ZIMBABWE … TRUTH AND RECONCILLIATION: Zimbabwe has had 37 years of one-Party rule -Zanu pf headed by Robert Gabriel Mugabe, now Emmerson Mnangagwa

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CHRIS GREENLAND , is a coloured raised in an orphanage in Zimbabwe rose to prominence as a High Court Judge in Zimbabwe and Acting High Court Judge South Africa.
He was born in Zimbabwe but now live in South Africa after the deposed former President Robert Mugabe destroyed the beautiful country.
Life was not always easy for Judge Chris Greenland being coloured / black and also Ndebele on his mothers end. Chris Green made history by becoming the first non-white magistrate to be appointed in the southern African region.
 
He later, served as a High Court Judge in Zimbabwe and also as an Acting High Court Judge in South Africa. Seven of his judgments are reported in the South African Law Reports.
Chris Green’s passion in life is social justice for everyone and that why he continuopusly speaks about issues that directly affect the lives of the ordinary people as in this article below.
 
He says, as much as Mugabe made a good start, implementing reconciliation and seeming inclusivity, the situation deteriorated.
Key to this deterioration was his passionate commitment to a Marxist style one Party Socialist State. He was never deterred by the reality of the failures of such States on the international front at that very time. The execution by his own people, of one of his heroes, Nicolae Ceausescu, at the very moment that Mugabe was singing this dictator’s praises at a ZANU-PF Congress did nothing to induce him to waver from this ideology of highly centralized power.
 
This culture of intolerance and exclusivity was always going to be resented by some/many. Not surprisingly ZAPU cadres mounted a bloody dissident campaign. The near genocide of Gukurahundi was the very convenient diabolical response.
Understand that violence begets violence.
Mugabe’s one-Party Marxist ideology was inherently violent for being intolerant and exclusive as opposed to being conciliatory, inclusive and unifying.
 
It triggered the violent dissident problem which, in turn, triggered the extreme violence of Gukurahundi.
Mugabe’s commitment to the failed Marxist ideology took its toll as the socio-economic situation steadily deteriorated. Complaint, protestation, lament by our people had to be stifled at every turn, and it was, Marxist style, which includes actual and organic violence at every turn.
 
Things came to a head in 1990 when Mugabe tried to entrench himself as a kind of living deity in obviously objectionable “constitutional reforms”.
Our people rejected this out of hand in a national referendum. One would have to very naïve to imagine that this outcome did not shake our megalomaniac leader to his very soul. It was something of his worst nightmare.
That nightmare became reality in 2008 when he and his Party lost the election.
 
It is a simple truism that leaders who remain in power after losing an election are only able to do so in terms of violence in its many formats. So whatever gloss or packaging was given to “no crisis” Thabo Mbeki’s “Government of National Unity” model that was forced on our people, systemic and organic violence continued as the operational mode and culture, in its multitude of forms.
Given the ever increasing suppression of press and media freedom we STILL DO NOT KNOW the details of the day-to-day violence that was in place to ensure exclusive retention of power.
We do know of disappearances. Three members of my community disappeared.
 
I want to give evidence on this and on my own experience of CIO.
We do know of Operation Murambatsvina.
We do know about routine election violence to some extent. We know about the violent land grabs. We saw pictures of Morgan Tsvangirai’ face swollen from being beaten. We saw pictures of human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa with bad bruises from having been beaten.
 
But we don’t know the full story. We don’t have the full picture. We don’t have the whole truth.
It is for this reason that it is my respectful but insistent view that we need our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
When this is mooted there is a tendency to immediately ONLY associate this with Gukurahundi.
Understand that Gukurahundi is not the only issue that needs to be resolved. When people have been denied freedom for 37 years it can only have been on the basis of routine violent victimization in its many, many forms.
 
The family that has starved because of the breadwinner having been victimized on political grounds is as much a victim of violence as the family whose breadwinner cannot work because of injuries sustained in political violence. The thousands of farm workers whose families were left homeless in the so called “land reform” saga were probably more victimized than the actual farmers.
 
So here is a list of issues that strike me as being of absolute concern to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
1. Gukurahundi.
2. The activities of Mugabe’s CIO.
3. Election violence.
4. Operation Murambatsvina and other similar operations.
5. Routine police violence and criminal conduct.
6. Press and media suppression.
7. Denial of basic freedoms such as freedom of association.
8. Disappearances.
9. Other forms of routine oppression and victimization and climate of fear.
10. Prison conditions.
11. Hospital conditions.
12. ………
 
This list is not exhaustive.
An Independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission will afford our people the opportunity to reveal the whole truth, unburden their hearts, find some sort of peace and closure on past human suffering.
In addition, our nation will have been informed by hard evidence, not imagination, propaganda and supposition.
In this way it can come to terms with itself, learn from the past and join hands for the first time in its history to march forward to the pinnacle of its potential.
 
There is simply no other way of true reconciliation, national healing and true unity.
It is only those infused with guilt about the past that oppose this.
So, in conclusion, I am insisting as a soldier of justice, that, in exchange for indemnity and forgiveness we create the opportunity for those who contributed to our oppression to come forward and tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
We will never be truly free if this does not happen as it is a truism that “only the truth can set us free”. Chris Greenland
see more at http://newzimbabwevision.com/zimbabwe-truth-and-reconcilliation-zimbabwe-has-had-37-years-of-one-party-rule-zanu-pf-headed-by-robert-gabriel-mugabe-now-emmerson-mnangagwa/

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