repercussions can be invoked by communities when dealing with recalcitrant culprits. Usually
communities can shun attending or associating with the perpetrators’ family at community
gatherings, funerals or even weddings. In a close knit society/community this is not desirable and
thus will usually force a culprit to become an acceptable member of the community by telling
the truth and being seen as a person who values Hunhu/Ubuntu. Such truth seeking mechanisms
are central to the promotion of reconciliation in divided societies, healing wounds that trials and
purges can deepen. It can as well be that for the family and friends of victims there can be no
closure, no moving on and leaving the past behind, without knowing what happened to their
loved ones. As a bereaved Zimbabwean woman would confess, “I am ready to forgive, but I
need to know whom to forgive and for what.”
8(Ii) Acknowledgement:
This is closely connected to truth seeking and seeks to place the victims in a place where they
are recognized as human beings by the perpetrators who acknowledge and accept what
wrongs they have committed. In Zimbabwe, most victims especially in the rural communities
know the people who committed rights violations against them. ZIMCET and HZT have learnt
through their engagements with communities that what victims need at times is not necessarily
the truth or information but an acknowledgement by the perpetrators. Traditional justice systems
such as nhimbe are plausible platforms for achieving this goal. By knowing what happened,
communities are able to debate honestly why and how dreadful crimes came to be committed.
To identify those responsible, and to show what they did, is to mark them with a public stigma
that is a punishment in itself, and to identify the victims, and recall how they were tortured and
killed, is a way of acknowledging their worth and dignity19.
19
A Neier, What Should Be Done About the Guilty?‟, (1990) 37 New York Review Books
15
Select target paragraph3
Add to table of contents