Gukurahundi rears its ugly head again as Parliament discusses Mphoko’s Peace and Reconciliation bill- Part Five

You have been demanding us to come here to Parliament, using the Constitution.  So there is nothing amiss by this Bill because it is here in the Constitution.  Nobody here, even if you think you want the Bill not to be discussed, you cannot clear it from the Constitution.  First and foremost, let us fulfill the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker Sir, we have an obligation, I have an obligation charged to me by the President and Parliament and I want to make sure that the Bill passes through.  It is very important.  Only the fear of the unknown can scare the people, otherwise this Bill is for the nation.  It is not for me, not for you and not for anybody else; it is for the nation.  Thank you.

Hon. Chinotimba having wanted to raise another point of order.

THE HON. SPEAKER: Order, order!  Hon. Chinotimba, please observe protocol.  When the Hon. Vice President has explained in support of what I have been trying to put across to yourselves, you cannot raise another point of order please.  Hon. Cross please, you must hold yourself.

HON. CROSS: I will try to.  Mr. Speaker, we went through a bitter civil war and the winds of that war remain war today.  When I was General Manager of the Cold Storage Commission, I lived through Gukurahundi, all four years of it.  I witnessed first time the suffering of people of Matabeleland and the Midlands.  Later on in 2005, I witnessed Murambatsvina.  Since 2000, we have had the continuous violence against members of the opposition in a democratic process.  These are wounds of our nation which have to be healed and I fully support this Bill today.  I want to see this Commission established and operational as soon as possible.  I just want to make the following comments Mr. Speaker Sir.  The United Nations laid down five principles for Commissions of this nature.

The first is the right of everybody to know what happened.  The other day I met the matron of Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo.  She is a middle aged Ndebele woman by the name Khumalo.  Her father was murdered outside Gwanda and the family was never able to find out what happened to him or where he was buried.  For that woman who today is middle aged, that incident when she was a young teenager is as real as yesterday.  She has a right to know what happened to her father, who were the perpetrator and what were the reasons.  So, the first right which the UN prescribes is the right to know what actually happened.

The second is the right to a sense that justice has been done.  In Rwanda where we had this terrible genocide in which over a million people died in a very short space of time – 80 thousand people per day,  justice was only obtained when the traditional leaders in Rwanda were brought into the game.  The murder – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER (HON. DZIVA):  Order Hon. Members from my right and from my left.

HON. CROSS:  The modern methods of justice simply will not be able to cope with the volume of work that was involved – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –

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