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

 I have said in this House, and I am glad the Hon. Vice President Mnangagwa is here – when I raised the issue around the reburials of people who were killed during the Gukurahundi era, the Vice President, at that stage said to the House, we will facilitate for those that want to do the burials.  As I speak to you right now, if anybody is trying to have a memorial service, not a reburial – to basically just get people in a community to talk about what happened and how they think, they are arrested and stopped from having those conversations taking place yet those people watch day in and day out here in Mashonaland, people sitting down and saying we are doing reburials.  How do you think those people feel?

For me, these are the issues that we are supposed to deal with.  If we pretend that there are no ethnic issues, we are joking and not being serious.  When we are here, let us not talk about Matabeleland and Mashonaland – let us talk about here in Mashonaland.  The Zezuru and Karanga divide – completely there and we live with it in this very House.  We have those major differences about whether you are Karanga or Zezuru and who is in control of what resources at this particular point in time and what it means.  Let us not pretend that those are not realities that we are talking about.  If we do not include the issues around ethnic conversations and how we are going to deal with it, day in and day out, we are going to be dealing with them.  We are going to be saying to ourselves, ‘MaZezuru ambotongawo, tavekuda kuti maKaranga ambotonga.’   That is the debate that is there and if we continue to pretend that the debate is not there, we are lying to each other.

I think it is important that in terms of a way forward, we do not play around with this if we really intend to do a proper truth and reconciliation process.  Let us go back and look at what happened in Rwanda, like Hon. Gonese was saying.  They said to themselves, ‘We are going to do a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and it will mean that truth is about dealing with the things that we are unhappy and uncomfortable about.  We will have to deal with issues of will there be arrests or amnesty?  We cannot have situations were amnesty is given; part of the problems that we have right now is, if we go to post 2000,  there are people who murdered people during the general elections, arrested, convicted yet they were given an amnesty.  Every other day, when you declare some of them heroes, people are upset.  They are hurt because they know that these people have a particular history that they have had before.

Trust me, people may get away with it now in the current context but the generations that are going to be coming tomorrow and in the future – this thing will come back. – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.]-  The children of those who were murdered will also come back to murder because you are not going to be in power in perpetuity.  There will be a time that you will be out of power and when you are out of power, that person who comes in and is in control is going to come back and deal with you. – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.]- We need to be able to understand and appreciate that particular aspect.

Madam Speaker, as a Committee, which is one of the things that was missing in our report, had an opportunity to visit South Africa and Kenya and do an analysis around what happened.  In both areas, we found that whilst South Africa had done a good job around truth and reconciliation, they had not dealt with some of the fundamental issues around transitional justice which is why in South Africa today they are beginning to have serious divisions and contradictions around policy issues, issues of land and the redistribution of land and resources … -[HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections. ]-

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Order, order Hon. Members, may Hon. Misihairabwi-Mushonga be heard in silence.  I think those who wish to engage in private conversations can do so outside the House.

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