Indeed, domestic and international organisations have played a fundamental fact-finding role in
reporting alleged human rights abuses. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in
Zimbabwe (CCJP) formally called the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Rhodesia has
actually consistently done so since the 1970s when it documented abuses by the Rhodesian
security forces. It was also a lone fact-finding body during the Gukurahundi massacres of the early
1980s.
These initiatives are however inadequate since they are led by elites who are mainly based in the
country's two capital cities. Thus there is insufficient ethnographic knowledge of those
communities mostly affected by the violence. Although some of the civic groups engaged in
documentation claim to have provincial offices, their effectiveness in the villages, where violent
incidents have been known to be prevalent, is still to be tested.
Much more significantly, whilst civic society reports might be a useful lobby tool they do not also
present a complete and accurate historic account. For example, the statistical figures of the CCJP
report of the Matabeleland atrocities are not accurate. This can be attributed to the fact that
during the disturbances, most of the affected areas were inaccessible. The state's propaganda at
the time also laid the bulk of the blame on the so-called dissidents.
On the same note, while the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, for example, can be cited as
perhaps one of the few non-governmental organisations that have ensured accuracy in their
reports, their political violence monthly reports are very positivist and might even distort history.
Consider the Forum's September 2008 report, where they state that there have been 385
incidents of human rights violations. Yet, the bulk of those incidents include infringements of
rights of those who wished to protest against economic hardships.
Other initiatives
In addition to state and civic society initiatives, external actors and the opposition party have
been involved in useful documentation and informal inquiries. Of these, the 2009 International
Labour Organisation (ILO)'s Commission of Inquiry is significant for its focus on worker's rights as
opposed to the usual proclivity to focus on violations of bodily integrity rights. Also noteworthy is
the 2006 internal investigation by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into the attack
on their four provincial executive members and the then Member of Parliament for Harare North
Constituency, Trudy Stevenson. The significance of this inquiry was its revelation that non-state
actors also violated rights in Zimbabwe.
Truth Commissions: the Best Practices
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