Tsholotsho workshop starts to bear fruit

In August a three day peacebuilding workshop was held in one of the wards in Tsholotsho, about 130kms, west of Bulawayo. The final count on the last day shows that 89 participants attended the workshop. These were made up of village heads, political parties' supporters and officials, the councillor, the headman, church leaders and other community leaders.

This place which is near the district centre has experience high levels of political violence and persecutions, dating back to the war of liberation, the 1980s atrocities committed by government soldiers (commonly known as Gukurahundi roughly translated as driving out the chaff) , especially trained for the task, through to the period leading to the presidential run-off in June 2008. So here we have a community that is at once a victim and at war with itself.

The unique feature of this particular workshop is that we had participants who were victims of the historical violence, some of these turned into perpetrators in June 2008. So we had a curious mixture which made our sessions very interesting indeed. After a shaky start because of the fears and the suspicions among the participants, and with skilful facilitation, the tensions and fears were broken and we had very candid and fruitful discussions. By the time we got into sessions dealing with trauma and forgiveness there was no holding back. It was during these sessions, which were on the second day that we discovered the reasons for the fears that had been expressed the first day.

We listened to the testimonies of the victims of the 1980s atrocities and we listened to the stories of the victims of the June 2008 electoral violence. A fair amount of the people who are victims of Gukurahundi, were unfortunately also victims of the June 2008 violence. There were also a number of people who were implicated as perpetrators in the June 2008 presidential runoff election period. A classic example of victims turned perpetrators. We only became aware of these at the end of the second day as some of the victims quietly pointed them out to us. That is one of the few joys of being an outsider, we could not have been accused of targeting the perpetrators as they all knew we had no idea of their community dynamics. I might add here that, although we could not put our finger on it, this community did not seem like any that we have worked in. They didn’t know each other well, which is a surprising thing for an African community who are members of the same community. There just was no community spirit and the unfolding events at the workshop revealed the causes.

It was amazing to listen to a person telling their heart rending story of how they suffered during the government sponsored violence, only to learn later that this very same person was at the forefront of harassing their neighbours in 2008.

Moves towards reconciliation
The best news coming out from this workshop is that several of the alleged perpetrators have come forward requesting facilitation from our team so that can offer apologies to their victims. We view this as a very positive step indeed considering the fact that, in spite of the formation of the so called inclusive government, little else has changed. What kept coming out during the workshop was that many of these perpetrators did what they did out of the fear of being labelled as unpatriotic by their party. We are now working out a follow up strategy that will address the expressed needs of this community. Indeed some of the victims have also indicated that there is a need for them to start dialogue with their victimisers since they all live in the same community.

                  
A villager holds a stick that was used to beat him by the 5th Brigade army in 1983. These soldiers were especially trained for this purpose. Well over 20 000 SiNdebele speaking people of Matabeleland and part of the Midlands were killed, others were disappeared, tortured, persecuted and raped. For 26 years this man has kept this stick and came to the workshop determined to tell his story, he is not part of the community for which the workshop was meant. The man has vowed never to get rid of the stick until something has been done to the perpetrators. This is a common story in Matabeleland, where most people still feel aggrieved by the actions of the government of the day which never apologised or did anything to address its crimes. Instead people were told the union of Zapupf and Zanupf in 1987, meant that all must be put in the past and people should not speak about their hurts and crimes done against them as doing so will only “open old wounds”.

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