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Exploring transitional justice for past human rights violations in Zimbabwe
Tendai Chabvuta, Transitional Justice Institute (University of Ulster)
September 30, 2006

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1 Introduction

Transitional justice refers to a range of approaches that societies undertake to deal with diverse past political situations such as authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or conflicted democracies to a stable democratic state. States endeavour to achieve this by taking up a range of mechanisms to reverse a past marked by inter - alia regime illegitimacy, repressive institutions, absence in the rule of law and denial of human rights violations. In responding to the legacies of past widespread or systematic human rights abuse, states may have a number of objectives. These may vary from the need to punish perpetrators, establish the truth about past human rights violations, repair damages and prevent further abuses. Other aims include promoting national reconciliation through reversing past social and economic injustices.

Likewise there are a variety of mechanisms implemented to reach these objectives ranging from a forgive - and - forget policy, as in Mozambique. Other mechanisms include holding trials in domestic or international courts, lustration, creating a commission of inquiry, awarding reparations, building memorials, or putting in place military, police, judicial or other reforms. South Africa took the way of a Truth Commission, Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia opted for International Tribunals, there was a Special Court and Truth Commission established in Sierra Leone and a Historical Clarification Commission in Guatemala.

However, contentions have always arisen among other issues, on the ethical, legal and political consequences of the choices discussed above. Questions of due process, who will be prosecuted, what crimes will be amnestied, what compensation will be given to victims or survivors, availability of resources, and the very fear of reverting to the status quo ante come to the fore. In some cases, victims have become perpetrators such that when the time to hold alleged perpetrators accountable comes, the majority of the population will be both victims and perpetrators.

Elin Skaar takes these issues into consideration and persuasively concludes that the choice of instituting truth commissions, trials or nothing for countries wanting to deal with past human rights violations,

"depends on the relative strength of demands from the public and the outgoing regime, the choice tending towards trials as the outgoing regime becomes weaker and towards nothing as the outgoing regime becomes stronger, with truth commissions being the most likely outcome when the relative strength of the demands is roughly equal.

Zimbabwe has a fateful history of human rights violations and impunity. It is now urgent that measures be taken up to deal with the country's past and present human rights violations. Redress Trust defines impunity as a concept wherein those that perpetuate human rights abuses are not held to account or are somehow held to be "above the law". Impunity has been used by the colonial and post - colonial state to evade justice for its agents and private individuals allegedly acting with the acquiescence of the state in committing human rights violations. Outstanding in Zimbabwe's protracted conflicts is the legacy of serious human rights violations of Ian Smith who ruled Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979 and Robert Mugabe who has been in power since independence in 1980. Both leaders have largely engaged in violent activities to proscribe any legal form of dissent from the opposition. Notwithstanding the fact that the country has failed to address past human rights crimes, Zimbabwe has a conflict emanating from a failure to resolve the land question and an obliteration of citizens' economic, civil and political rights by the state with the former stemming from Zimbabwe's unfinished business of decolonization at the Lancaster House negotiations in 1979

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