“We want to support the whole country establish peace by going through the communities and the local traditional leadership. The village heads, headmen and chiefs are the custodians of the traditional law of good neighbourliness,” said ZPRA Veterans Trust, Vice Chairman Buster Magwizi, in a recent interview.
“We generally are accepted when we present ourselves to the traditional leaders and say we are non-violent. The people in the rural areas and even in the urban areas are beginning to understand us very much. Zimbabweans everywhere are talking about the need for peace in the country – because without peace there will never be any progressive development,” he said.
Magwizi added that ZPRA veterans understand violence because they have been involved in it. “So we are the best people to talk about peace building.”
He said it was vital that the process of building peace was done at community level, because whatever disturbances occurred “it was between the homesteads within a specific community”.
“We are against the concept of national healing as the term applies, because what we have seen is that they call in the traditional chiefs to city hotels and buy them lots of food and beer and intimidate them. Then the chiefs go back home and tell people that they must not fight. But they do not bring in any form of psycho-social treatment that should rest within the people themselves,” said Magwizi.
Post published in: News