This Day (Lagos)
Paul Ohia
1 November 2009
opinion
Lagos — I find it difficult to see the relevance of the visit of the United Nations torture investigator to Zimbabwe at this point in time. It is no longer news that President Robert Mugabe has been accused of torturing opponents of his old ZANU-PF regime- the MDC who are his present allies in government of national unity.
I do not want to see reason in the fact that those who perpetrate the act of making others undergo unnecessary pain should be brought to book. Not in the context of Zimbabwe for now because, if Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's intention is to make Mugabe face the music, he should not have joined the Unity Government or even talked of one.
The story that brought about this stand happened on Wednesday when the UN expert, Manfred Nowalk was stopped from entering Zimbabwe.
He was returned back to South Africa after being detained overnight. He had no clearance and said he came at the invite of the prime minister. Before then, Tsvangirai had suspended his participation at the interim government and prefers to hibernate and wait for a change of attitude by Mugabe on major areas of disagreement by the strange bedfellows in government.
The Zimbabwean foreign ministry had claimed Nowak would be able to rearrange his visit at a mutually agreed time "in spite of this unwarranted, provocative act."
Now, the issue is that for eight months, the MDC and the ZANU-PF have been sharing power in a style that looks strange to a textbook democracy but the power allotment has allowed the shattered economy to start functioning once again.
Envoys have been working overnight to make the unity government work and in the process so many palliative words are given to both sides and sometimes some hardline postures collapse to give room for dialogue.
Most post-dictatorial governments in Africa often copy some lessons from the post apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The South Africa's TRC was set up by the Government of National Unity to help deal with what happened under apartheid. The conflict during this period resulted in violence and human rights abuses from all sides. No section of society escaped these abuses. The TRC effects its mandate through three committees: the Amnesty Committee, Reparation and Rehabilitation (R&R) Committee and Human Rights Violations (HRV) Committee. The Commission is currently in suspension while the work of the Amnesty Committee is completed.
Recently, Tsvangirai called for such a commission in Zimbabwe to examine atrocities in the country dating back to the massacres of ethnic minorities in the 1980s."This country has gone through a lot of traumatic experiences," Tsvangirai said at the launch of a video on the 1980s atrocities. "What we have to accept is that in order to heal there must be justice, and in order to have justice there must be truth," Tsvangirai said. The video documents the Zimbabwean army's bloody campaign known as Gukurahundi, "the rain that washes away the chaff", when a North Korean-trained brigade is believed to have killed some 20,000 people in a counter-insurgency drive. "That is the only way which can help us move forward as a nation. Unless the truth is told, there cannot be healing and reconciliation," he said. "There are those who are calling for a truth commission. They are right, but without justice we cannot move forward," he added.
Yes, the truth must be told as the prime minister said but at the same time, what follows is reconciliation because without this some elements within the country would continue being afraid of punishment thereby maintaining a hard stance.
This will naturally lead to difficulty in getting the sort of international aid the country is amassing now and at the end, the people to bear the brunt are the ordinary Zimbabweans.
It is in this light that I suggest a truth and reconciliation commission to look into all forms of torture within Zimbabwe till date and avoid threatening to or actually dragging some persons to the Hague.
Therefore, it is my candid opinion to tell Nowak to keep off the country at least for now.
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