Twenty-five-year-old Charity Ncube (25), a villager from Lupane in Matabeleland North, doubts if she will ever obtain a birth certificate.<\/p>\n
“My father disappeared and our homestead was burnt,” said Ncube from the Pupu area.<\/p>\n
“My mother later in life tried to register me with the civil registry office, but to no avail until her death.”<\/p>\n
Ncube is among thousands of adults in Matabeleland and Midlands, who are struggling to get national identity documents either because they don’t know their fathers because their mothers were raped by soldiers during the Gukurahundi era or their parents were killed.<\/p>\n
In a report last year, Amnesty International said thousands of Gukurahundi survivors were “trapped in the misery of statelessness in Zimbabwe have been forced to the margins of society and struggle to access education, healthcare and housing.”<\/p>\n