication and it was confirmed that no mass grave was unearthed near Bulawayo recently.
We used Photo Sherlock to trace the roots of the picture and it was discovered that the image was used in some articles before dating back to 2020.
It was also used on Christmas last year where it claimed that the mass grave is that of the soldiers killed during the Battle of Imera (Palermo) between the Greeks and the Carthage, resulting in the victory of the Greek Siciliotes in 480 BC.
CONCLUSION: No mass grave was recently discovered in Bulawayo and the picture circulating on social media is misleading.
