The aim of our meeting was to prod the whole process forward and the effort was much appreciated by the participants. But such exercises have limited effect when in fact there is a conspicuous absence of desire for reconciliation at the top. The minister kept saying it was up to the people of Zimbabwe to move the reconciliation process forward but speaker after speaker from the floor pointed out we would be pushing on a closed door.
I suspect this sums up where we are. There is convenient lip service paid to reconciliation as this numbs us into believing that somehow we are moving towards normality. That is what those who have the power in the inclusive government want people to believe. Meanwhile there is evidence they are nervous of any expressions of opinion seen to be at variance with their line. For instance, there was a report last week that a DA in Chivi was threatened by Zanu (PF) youths for expressing the view that in the new constitution executive power should be vested in the prime minister; something that happens in Britain, Ethiopia and was the case in Zimbabwe at the time of independence.
National reconciliation is the right agenda in Zimbabwe today. People long for it. And there are none of the inbuilt long hostile memories that there were, for instance, in South Africa or Northern Ireland both of whom have made incredible progress in reconciliation when you consider their history, the former living down 300 years of fractured morality, as one commentator put it, and the other 700. We havent even had 30, unless you believe that the injustices of the colonial era are behind the divisions of the present.
Our meeting, for all its value in clarifying how far we have still to go, was a gathering where the speakers were preaching to the converted. There was hardly anyone present who did not want radical reconciliation. So it was the wrong audience. It would have been much more useful had it taken place in the community at large in the towns and villages of Zimbabwe.
And it would have produced far greater results if the three principals were there and expressed their clear desire for reconciliation. Until they say no to violence and mean it, until they show a passionate commitment to breaking down barriers (Ephesians 2:14) between people, we will continue as we are – hobbling now on one leg now on another (I Kings 18:21).
Post published in: Opinions