Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa held talks with civil society leaders on Saturday, about exhuming the victims of a notorious massacre by government troops, which claimed some 20 000 lives in the 1980’s.

During the newly independent democratic government, the regime of Mnangagwa’s predecessor Robert Mugabe deployed a North Korean-trained military unit to crack down on a revolt in the western region of Matebeleland.

According to the Zimbabwe Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, the mass murder known as the Gukurahundi massacre, is believed to have claimed over 20 000 lives over several years.

Mnangagwa met with civil society leaders from Matebeleland, in Zimbabwe’s largest city of Bulawayo, about exhuming the victims for reburial.