As part of the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 that led to Zimbabwe's independence the Amnesty Ordinance (3) of 1979 and the Amnesty (General Pardon) Ordinance (12) of 1980 were legislated to grant an amnesty to all of those who had participated in the struggle for African self-determination or the defence of then-Rhodesia for any human rights violation they had committed such as killings, rape, assault or torture. The Matabeleland Massacres Starting in the early 1980s, the purported threat of "dissident" ex-guerrilla fighters in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces led to a counter-insurgency war commonly known as the Gukurahundi7 in which several thousands of civilians were killed or "disappeared".8 Mugabe accurately presaged the violence in a 1982 speech to parliament. “An eye for an eye and an ear for an ear may not be adequate in our circumstances. We might very well demand two ears for one ear and two eyes for one eye”.9 Some estimates put the number of deaths at up to 10,000 civilians. Thousands were arbitrarily detained, beaten and often tortured in official operations by the Zimbabwe National Army's Fifth Brigade that was directly 'answerable to Mugabe himself being outside of the normal army command structures'.10 Villagers in rural Matabeleland consistently refer to the violence of the 1980s as far worse than that of the liberation war.11 Most of the perpetrators of other mass killings and "disappearances" can never conclusively be identified. The Chihambakwe Commission was set up by the government to investigate these events. However, the report of this Commission has never been made public. 'Just as much as the Nazi period was portrayed as an accident of German history'12 the 1980s atrocities in Zimbabwe have been portrayed as a regrettable and ugly part of its history that should stand forgiven and forgotten. However, as Summerfield notes '… the denial to acknowledge the dead victims as if they never existed … must be challenged if survivors are to make sense of their losses and the social fabric is to mend.'13 In 1999 human rights groups initiated court action to compel the government to release the report however, the government claimed that the report was missing and could not be located. 7 'Gukurahundi' refers to the first rain of summer that washes away the chaff from the previous season. Mugabe gave this name to 5 Brigade at the passing out parade in December 1982. Civilians in Matabeleland see themselves as the rubbish that had to be washed away. See E Shappel p.59. 8 “The antagonisms between the two guerrilla armies hardened into hostilities between the two parties, as ZANU PF became convinced that ZAPU was supporting a new dissident war in order to improve its standing in the country. ZAPU in turn has expressed its belief that ZANU PF used the pretext of the disturbances as a long awaited opportunity to crush ZAPU once and for all.” See Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Legal Resources Foundation (CCJP and LRF). Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980 – 1988. LRF and CCJP, Harare, 1997 9 Quoted by M Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns (New York: Basic books, 2002) 65. 10 E Sharri at 45. 11 Ibid at 46. 12 H Adam, Divided Memories. Telos, No// 18, Winter 2000, at 90. 13 D Summerfield 'Raising the Dead: War, Reparation, and the Politics of Memory', (1995) British Medical Journal, 311 at 495 – 497. 13