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Transitional justice and national healing: Perpetrators must pay the price
Arnold Tsunga, OSISA
June 30, 2011

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http://www.osisa.org/openspace/zimbabwe/transitional-justice-and-national-healing

Zimbabwe achieved its independence in 1980 after a brutal war during which widespread and serious human rights atrocities were committed. The new Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, called for reconciliation and forgiveness and no one was prosecuted for the atrocities.

A few years later, Mugabe's government was involved in gross human rights violations during the Gukurahundi campaign in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces, during which 20,000 people are believed to have been killed. In 1987, a Unity Accord was signed between the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the opposition Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) bringing an end to the violence. Once again, the government called for reconciliation and national healing and no one was prosecuted for those extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances.

But the cycle of violence did not end. Zimbabwe has experienced spikes in organised violence and torture, particularly around elections. It has become obvious that ZANU-PF uses targeted, organised violence and torture against unarmed civilians as a primary method of power retention. After the March 2008 elections that Mugabe lost to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-M), the country saw an escalation in orchestrated violence with reports showing that hundreds of unarmed civilians were extra-judicially killed and many more disappeared as ZANU-PF tried desperately to cling to power.

Despite the fact that the election violence was highly publicised, no meaningful prosecutions or investigations have occurred domestically due to an uncooperative government. Impunity has been a central feature accompanying the organised violence and torture against unarmed civilians. It is therefore critical that any process towards transitional justice and national healing is predicated on an unequivocal goal of breaking the cycle of impunity rather than letting 'bygones be bygones'.

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