Paper presented to: “The Responsibility of Religions in Times of Crisis”,
Organised by Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe,
Great Zimbabwe Safari Lodge, 11-13 July 2001.
The Extent of Political Violence in Zimbabwe
A P Reeler
Director, AMANI Trust
Chairperson, Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.
1.
Background:
Organised violence and torture are integral features of Zimbabwean political life, and
have been since the early 1960s. This has been documented in a number of publications,
beginning with the ground-breaking reports of the Catholic Commission for Justice and
Peace in the 1970s. Until recently however, all reporting has been largely post-hoc, and
only recently has Zimbabwe developed the capacity to monitor and report upon organised
violence and torture in up to date terms. Here the Human Rights Forum has been a
leading energy in the monitoring process.
This paper discusses the current violence in Zimbabwe, and outlines the major features of
this violence in the context of violence in Zimbabwe generally.
2.
The violence of the past
Apart from the studies carried out in the 1970s themselves by CCJP, the AMANI Trust
has been the single organisation that has provided detailed data on the prevalence and
nature of organised violence and torture in Zimbabwe. This has involved studies on war
veterans, survivors of the Chimurenga, survivors of the Gukurahundi, and now current
survivors together with the other organizations in the Human Rights Forum. A selection
of the reports available is given in Appendix 1.
Some crude statistics will illustrate the level of violence. Of 224 persons seen by the
AMANI Trust in 1995-1996, 98% report some form of torture. As can be seen from
Table 1 below, most had been detained, and a very high percentage reported a family
witness to their torture.
Table 1.
History of detention and witnesses
to own torture.
DETAINED:
Yes
77%
No
21%
WITNESSES:
Adult
39%
Children
38%