‘Henceforth you and I must strive to adapt ourselves intellectually and spiritually to the reality of our political change and relate to each other as brothers bound one to the other by a bond of comradeship. If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend and ally with the same national interests, loyalty, rights and duties as myself. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you. Is it not folly, therefore, that in these circumstances anybody should seek to revive the wounds and grievances of the past? The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten.’ 4 This strategy by Mugabe drew a veil over the human rights violations of the Rhodesian secret service, army and police. It was at the same time, appreciated by the leaders of the liberation movements because it meant also closing the books on their violence against civilians in Rhodesia and against their rivals in the training camps in Mozambique and Zambia.5 Indeed, nowadays this policy looks problematic in terms of condoning impunity. However, this report argues that during the 1980s using the peace vs. justice paradigm, this would have been a welcome development in a country emerging from a war. However, it is contentious as to who would welcome such a development – the whites that had inflicted harm on the black population or the black majority population because of their quest for peace. In the then Rhodesia and Zimbabwe at present, amnesia had its institutional expression in legal immunity and amnesty by the state. Human rights defenders and the independent media have been prevented from documenting the activities of perpetrators. The government has also thwarted the prosecution of perpetrators by political manipulation of the police and by undermining the independence of the judiciary,6 either through apparent manipulation or by the passage of repressive legislation. In any case granting amnesty to the Rhodesian police and military personnel for human rights violations was a tradition long before the liberation war was at its height although it abetted impunity. The Indemnity and Compensation Act of 1975 sanctioned this tradition. The legislation sought to indemnify police and soldiers in advance for any human rights violations they perpetrated. The key provision of this Act was that 'if any member of the security forces, defined as the army, the police, and the CIO, or if any civil servant or any minister of government, acting in good faith, committed a breach of the law and became liable criminally or civilly, no court of law could hold them accountable.' 4 “Zimbabwe: A Final Priceless Reward”, Newsweek, 28 April 1980, in 'Foreword', B Raftopolous and T Savage (eds), Zimbabwe Injustice and Political Reconciliation (Cape Town, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2004). 5 See NJ Kriger, Zimbabwe Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992) at 156 and H Luc “Why Reconciliation Failed in Zimbabwe” http://www.idea.int/pubications/reconciliation (Last accessed 3 June 2006). 6 This can be established by the spate of resignations by senior members of the bench in Zimbabwe and statements by political figures that the government was in no position to protect judges from the wrath of war veterans if they were to pass unfavourable judgements especially in the land cases. It is alleged that being given farms silenced a number of high profile judges. A longstanding problem can also be discerned from the relationship between magistrates and the state where the former are employees of the latter. This certainly compromises the independence of the judiciary. 12