To complement these community-based initiatives, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have embarked on peace building exercises and outreach programmes in the various communities in Zimbabwe. In these outreach programmes CSOs provide platforms for victims to speak out, in small groups, on their experiences of political violence (Church and Civil Society Forum. 2012). A CSO, Heal Zimbabwe, for instance conducted 144 memorial services for victims of the 2008 political violence in districts of Zimbabwe between 2010 and 2011.40 The former Minister of the now defunct Organ on National Healing Reconciliation and Integration41, Sekai Holland advocated for a cultural model known as “Kusvutisana fodya‖(sharing snuff/cigarettes) under which perpetrators and victims would discuss and amicably resolve their grievances before sharing tobacco as a sign of reconciliation (Church and Civil Society Forum CCSF. 2012). 5. Overall Conclusions It is evident that Zimbabwe, in common with most other authoritarian countries, has been unable to make use of many of the transitional justice mechanisms that can be used in the post-transition period. This is not surprising since in an authoritarian state such as Zimbabwe, few have a vested interest in accountability when such accountability will directly affect the interests of the ruling elite. And Zimbabwe, despite the views of many commentators that the country is in a transitional state, is not in the kind of transition where transitional justice has any realistic chance of being applied. Here one only has to point to the timorous manner in which the constitutional requirement for the setting up of the NPRC is being approached and the highly contentious gazetting of the NPRC bill. Notwithstanding, the years of hard work by civil society resulted in a significant victory in the 2013 Constitution that requires the establishment of the NPRC. Zimbabwean civil society has faced all the hurdles in a very innovative fashion, not the least of which is the setting up of the NTJWG, bolstered by the huge number of reliable and authoritative reports on gross human rights violations since 1980. Furthermore, the creative use of other jurisdictions and bodies has bolstered all the claims made in these reports, and there can be no doubt that all Zimbabweans and the international community accept that gross human rights violations are now common knowledge. It may even be, certainly since 2008, that all of this action has had a restraining influence on the government‟s propensity to use violence as an instrument of political persuasion. The question here is whether there are still lessons that Zimbabwe should learn from the experiences of other countries dealing with authoritarian regimes. It does not appear so. There does not seem to be a single transitional justice mechanism that could be possibly applied pre-transition, that have not already been realistically applied. And where a mechanism seemed to be impossible, Zimbabwean civil society has found another way to keep the demand and the momentum going. It has also used novel strategies such as the use of civil litigation, and, above all, has successfully drawn in the support of regional and 45