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

HON. MISIHAIRABWI-MUSHONGA:  I am just giving you an example of South Africa that whilst South Africa dealt with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one of the lessons that we learnt from there is that it was too limited because it just dealt with the things that had happened during the apartheid era.  It did not deal with the fundamental issues around transitional justice, resource allocation – who is getting what and if something does not happen well, there is going to be a disaster in South Africa.  I think we should learn from that particular aspect and not allow things to continue to fester and hope that they will go away.  They will not go away Madam Speaker, as at one stage those things will come back to bite us.

We went to Kenya, for example, Kenya did the same.  They had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) but they failed to organise it in a way that they would then say we have done a TRC but how are we going to implement the issues that are coming out of the TRC and up till now, they are grappling with those issues.  So in Kenya, things may seem to be working well but the issues around ethnic problems are still there.  The fortunate thing about some of these countries is an acknowledgement that they have a problem.  The sad thing about Zimbabwe is the denialism that we have, a pretence that we have no problems.  So you will have somebody sitting here and saying, but in our country we have not had conflict; in our country we do not have ethnic problems yet we know that if we are organising our factions, we are doing so on the basis of ethnicity.  Why are we pretending that it is not a problem that we are having?  Let us deal with it and deal with it once and for all.

I gave an example, which is on my favourite subject, around the issues of war veterans and gender.  Madam Speaker, when I went back to look at, for example, those who were at the Lancaster House Constitution, I found out that there was a woman called Kadungure.  She was the only woman who was there and it was noted.  I do not know whether that woman is there right now and I do not know whether she died. I do not know what her circumstances were but I am giving that example in that it is clear because we never had a conversation about what happened during the liberation struggle that perhaps those that really participated, worked and suffered are the ones that are not being acknowledged today.

 It is because we never really did a truth and reconciliation process.  I am saying what we noticed during the hearings is that we have a bigger problem than what we are talking about here.  We have an angry society and in fact, most of us were being abused. They said, you are wasting money and they were right – you came here last year and you said to us let us talk about this Bill; now you are coming back again with this Bill and for us it has not changed anything fundamentally in terms of what we have done.

So, if we do not want to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, let us just come back here and be honest that we do not want to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  We will have it when every one of us who are leaders today and who are governing have gone and we forget about it.  Let us not pretend that we want to have a National Peace and Reconciliation Commission.

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