I n s t i t u t e fo r j us t i ce a n d r eco n ci l iat i o n a fr i c a pr o g r a m m e Justice and reconciliation Zimbabwe is clearly a candidate for a far-reaching national healing and reconciliation project. As Mashingaidze has stated, ‘Zimbabweans have failed to heal and reconcile after major crises, because their national leadership has accorded premium to the state-sanctioned ideal of forgiveness without truth, and reconciliation without justice’ (Mashingaidze, 2010:21). The series of elite political transitions that Zimbabwe has experienced over the last three decades have all been characterised by a fundamental failure to deal with crucial issues of justice and reconciliation. Machakanja observes that the successive ‘negotiated peace processes were couched in reconciliatory amnesty measures’ (Machakanja 2010: 10). The Lancaster House Conference and the 1979 Agreement that sealed Zimbabwe’s transition from a colony to a sovereign state failed to provide the conceptual, legal or institutional framework for transitional justice. The Amnesty Ordinances of 1979 and 1980, passed on the basis of the Lancaster House Agreement, pardoned all atrocities perpetrated by the Rhodesian security forces on one side, and the liberation armies on the other. In 1980, Robert Mugabe famously and magnanimously pronounced a policy of national racial reconciliation under which, ‘the wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten’ (quoted in Barnes 2007: 634), but this meant that there was no formal process whereby people could openly deal with the trauma they had suffered. Similarly, the 1987 Unity Accord, which ended the violent civil strife that had engulfed the regions of Matabeleland and the Midlands since 1980 and resulted in the Gukurahundi massacres, had no dedicated transitional justice and reconciliation component. Furthermore, in October 2000, President Mugabe used his presidential prerogative to issue a clemency order granting amnesty to the perpetrators of the politically motivated violence that Zimbabwe experienced in the run-up to the June 2000 parliamentary elections (Feltoe 2004: 213–214). The signing of the power-sharing GPA was heralded as presenting another opportunity for justice and reconciliation in Zimbabwe, and this seemed particularly necessary after the significant political violence experienced by Zimbabweans during the lead-up to the presidential run-off election in June 2008. The GPA provides for restorative transitional justice but does so quite vaguely. Under Article 7 of the GPA, entitled ‘Promotion of equality, national healing, cohesion and unity’, the three parties committed themselves ‘to putting an end to the polarisation, divisions, conflict and intolerance that has characterised Zimbabwean politics and society in recent times’. The GPA also states that the inclusive 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 pre- and post-independence political conflicts’ and ‘will strive to create an environment of tolerance and respect among Zimbabweans and [ensure] that all citizens are treated with dignity and decency irrespective of age, gender, race, ethnicity, place of origin or political affiliation’ (GoZ 2008). Although Article 7 of the GPA acknowledges the culture of endemic violence and impunity in Zimbabwe, it is ambiguous in dealing with the fundamental issues of justice, reconciliation and human rights (Machakanja 2010). It merely states that the inclusive government ‘would give consideration’ to the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms. In other words, the GPA is, perhaps predictably, muted about the issue of accountability for past atrocities. The absence of the key words ‘justice’ and ‘reconciliation’ exempted the three parties, and particularly ZANU-PF, from accounting for post-independence human-rights violations (Machakanja 2010). It is important to remember that the GPA emerged from the SADC-mediated bargaining process between the ZANU-PF and MDC elites. It is thus highly probable that tabling the issues of truth and justice would have hampered those delicate talks. Indeed, Zimbabwe 8