ZIMBABWE: FROM IMPUNITY TO ACCOUNTABILITY The formal documents agreed at the close of the symposium 2 3 consisted of a Declaration and a Summary of the basic issues needing attention. The latter document contained an outline of the mechanisms requiring implementation if justice in Zimbabwe is to become a reality. These two documents, together with the papers presented and the resource materials due to be published, were to be used in the ongoing campaign inside Zimbabwe to insist that the needs of victims are fully met in transition and afterwards. 2. CONTEXT The current Zimbabwe crisis is multi-layered and multi-faceted. The most recent spate of gross and systematic human rights abuses has taken place in a climate of economic collapse, compounded by drought and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The ZanuPF Government’s use of the land question to hold on to political 4 power has exacerbated the all-round crisis . Food, fuel and many other basic commodities are in short supply, and beyond the reach of millions of Zimbabweans who cannot afford black-market prices. Corruption is rampant, and the vast majority of the population is in dire economic straights. Health, educational and environmental structures are disintegrating. Organised political violence has become entrenched. Torture is routinely practiced 5 and is widespread. The police, army, recently-instituted youth 2 Appendix I. 3 Appendix II. 4 Zanu-PF denies that the land reform programme was suddenly implemented in 2000 as a pretext and method for staying in power. However, the violent and widespread invasions of commercial farms began in early March 2000, a fortnight after the Government lost the Constitutional Referendum which would have entrenched its position, and a few months before the June 2000 general parliamentary elections in which it faced a real challenge in the shape of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC, only formed in September 1999, had been one of the main bodies leading the call for a “No” vote in the Referendum. Faced with almost certain defeat at the polls in a free and fair June election, Zanu-PF unleashed the campaign of terror that continues to this day. All serious players in Zimbabwe recognize the need for land reform, which nevertheless was racially manipulated in early 2000 as a crude populist issue and to physically attack all those opposed to Zanu-PF hegemony. In the process the rule of law has been destroyed. 5 For a comprehensive survey and analysis of Zimbabwe from the perspective of torture survivors see REDRESS: Reparation for Torture: A Survey of the Law and Practice of Torture 2