Dabengwa informed Dr Joshua Nkomo of this message and following further consultations it was decided that a cleansing ceremony should be held at Pupu.10 This extraordinary event took place over a period of several days in 1992, and was attended by thousands of people, including chiefs and headmen, spirit mediums, liberation war veterans, political and community leaders and ordinary folk. It was never reported in the state controlled media. In the absence of such cleansing processes, liberation war fighters have recourse to other traditional methods of purification as Pamela Reynolds recounts in one of the very few studies published concerning the personal traumatic legacies of the liberation war. A male patient was brought to Gororo (a spirit medium) because he was disturbed and spoke nonsense. Gororo became possessed and instructed her acolyte to make an infusion of herbs and incense, over which the patient had to lean covered with a blanket. After some time he called out that he was ready to talk. He admitted killing nine people in the war as a fighter against the Rhodesian Army. Some he killed in battle; some he killed as varoyi (‘witches’) because he believed they had eaten the corpses of comrades killed in battle and others he killed for being sellouts. Gororo divined that two spirits of the last category had returned to trouble him as they had been wrongfully accused. Had they been guilty they would not have sought revenge. Gororo cleansed the patient. The purification ritual would not have been effective (she said) if the patient had not revealed the truth”.11 The Gororo story illustrates how overcoming the trauma of war requires that we identify the sources of trauma and reveal the truth. Whilst this advice applies to an individual as part of a personal healing, it certainly also applies to people who share a traumatic experience or a history together. The neglected liberation war legacy of trauma and violence, and one should add of colonial violence too, finds expression in post-independent Zimbabwe in many respects, and in relation to security sector governance and policy specifically in respect of the manner in which violence by the state and its functionaries has frequently been condoned. The use of coercion and violence in pursuit of political objectives, which was legitimatised during the liberation struggle, has continued and been institutionalized in parts of the state security apparatus. Ironically the Rhodesian security system, which conducted regular torture and many illegal and 10 The shrine is located at the site of the historic battle between King Lobengula’s soldiers and the pioneer soldiers led by Major Allan Wilson in 1893, all of whom died in the encounter. In preparation for the cleansing of ZPRA fighters the spirit mediums insisted that the pioneer soldiers had to be propitiated first, expressing the extraordinary humanity of traditional reconciliation. 11 Reynolds, Pamela, “Children of Tribulation: The need to heal and the means to heal war trauma”, Africa, 1990, LX, 14. 13