Faced with this tension, and despite little public action by international NGOs, Zimbabweans have sought novel paths to reconciliation. Both civil society and the compromised state are shaping transitional justice concepts. The GNU has created the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration, 6 although to date it has maintained a low profile while undertaking a series of consultative meetings with traditional and civic leaders. Its prospects of becoming a powerful advocate for transitional justice, however, are hampered by its location within the office of the President, its limited budget and extremely cautious work, and the recent promotion of ZANU (PF) Minister John Nkomo from the Organ to the office of the Vice President. If Zimbabweans invest their hopes for justice in a body that remains co-opted by ZANU (PF), they may become frustrated and disenchanted with the entire transitional justice project. Grassroots Transitional Justice With little prospect of centralised state support for effective justice or reconciliation initiatives, Zimbabweans have seized on decentralised modes of transitional justice. A diverse array of civic, church, traditional, business and community bodies have taken advantage of the slight easing of the security and political environment afforded by the GNU to begin reconciliation programs, adopting a politically neutral community-based approach. The grassroots programs, strikingly similar in structure, have modest goals. They eschew attempts at reparation or punishment in favour of restoring a modicum of tolerance and dialogue in divided communities. The programs provide a forum for participants to speak out in small groups of their peers about their experience of trauma, including political violence. Critically, these organisations engage both perpetrators and victims, recognising the complex intermingling of roles in which militia members may have been beaten and intimidated into attacking others and ZANU (PF) supporters may have been the victims of revenge crimes. Many Zimbabweans have experiences of abuse dating from the liberation and Gukurahundi periods. 7 Political operatives from outside the community are often the instigators of political violence that leaves communities fragmented long after they themselves leave. MDC Minister Sekai Holland of the Organ on National Healing has begun advocating community-based reconciliation programs mediated by traditional leaders, citing a cultural model dubbed kusvitisana fodya, under which perpetrators and victims would discuss and resolve their grievances before sharing tobacco in a sign of their reconciliation. This model is problematic, as many traditional leaders are viewed as 6 Article 7.1.c of the Global Political Agreement provides: “The Parties hereby agree that the new Government shall give consideration to the setting up of a mechanism to properly advise on what measures might be necessary and practicable to achieve national healing, cohesion and unity in respect of victims of pre and post independence political conflicts.” 7 “Gukurahundi” refers to a period of military repression in the Matabeleland region during the 1980s. Oxford Transitional Justice Research Working Paper Series 3