George Makoni addressing the meeting
This came out during a community meeting organized by the Wedza Residents Development Initiative Trust (WERDIT) last week.
The meeting was attended by WERDIT’s peace structures from different wards of Wedza District. The peace structures are part of WERDIT’s Peace Building and Conflict Management initiatives.
It came out during the meeting that land boundaries were among the leading causes of conflicts among villagers amid calls for traditional leaders and other key stakeholders to ensure amicable resolution of the conflicts.
“We have a number of issues that are leading to conflicts among villagers and land boundaries is one of the major issues. We have a lot of disputes arising from land ownership and boundaries and some of these issues date from long back and remain unresolved up to now.
“We feel it is necessary that we have platforms were such issues are discussed and addressed amicably so that we deal with conflicts in our different areas,” said a participant.
During the meeting, the residents made calls for improved services at health centers, improved access to water, roads refurbishment and programmes aimed at addressing gender-based violence.
On gender-based violence, it was noted that there is need to bring key stakeholders on board and identify programmes that will ensure community participation in ending gender-based violence.
WERDIT Director, George Makoni said his organization was seized with conflict management and resolution as part of efforts to rally communities towards development.
He said that through its peace structures, WERDIT had identified a number of conflict areas and was seeking to address these in collaboration with different policy makers including traditional leaders.
“As WERDIT we are working through our peace structures to identify areas of conflict and see how we can mobilize communities on conflict management and resolution. This requires an all stakeholders approach and that is why we are working with different stakeholders to address conflicts within the district. In doing this, we have embraced a bottom up approach and all the issues that have been identified at our meetings will be escalated to the top and this includes the traditional leadership.
“We believe that resolving conflict leads to unity and this ultimately paves the way for communities to rally towards development projects in their different areas. Peace and unity are key for development hence our continued efforts to deal with conflict,” said Makoni.
Post published in: Featured