JOHANNESBURG - The Zimrights have rubbished the Article V11 of the Government of National Unity (GNU), which deals with national healing saying it was ill fated from birth. (Pictured: One of the controversial Zimrights photos showing 2008 political violence)
The national Director of the Zimrights, Okay Machisa, said what was happening in Zimbabwe was like having the wolf herding the sheep. The issue of national healing have never been taken seriously. The culture of violence has never been abated. Issues from the Gukurahundi era have never been taken serious. Even the 1987 unity accord was a window dressing with no national healing but only shaking of hands, said Machisa.
They are choosing the perpetrators to be on the steering wheel with the victims following. How can you have a national healing with the victim submerged? People have to be mobilised to voice and define the national healing. Peoples wish cannot be taken for granted anymore, their patience have been pushed too far.
Machisa said healing could not be the preserve of the politicians. He said when a person was sick he was the one who decided to go to the doctor. He said people therefore had to be allowed to say what and how they wanted the national healing done rather than having politicians deciding for them.
The Zimrights Chairperson Everson Ndlovu said Zimbabweans could not sit and watch but had to play the ball. We are worried about the pace of the healing. We are also worried that it was the government who had to kick start the process. Its high time the government listened to the people at the grassroots level. They are tired of taking instructions from the top. They cannot be prisoners of the politicians. Ndlovu said if the people had an input in the process from its inception that assisted the healing process as opposed to when they were dictated upon by the government.
Both Zimrights bosses feared that if people were not given a chance to own and associate themselves with the healing process they would disown it. Machisa is a victim of police abuse after he was arrested prior to Zimrights staging a controversial photo exhibition earlier this year, showing the political violence of 2008. Although he was released and the exhibition allowed to be launched, police later disrupted it threatening to cease the pictures. Zimrights was forced to abandon the exhibition and efforts to take it around the country were not successful either as the organisations officials in Masvingo were arrested. Zimrights has now taken the exhibition to South Africa.
Post published in: News