The post-transition period will pose enormous problems for any notion of vetting. Although the NTJWG has published in its Guiding Principles for Transitional Justice Policy and Practice in Zimbabwe a set of guidelines for vetting (NTJWG. 2015): a. Public employees who are personally responsible for gross human rights violations or serious crimes under international law must be excluded from public service to re-establish public trust and re-legitimise public institutions; b. Vetting must not be solely on the basis of group or party affiliation as this tends to cast the net too wide and to remove public employees of integrity who bear no individual responsibility for past abuses; c. In vetting, there is need for a strategic approach targeting critical areas. These are useful guidelines, but, given the scale of the violations since 1980 and the numbers of public employees involved, this will obviously be a very complex process, with the potential of wholly de-stabilising the state. Vetting will, therefore, require very careful thought. 4.7.7 Reparations Reparations are a thorny matter as a transitional justice mechanism, especially in countries where there have been mass human rights violations. They are rarely a mechanism seen in the pre-transitional period, but they did increase post-transition. Reparations were significantly more frequent in African countries, but this is explicable perhaps because of the importance of compensation in traditional justice systems. Certainly this is the case for Zimbabwe, and the surveys of Zimbabwean citizens show the high priority given to compensation (RAU. 2009; Human Rights Forum. 2011). Interestingly, in both studies there seemed to be the understanding that individual perpetrators might find it difficult to be made responsible for compensation, and that the state should then be responsible. It is also interesting that the other aspects of reparation, best described under the Joinet Principles – restitution, rehabilitation AND compensation – are rarely mentioned by citizens. The issue of reparation has had a chequered history in Zimbabwe. Building on the colonial support to victims under the Indemnity and Compensation Act, the Zimbabwe government promulgated the War Victims Compensation Act, which was aimed at giving victims that had suffered physical injury during the Liberation War access to a disability pension (Reeler. 1998). The criteria were based on those in the Workmen‟s Compensation Act, and make no mention of disability due to psychological damage, nor to the right to rehabilitation. The whole process of awarding compensation was undermined by the revelations in 1997 that the Act had been corruptly used to benefit select individuals. There was considerable discussion in the judicial commission set up to investigate the corruption about the likely costs of full compensation to all the victims, including those with psychological disability, and it evident that any adherence to international principles, such as those developed by the Governing Council of the United Nations Compensation Commission, would bankrupt the country. Additionally, there was the very difficult matter of making the current government liable for the violations committed under a previous government.39 39 Such discussions about compensation will undoubtedly be coloured by the previous history of the payouts to the war veterans in 1997, which led to the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar, as well as uncovering the massive corruption in the awards under the War Victims Compensation Act. 43