Zimbabwe Vows to Avenge Massacre of 16 Whites

Home Affairs Minister Enos Nkala toured the two farms where 16 whites were butchered by rebels on Wednesday and vowed that the murderers will be punished.

“We will account for them,” said Nkala, who on Saturday visited Olive Tree and Adams Farm at Esigodini, 65 miles south of Bulawayo in Matabeleland province.

“We have put together something and we could have had results last night if certain things didn’t happen,” he said without elaborating.

The members of the Christian commune, who included two infants and several children, were believed hacked to death by a rebel known as Gayigusu, apparently called in by squatters who had quarrelled with the whites over grazing rights.

David Emersen, one of the two Americans killed, was to have married Sarah Lovett, a Zimbabwean victim, on Dec. 27.

Nkala arrived at the two sites of the slaughter in a police jeep in a convoy of police and immediately inspected the house at Olive Tree Farm where eight of the victims were slain with machetes.

Nkala later toured the adjacent Adams farm and saw a garden house in which eight bodies were burned. Two gutted trucks were parked in front of the house.

“It’s a question of time, or how they (the killers) move. We are all over the place, in the mountains,” Nkala said.

“We want Gayigusu’s head, and I’m sure we will get it,” he said.

A massive manhunt involving special plainclothes army and police units is under way to track the bandits who committed the worst massacre since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.

John Russel, 74, one of the founders of the Christian community on the two farms, was flying home from the United States when the killers struck Wednesday night. The community had been planning a welcome-home lunch for him on Thursday.

Comforting Russel, father of victim Katherine Marais, Nkala said, “No one imagined we could be here under a dark cloud of death.”

His grandson, Matthew Marais, 6, escaped the massacre by crawling through a window and spending the night in a cattle dip where he fell asleep and was found by farm workers on Thursday morning.

“I still don’t believe it happened,” said Russel, his voice shaking. “When we moved in 5 1/2 years ago, there were problems, but we thought we could build a fortress here. We didn’t want to live under arms, we wanted to be part of the community,” he said.

Russel said the dissidents had visited the farm in December, 1986, but he did not ask for military protection at the time because he did not think they would kill members of a church commune.