From Solidarity to Repression: North Korea–Zimbabwe Relations and the Legacy of the Fifth Brigade

By Samantha Clark, Former HRNK Research Intern
Edited by Greg Scarlatoiu, HRNK President & CEO

          When Zimbabwe got independence from white-minority rule in 1980, its new head of state Robert Mugabe was faced with the challenge of consolidating the country while ensuring that he remained firmly in place. Instead of seeking primary advice and support from Western countries, Mugabe looked to Kim Il-sung, North Korea's first leader and founder. He ruled an authoritarian regime centered on very strict discipline, one party, and a  personality cult. Their relationship created one of the most anomalous and notable alliances of the later Cold War. North Korea gave military training, templates of ideology, and grand monuments to Zimbabwe. But these presents also facilitated one of the darkest periods in Zimbabwean history: the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s.

          The origins of the North Korea–Zimbabwe alliance can be traced back to the 1970s, during Zimbabwe’s long fight for independence. At that time, the country was called Rhodesia and was ruled by a white-minority government under Prime Minister Ian Smith. Two major African nationalist groups led the struggle against Smith’s regime. The first was Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), whose military wing was known as the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). The second was Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which had its own armed wing. Foreign powers lined up behind these movements. The Soviet Union backed ZAPU, while North Korea chose to support Mugabe’s ZANU. Pyongyang supplied ZANLA with weapons and training, which built trust between Mugabe and Kim Il-sung well before Zimbabwe gained independence (Young 2018). This early support gave North Korea an advantage over other outside powers when Mugabe came to power in 1980. Both Mugabe and Kim believed that armed struggle, revolutionary vigilance, and collective discipline were the true foundations of political legitimacy, which made the two leaders natural allies (Young 2018).

          Mugabe looked up to North Korea further after independence. In 1980, he went to Pyongyang to witness a meeting of the Korean Workers' Party and listened as Kim Il-sung declared that he would be succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-il. Mugabe valued North Korea's land reform, whereby farms had been “allocated” to peasants working on collective farms, and its concept of "self-reliance" (Juche). He also liked the huge mass games, where large numbers of North Korean kids exercised gymnastics and danced in unison to display their loyalty to the leader. These demonstrations of unity were precisely what Mugabe sought to have at home in Zimbabwe. Upon his return to Harare, he went so far as to set up a Juche study center at the University of Zimbabwe to teach students about North Korea's ideology (Young 2018).
 
          The most significant part of the relationship in terms of impact, however, was in the military sphere. Soon after independence, Mugabe requested North Korea's help in creating an elite force under his direct command. Kim Il-sung agreed, and in 1981 North Korean instructors visited Zimbabwe to train the new brigade, which would come to be known as the Fifth Brigade. As opposed to the remainder of the military, the Fifth Brigade was instructed by Mugabe alone. Its training emphasized unrestrained devotion to the ruling party and loyalty to the president, like the "single-minded unity" that is taught in the Korean People's Army (Young 2018). By 1985, the brigade had grown to around 20,000 soldiers and became one of Mugabe’s most powerful tools.

          Not long after its creation, the Fifth Brigade turned its guns inward. From 1983 to 1987, the unit ran a terror campaign in Matabeleland, a region where support for Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU was strong. Known as Gukurahundi—a Shona phrase meaning “the early rain that washes away the chaff”—the government claimed it was a security operation against dissidents. It became a massacre of civilians. Around 20,000 people were killed, and very sadly many more were tortured, raped, or forced into reeducation camps. These years remain among the darkest chapters in Zimbabwe’s history. North Korea did not carry out the killings directly. However, by training the Fifth Brigade, it had given Robert Mugabe the tools to crush political opposition on a massive scale. Many distinctive features of the North Korean regime were transplanted to Zimbabwe (Young 2018).

          North Korea also helped design buildings in Zimbabwe. The state construction firm of North Korea, Mansudae Overseas Projects, constructed and designed Harare's National Heroes' Acre, a large monument complex to commemorate individuals who participated in the struggle for independence. The project was completed in 1982 and has large statues, large stone stairways, and an eternal flame, and it is a replica of monuments in Pyongyang. Like much of Mansudae's African work, it was constructed by North Korean laborers for the most part, under conditions akin to forced labor (van der Hoog 2018). The Heroes' Acre was both a monument and a political declaration, acknowledging Mugabe as the rightful victor of a heroic struggle.

          Cumulatively, the export of military skills and mega-architecture captures the way North Korea did business in Africa. On the surface, Pyongyang was a supporter of anti-colonialist movements, joining hands with new independent nations in opposition to imperialism. These alliances served to advance North Korean interests via the establishment of building contracts, weapons sales, and the spread of its ideology beyond its territory (van der Hoog 2018). Zimbabwe was Pyongyang's closest supporter in this policy, and Mugabe's personal admiration of Kim Il Sung helped to sustain it. Despite worldwide condemnation of Zimbabwe for the Gukurahundi massacres and despite growing global condemnation of North Korea for its foreign interventions, the alliance continued. Mugabe continued to publicly praise Pyongyang, and even in the 2000s Juche books could be found in Zimbabwean government offices (Young 2018). For North Korea, the preservation of its ties to Harare showed that it still had allies in the Global South, even as it grew increasingly isolated elsewhere. For Mugabe, Pyongyang was a symbol of authoritarian longevity and a sign of support he had amassed when he had ascended to power.
 
          The Zimbabwe experience illustrates the human rights effects of North Korea's foreign alliances. While “legitimized” as an alleged representative of “anti-imperialist solidarity,” in practice Pyongyang exported repressive practices associated with authoritarianism. In Zimbabwe, the Fifth Brigade was deployed as a tool of mass terror, and Mansudae's monuments legitimized a political culture revolving around a personality cult. These legacies illustrate how Cold War alliances left deep-seated wounds to African domestic politics.
 
          Today everyone is debating whether sanctions are effective against North Korea. They are not, as Zimbabwean lessons teach how difficult it is to prevent North Korea's activities elsewhere. Despite decades of sanctions, North Korea remained active in Africa with cultural cooperation, infrastructure projects, and clandestine defense ties. Zimbabwe illustrates how authoritarian governments exchange favors among themselves all over the world. It also points to the imperious need to document this history, so that the toll taken on human rights is not lost. For Zimbabwe, the Fifth Brigade is one of its darkest post-independence tales. For North Korea, the alliance shows how much power it wielded once—and as a reminder of the devastation authoritarian unity can cause.
 
Samantha Clark is an undergraduate at William & Mary studying Government and History. Her areas of focus are North Korean relations with Africa and the human rights consequences of authoritarian alliances. Recently, she was a research intern at the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK).
 
Works Cited
Kuo, Jaewon. “An Exploratory Analysis of North Korea’s Relationship with Africa.” North Korean Review, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019, pp. 61–78.
Van der Hoog, Jonas. Uncovering North Korean Forced Labour in Africa: The Case of the Mansudae Overseas Project Group in Namibia. European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea, 2018.
Young, Benjamin R. “An Emotional Relationship: Trust, Admiration, and Fear in North Korea–Zimbabwe Relations, 1976–1988.” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 2018, pp. 6–31.