13 forgive the torturers and murderers, then we can easily forgive the corrupt. When we forgive the corrupt, then it makes little difference whether we have a Parliament that insists upon transparency and accountability. When we see the guilty of all kinds avoiding the consequences of their guilt with government connivance, the moral basis of society has eroded to a very dangerous degree. From the lofty vantage point of history, we can see what happened in Zimbabwe. We needed to repair ourselves in 1980, but chose reconciliation rather than reparation. It was convenient to do so, and we sweetened the blow with a poor attempt at compensation. We removed justice and rehabilitation from the reparation equation, and this just could not work. We allowed people guilty of the most horrible crimes to go free, and with this model it was perhaps inevitable that we do the same things again, and we did: in Matabeleland in the 1980s, in Harare in 1998, and again in 1999. And if you can avoid the consequences of the most horrible crimes, why should there be any prohibition on committing less serious crimes? If the most serious crimes can be forgiven, why then should there be punishment for less serious crimes? How can we get free of this terrible fate in Zimbabwe? As commentators have stated in the national newspapers, we cannot open a can of worms selectively18. We have to take on our whole sorry history as a whole, and view it from the perspective of justice, and from a complete perspective of reparations - justice, compensation and rehabilitation. Anything less will not do. There cannot be a shopping basket approach to the aftermath of gross human rights violations, and neither can we assert that different contexts require a different balance of remedies. As Karl Popper says, we see the truth through the falsity we expose. In Zimbabwe, we have now exposed the falsity of reconciliation, and realise that the rhetoric of togetherness hides all manner of evil. Reconciliation has given us the avoidance of justice, the institutionalising of corruption, and created an apathy based on fear. This is not reparation; nothing has been fixed, and even the paltry attempt at compensation has failed due to corruption. Human rights violations strike at the moral foundation of society, and to restore this requires justice, compensation and rehabilitation. Nothing more than this, and certainly nothing less! As Richard Goldstone has said, “justice does not depend on peace, rather that peace depends on justice”. 18 See Reeler, A.P. (1997), We cannot open cans of worms selectively, ZIMBABWE INDEPENDENT, April 23.See also Reeler,A.P. (1994), I want my Nuremberg: Impunity and Racism in Zimbabwe, FINANCIAL GAZETTE, October 20;