Zimbabwe's transitional justice programme targets diaspora

Zimbabweans in Europe are being targeted by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum to make their input into the Forum’s Taking Transitional Justice to the People programme.

Originally launched in the eight constituencies most affected by human rights violations, the programme aims to consult and educate – on the nature and processes of transitional justice – Zimbabweans who have gone through periods of state-sponsored and politically motivated violence in their lives. These aims were explained by the Forum’s executive director, Abel Chikomo, last week to a meeting in London’s Chatham House.

But there are predictable tensions between NGO Forum activists and the parallel initiatives launched by Sekai Holland, minister for national healing, reconciliation and integration in Zimbabwe’s ‘inclusive government’.

Holland heads the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration, a government body set up under the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

She explained that this body wants to work with the Forum to make clear where the organ is coming from and avoid friction with NGOs. But NGO Forum representatives at the Chatham House meeting were clearly sceptical of the way that the GPA was working out in practice.

Holland admitted that those who had to implement it would read the GPA differently. For her, it was something that had taken years to achieve, as a result of much work by several parties, including the Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) 2006 decision to launch ‘a peaceful campaign to get ZANU/PF to the negotiating table’.

‘It is weak and flawed but it has a history’, she said of the agreement. It was Mugabe’s resort to intimidation and torture, which had led the African Union (AU) forcing Mugabe to talk, she claimed. Zimbabwe was not yet in a post-conflict situation, but in a ‘weak transition’.

Sekai Holland puts great store by the provisions of Article 7 of the GPA which she believes create an ‘enabling environment’ for change. She points to the provision that the parties will ensure ‘equal treatment for all and work towards equal development for all’ including the ‘equal development of all regions’. This, she says, includes Matabeleland, Midlands and Manicaland.

Other clauses provide that ‘consideration’ will be given to setting up a body to advise what measures are necessary for victims of conflict and call for a ‘climate of tolerance and respect’. There are also provisions for involving the diaspora.

Some clearly see this as general ‘motherhood and apple pie’ talk. But not Holland, who insists ‘this empowers you to draw up a programme’ and who points out that the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration is charged with identifying sources of violence and solutions. In the 1980s Mugabes articulations of reconciliation were welcomed. But, she says, there were no mechanisms to deal with ‘the consequences of 95 years of colonialism and previous wars and conquests’. She sees ‘all this history’ as a cause and believes traditional chiefs have ‘the key to much of this’.

Zimbabweans, she maintains, must be enabled to talk about this ‘in all its beauty and ugliness’. To this end the organ will be organising a meeting at Midland State University to bring together different disciplines and scholars to talk through ‘what happened in history’ – a process she compares to social services dealing with a traumatised family, or to dealing with the medical and psychological needs of torture victims.

In more conventionally, political terms the organ will, she says, work towards a national code of conduct leading to an act of parliament, covering a range of issues: from respect by all ministries for the rule of law, land reform to the dismantling of the ‘machinery of violence’.

But for human rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba, director of the Zimbabwe Exile Forum, there was only one point of agreement with Holland – that Zimbabwe was not yet in a post-conflict situation. The ‘noble aspirations’ of Article 7 had still not been consummated, he insisted. The pledge of equal treatment for all and fair development of all regions was not happening. The measures for healing were being processed through political parties and there was no mention of justice.

And why did the mention of the diaspora refer only to the skilled? For healing to take place it would be necessary to ask why four million left. The fundamentals were redress and justice to prevent recurrence, followed by reconciliation. Forgiveness was easy from an armchair. But the environment that gave rise to atrocity was still in place, with those responsible still roaming the streets. Meanwhile progressive forces were disempowered, as the agreement did not recognise those who were not party to it.

Had the MDC’s compromises taken away the possibility of raising issues of transitional justice? Would the MDC be compromised by association with the ‘environment of impunity’ in the country? The transitional justice programme would enable the diaspora to work with the process, including the organ. It would be launching a programme for this in March, with the minister’s cooperation.

The NGO Forum was working within the GPA. But, according to Okay Machisa, a board member of the Forum and director of the Zimbabwe Association for Human Rights, the GPA is ‘an agreement that favours Mugabe, and he is failing to implement it’.

He sees the Forum’s role as one ‘to provoke the community into defining its input’ – as for example by promoting the theatre drama ‘Healing the Wounds’ which had already staged 30 productions and a film version. It included first-hand victim narratives of torture and should be used by the Ministerial Organ as evidence. He was happy the organ was prepared to work with the NGO Forum. But the grass roots had to define the process.

In spite of the caution from the NGO sceptics, Holland was optimistic. She had consulted widely about whether the MDC should stay in the GPA despite the setbacks. Women’s organisations in particular had told her that the security situation was better under the GPA, and their message was ‘stay in but fight better’.

For her the lesson was that ‘we must learn to use our traditional methods of dealing with bullies. Every African in Shonaland and Matabeleland is a born mediator. ‘I’m sorry’ has an extraordinary power in our culture. Change in Zimbabwe has never come from outsiders telling us what to do.’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Stephen Marks is a freelance writer and researcher, specialising in development and human rights issues.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.