The unfortunate thing that has happened with this Bill is that the moment people hear about National Peace and Reconciliation, the first thing that comes to their mind is Gukurahundi. Unfortunately it stops you from thinking. If you go step by step, you should be saying to yourself why is it today we are still talking about war veterans not getting anything and not being supported. It is because we never dealt with the issue around reconciliation, we would have said, what is it that we are going to do about those that participated in the struggle and the pains that they experienced during the liberation struggle – nothing like that happened, so we have not debated that, we have not debated what happened immediately after independence. I am prepared Madam Speaker because these are some of the very uncomfortable conversation that we started facing. I remember and I hope some of my colleagues who were at the hearing also remember this, a very young woman standing up in Bulawayo, saying this war between amaShona lamaNdebele can only be described in this manner yikulwa kukaSatan loJehovah – it can never finish. This is a young person who was not there during the Gukurahundi era but the pain is about what she is dealing with in terms of the marginalisation that she lives with on a daily basis.
So, until you address the problems and issues that people are facing, you will not deal with this. To play around and pretend that you have a national peace and reconciliation when you are not dealing with the issues of transitional justice which are issues of who has gotten land, jobs and resources in this country, it is why you could clearly separate the issues that were being raised in Matabeleland and Mashonaland regions.
For example, I remember when we went to Mashonaland West and somebody in the group was standing up and saying, ‘Stop talking about Gukurahundi, after all the maNdebele people took inkomo zethu and our wives.’ At a very basic level, it is a very upsetting statement for some of us but it is a real statement. I am saying if that is the reason why the people of Matabeleland today continue to suffer marginalisation because there were cattle and women that were taken – then let us talk about it. And if there is supposed to be reparation of the cattle coming back to Mashonaland, let those cattle come back then we can go back to the issues that we are talking about. I do not know what we are going to do with the women that were supposedly taken. We cannot have them and take them back.
In reality, we cannot pretend that certain things are being said and we ignore them. If it is a general feeling that somebody thinks it is justified to continue to oppress and subject a particular tribe on the basis that you believe that there were cattle and women that were taken away – then let us deal with it. Unfortunately, this Bill does not deal with that. So, it is a useless Bill as far as we are concerned because that Bill is supposed to be talking about why when you go into Matabeleland you necessarily find people who are angry? They are angry because of certain things that are being done systematically.
Madam Speaker, if you look at Section 18 of our Constitution, as we drafted that Constitution, we put in a provision around equality of regions because there was an understanding and appreciation that the issue around inequality was important. Inequality comes from the fact that historically, people believe and live through the realities that they are not being treated fairly. If you go to an interpretation stage and do not find a definition of why there is a need for reconciliation, then we are talking nonsense.
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