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

HON. MISIHAIRABWI-MUSHONGA: Thank you very much Madam Speaker.  Let me start by saying, I am hoping that as we get into this debate we can be as frank and perhaps as brutally frank as we can.  If we do not, we will not be able to get to the bottom of what this is all about.

 I want to join my colleagues and chairperson in saying the general view that we got was not that people did not want the Bill; the general thing that we got was that people wanted the Bill but they wanted a Bill that made sense and this particular Bill was not making sense both in the way it was drafted and the manner in which the contents and the issues therein where expressed.

Before I get into why I am saying so Madam Speaker, let me just say to you that the anger that we faced when we went for this public hearing is amazing.  It is unfortunate that we are unable to bring the audio tapes or the electronic taps…

HON. MLISWA: On a point of order! Madam Speaker, this debate is very serious, I saw Members of Parliament from the other side, especially women, going out, what for, I do not know.  The Masvingo election is done.  So, what are they going to talk about – I do not know [Laughter.]-

THE TEMPORARAY SPEAKER (MS. DZIVA): I think there is no point of order.

HON. MISIHAIRABWI-MUSHONGA: Madam Speaker, I was speaking to the anger that we found and to some extent, just this last comment by the colleague is relevant because I think if the people that we met actually had a way of sitting and watching the way we are debating this, they would be very disappointed.  For many of them, it speaks of their lived realities, their day to day lived realities.  It is unfortunate that as a nation we have gotten to a point where issues of conflict, healing, issues that should be bringing us together, we do not care much about them, we are so used to just living life as life without necessarily understanding where people are coming from.

Madam Speaker, for me the debate and the public hearing showed me a divided nation, an extremely dived nation – divided in a number of ways.  Firstly, divided in the appreciation and understanding of the issues that happened in the pre-colonial era, divided in the issues about what happened in the post colonial era and divided around the issues that happened just after independence and what is currently happening today. I think that is the unfortunate part about this particular Bill, whoever is drafting the Bill has just thought it is mechanical, business as usual without dealing with what exactly we want to address and you are not finding what exactly we want to address.  Are we trying to do a truth and reconciliation commission, we are trying to just create a certain institution that is going to be dealing with issues generally about healing. So unlike my other colleagues,  I actually think the disappointment is in that after the first time where we took this particular Bill for people to speak, those issues have not been brought in because the basic thing that people said is that do not give us something that is not talking about truth.  Our concern is somebody who comes back and said this is the truth about what happened during Gukurahundi, this is the truth about what happened during the liberation struggle.

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