The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
VICE-President Kembo Mohadi has said Gukurahundi should be discussed freely and openly by people in order to find lasting solutions and closure on the matter.
Emerging from a closed door meeting with chiefs from Matabeleland South in Gwanda Town yesterday, VP Mohadi said he was happy that dialogue was taking place which was a positive move.
“I am happy that people are talking about it and that is the only way we can bring closure to this issue. We are going to get closure. Some suggestions were brought about during our meeting including compensation for the victims, openly talking about the issue and other developmental issues such as why we lag behind other provinces.
“We now need to find total closure and discuss issues freely and openly, Gukurahundi must not be a thing that is spoken in the dark alleys of the streets, talk about it and we will get a solution,” he said.
VP Mohadi said Gukurahundi was not different from any other conflict that happened in Zimbabwe before.
“We have had other conflicts before, politically we have had our own conflicts since the 1960s, we also had conflict with the Rhodesians and a number of people lost their lives but we found each other and we are in one country.
It is something that happened but when Dr Joshua Nkomo and former President Robert Mugabe decided to sign the Unity Accord of 1987 the whole thing ended,” he said.
The VP also applauded the chiefs for a fruitful meeting as they spoke their minds out and said more dialogue was going to take place in future.
“We talked about devolution, we need to leverage on our locally available resources in order to generate employment and improve the standard of living for our people.
We could not exhaust everything but the chiefs will meet again and have a draft of resolutions and we will consider in order of importance, their suggestions and work on them,” he said.
The VP said it was a researched fact that prior to the colonisation of Zimbabwe, the institution of traditional leadership was the sole governance structure with legitimacy to govern, derived from tradition and culture.
He said research has also established that long before Africa was colonised, African societies had institutional mechanisms as well as cultural sources to uphold the values of peace, tolerance, solidarity and respect for one another.
These structures, he said, were responsible for peace education, confidence building, peacemaking, peace building, conflict management and conflict resolution.
VP Mohadi said research had further established that the traditional African system on government was open and inclusive, where all people could participate in the decision making process.
VP Mohadi said he was convinced that traditional leaders had a critical and fundamental role to play in peace building and conflict resolution in the country.
