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. Sunday News
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