Back to Index

Elections only sensible after the National Healing process
Heal Zimbabwe Trust
February 03, 2011

Download this document
- Word 97 version (31.0KB)
- Acrobat PDF version (12.9KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking here

Villagers in Buhera still vividly recount the 2008 political horror

Heal Zimbabwe and local rural communities in five districts most affected by the post 29 March 2008 political violence carried a public memorialisation project in 2010. The memorialisation project has provided families of the bereaved and their communities with the opportunity to openly grieve the death of their beloved ones who were killed during the period of political violence. Furthermore, the project has targeted the restoration of livelihoods of families of people who were killed during this period of violence. In January 2011, the project targeted Buhera district in Manicaland province where 17 people were killed. In 2010 the project was implemented in Muzarabani, Gokwe, Headlands, Rusape, Mutoko, Zaka and Mwenezi.

Background to political violence in Buhera

Buhera district witnessed the first known and recorded murders of Zimbabwe's post 2000 political violence. The petrol bombing of Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya in April 2000 as a result of political contestation between the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU PF) formed in 1963 and an emergent opposition political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formed 1999. Since 2000, the political duel has claimed lives, displaced people internally and destroyed property worth millions of dollars. According to a Zimbabwe Peace Project report in 2008, Buhera South was the most affected by political violence in Buhera during the period leading to the Presidential election runoff. The violence in Buhera has mainly been attributed to some elements of war veterans of the country's war of liberation and deployed army officers. The participation of such elements has compromised the victims' efforts to seek legal recourse and civic society organization's peace building initiatives.

The long arm of the law is yet to catch up with the perpetrators of political violence. There is only one case of Reuben Muteve where the people who murdered him were arrested but all the other cases are lying idle in the hands of the police. This has further exacerbated violence in Buhera as the perpetrators have gone unpunished for a long time

About 350 people had their property tampered with during the violence period, more than 500 people were assaulted and received various types of injuries. 145 children dropped out of school as a result of the deaths of their breadwinners in 2008. The calamity created by the violence led to the intervention of Heal Zimbabwe which carried various intervention strategies in the area from 10 January 2008 to date. Some of the activities included, 13 memorial services, kick starting capacity building projects for twenty families. The organization also facilitated the start of community peace building initiatives in the form of weeding ceremonies "nhimbes" that were led by traditional leaders and this program brought together villagers from different political persuasions. This is an effort to try and address issues of polarization in local communities.

Download full document

Visit the Heal Zimbabwe fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP