The Sunday News
Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, Gwanda Correspondent
THE National Peace and Reconciliation Commission has embarked on an initiative to establish provincial peace committees as it seeks to promote national healing, unity and cohesion in the country.
The commission last Thursday formulated a Matabeleland South Provincial Peace Committee comprising various stakeholders.
Speaking at the launch in Gwanda, NPRC Commissioner Lesley Ncube said the committees were going to facilitate dialogue within communities.
”As a commission we first engaged in a consultative process of identifying issues of conflict that need to be addressed in various provinces. Now we want to get into the actual process of addressing these issues. We are in a process of establishing peace committees in various provinces, each commissioner has been allocated a province. There are a lot a problems within communities that we are bottling up which in turn affects development. There are a lot of political, social and economic issues that we need to dialogue as a country.
”The provincial peace committees that we are formulating are an infrastructure that will help in this regard. We want to take a bottom-top approach of dealing with these issues. The peace committees will be responsible for facilitating spaces for dialogue, promoting tolerance building, provide strategic advice and early warning on potential threats to peace among other things,” he said.
Comm Ncube said some of the pertinent issues that were raised in the province included Gurukurahundi, under development, challenges in obtaining crucial documents such as birth certificates, fight over natural resources such as mining claims and unfair distribution of resources.
He said the provincial committees were a main body which the NPRC was going to use in facilitating dialogue and intervention for national healing.
In a speech read on his behalf by an acting director in his office, the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs in Matabeleland South, Cde Abednico Ncube urged the commission to ensure that peace committees were soon formulated at district, ward and village level to ensure that communities were fully involved in the process of national healing.
”The establishment of this peace committee is well in line with the desire to ensure that we facilitate an infrastructure to address conflicts in our province so that we transition Zimbabwe from a conflictual past to a sustainable, harmonious and peaceful society through generations. I’m confident that the peace builders here are going to be equal to the task.
”In your work kindly ensure that you include all groups of people in the province and that your programmes are informed by the input generated from the grassroots. I also wish to urge that this concept of peace committees cascades to the district ward and village level,” he said.
Cde Ncube said the Government under the leadership of President Mnangagwa has made progressive efforts to operationalise the NPRC as well as support the commission to ensure that peace building, conflict resolution, healing and reconciliation is achieved.
@DubeMatutu
