out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing
there is a field
I’ll meet you there
rumi

Last week the Tree of Life held workshops in the granite rocks of Mutoko
sheltering from the October heat under Mahatcha trees
as they dropped their ripening fruit into the circles

30 people had walked from their homes 1 to 2 hours away
all from the same community
headmen, councillors, community leaders and activists
victims and the perpetrators together in the same circle

victims who had become perpetrators
and perpetrators who had become victims
brother against brother
father against son

a community who have been carrying the brunt of political conflict and social upheaval in the centre of their families

but in this place
where they told their stories
they began to speak of something different
of their need to stop the violence
and to reconstruct their lives
to see beyond fear
into the eyes of their brother, neighbour, friend
and recognise that peace was more important

(there was even the space for humour
as one man said to the person who had burnt his house and stolen his chicken.
“the house I can understand – but my hen?
did you think she had a vote?”)

and when the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about
rumi

Author and playwright Steven Chifunyise never fails to tickle the funny bone in me. Last night I was at Theatre in the Park, excited at the thought of getting a dose of political satire from his new play, Heal the Wounds and equally excited about the opportunity to unwind in the cool breeze of the evening while breathing in the garden’s fresh soil and grass. While we waited for the play to start, the breeze was indeed cool, but it also transported the stinks of urine and other forms or human waste thanks to the vagrants who often use the park for ablution facilities. Thankfully the play was not as disappointing. It featured two brothers who, because of their different political orientations, could never be imagined as friends but at some point find themselves working and sitting together in a committee of national healing and reconciliation.

Sophisticated terminology, concepts and all, they are seen trying to sell the idea to their elderly rural parents who seem skeptical of the Global National Unity and the process of healing. Forgiveness is the gospel they both vociferously preach and believe to be the only ‘practical’ way forward to achieving healing and forming the basis of national development.

The parents believe that it is so simple for the people in Harare to just forgive and move on because they didn’t lose any cattle and their houses weren’t razed for perceived differing political orientation. The parents use an old metaphor to ask their sons how any healing is possible if lots of people in the village were still walking around with axes stuck in their heads. Of course the ‘masalad’ sons took the literal meaning, discarded it as ludicrous and soon started to argue between themselves about which party did what, in the violence of 2008.

Their short display of ‘disunity’ invites the mockery of, and convinces the old men that nothing reasonable was being done in the ‘committee healing national’ as one of them kept confusing it. The long and short of it all was that this process is out of touch with the people and is not being done in as inclusive a way as it should be, that is by involving all stakeholders. The gospel of forgiveness that is being preached by politicians, some of who were themselves responsible for the atrocities surrounding the June 2008 elections, (abductions, rape, torture and murder), is just not enough for ordinary Zimbabweans.

The old men towards the end of the play prescribed 10 panaceas that they felt needed to be presented to the committee in order to allow real discussions about national healing to begin. In short, they described a number of transitional justice mechanisms, some of which are not practical, and seem very silly to the sons, but actually do lie buried deep in the hearts of many.

The emotional weight carried by most Zimbabweans from the many violent episodes since independence are the axes Chifunyise refers to. They are a constant reminder, which cannot be wished away, and they lie so deep they cannot just die a natural death at the prompt of forgiveness, especially coming from the highest offenders. Known offenders need to apologize in public; property-grabbers have to return the cattle, chickens, wives and whatever else they stole, to their rightful owners. In the rural areas, some people live with the reality of seeing their livestock in the stock pens of their neighbors.

People want to freely bury and mourn their dead, have a chance to be heard, to tell their story and to create a record so that there is a certain measure of closure. They want a commission of inquiry; but nothing like the joke that was the Chihambakwe commission of the 1980s. Insulted chiefs want to be apologized to. So do parents whose sons and daughters insulted them because of differing political views.

This all sounds petty, but could it be that the real journey towards true healing begins at the grassroots level and that the answer lies in each one of us finding a way of shedding the axes that we each carry in our heads?

I never thought it possible to have patriotic Zimbabweans any more. Especially when it comes to young people of my generation. These patriots are young scholars based in the USA.They have come together to form a miniature Zimbabwean government. In it they appoint a Minister who gets to research on the field given to them. Not only do they research but they get to ask themselves what wrongs are being done in the real government and they propose policy ideas. If implemented they could really make a difference in our country. So when the young men addressing us told us they had put together a 100 plus paged document that has policy ideas, and suggestions to change the way the real government is doing work.  I almost stood to attention and said soldier on boys! Because I really think that with such innovative young minds, my beloved country can go back to her former glory and be called the “bread basket of Africa” again. But my mind went on a stand still when I heard them say they hoped to hand the document to the Prime Minister. One thing that came to mind as these boys were talking is what if they do not get chance to meet the Prime Minister, what happens to all those ideas? Who do they turn to, are they going to be considered a threat by the oldies in the real government? Then I remembered that we are in a new dispensation, and those old guys would be dumb not to consider the possibility of a break through from that document. I say this not because these guys are US based scholars but I sincerely have hope and believe in the power of young minds.

The discussion around transitional justice and national healing has grown to the point that we’ve created a special index page to track the issue on Kubatana.

One of the interesting documents on the subject that I’ve put up recently is the Research and Advocacy Unit’s report Human rights violations against women and truth commissions, which looks at how women are effected by political violence and what lessons Zimbabwe can draw from truth commission processes in South Africa, Sierra Leone and Kenya. It calls for a Zimbabwean process that is open to and supportive of women victims of human rights abuses.

The Taking transitional justice to the people – Outreach report by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum shares insights from a series of consultative meetings organised by the HR Forum with 442 people in 13 different rural constituencies across Zimbabwe. As the report points, out people from all walks of life in Zimbabwe have experienced political violence and other human rights abuses in the country’s history – and a similarly wide range of people participated in the HR Forum meetings. It was clear from these meetings that people want to talk about their past, and they need the platform to do so – in a way that is not biased or partisan.