Reparations Reparations were suggested as one method that can be used to achieve national healing and effective transitional justice. Reparations are the same as compensations. The participants were informed that reparations have to take place at various levels; the government and perpetrator levels. To be effective, it has to be commensurate to the harm done. What came out of the meetings was the observation that some people who committed acts of violence could not afford to pay material reparations. It was pointed out that under such circumstances the government had an obligation to pay. The difficulty with this approach was that government gets its resources from taxing people and therefore if the government were to pay it would be tantamount to victims/survivors compensating themselves. Some participants suggested that NGOs could assist with funding to compensate victims of violence in light of the fact that the Zimbabwean government might not be able to afford such levels of claims as might arise from such processes. However, it was pointed that this would continue to motivate the perpetrators to do more acts of violence knowing that they would always pay nothing. Participants emphasized that the perpetrators needed to meet all costs of reparations themselves. Participants also wanted to know the course of justice in situations whereby one was injured by a person who was sponsored by some politician to commit the act of violence. Several interesting responses came out with some participants saying that the actors in violence should be jailed and the sponsor of violence pay the material compensation. Others noted that even the sponsor of violence should serve a jail term only after he had paid compensation in full because if he/she stayed out of jail he would recruit other people to commit further acts of violence. On the question of youths from the National Youth Service who got politicized and committed gruesome acts of violence including murder, theft, rape and extortions some of whom are deeply traumatized by their acts, it was noted that they need to be persuaded to come out into the open and should not be threatened. However, participants said that the people were willing to forgive these youths provided that the offenders were truly remorseful and can come out and apologize publicly in their communities for what they did. 25