Zimbabwe: Calls for restorative justice must be heeded now
Aug 27, 2010
from an entry on Kubatana.net:
This becomes a strong case for the open discussion of what evil has been spawned by political violence and the need for a truth and reconciliation commission so people can move on with their lives. Yet some people in their wisdom think the past can take care of itself by natural processes of time and have been arrogant to calls for a naming and shaming of people behind the raping and killing of wives and mothers since independence.
The question for many is that what really can be expected from the people who are accused of heinous political crime and still control state apparatus that would in essence be in charge of letting the law take its course? So does the nation wait for that epoch when they are no longer in government and then they are tracked and shot down like rabid dogs?
But then some will argue that then this goes against the principles of restorative justice but conform to the dictates of vengeance instead, thus justice must be delivered in the here and now so that victims like the man cited above may know peace in their hearts.
African politicians have tended to exhibit traits that seek to place them above the moral barometer of normal beings as they use both illiterates and literati to commit the basest crimes, but turn and say the charges are all conspiracies by political opponents: Charles Taylor, Mobutu, Idi Dada Amin, Baby Doc Duvalier – all their stories read the same and the tragedy is that even as we journey into the 21st century, we find ourselves having to make the same excuses made by these evil black brothers. It is invariably always someone else who is not power who is blamed for the atrocities!
But with the nature of Zimbabwe’s politics whose popularity contests have largely been defined by clubs and cudgels as weapons of persuasion, we are no doubt in for another round of calls for national healing after lives have already been lost when all this can be averted by heeding the calls for restorative justice.
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