HEAL ZIMBABWE - BASELINE STUDY REPORT The liberation struggle is seen as an issue requiring reconciliation because the period involved killings between the white colonialists and the black majority who were natives of the Zimbabwean state. However, there were also atrocities among the black liberation war fighters emanating from ethnocentric fundamentalism and power dynamics among the liberation movements including Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) –mainly. The killings experienced during the Nhari rebellion and the Mugagao Declaration are such examples where black liberation war fighters killed each other.42 In addition, women were raped, used as human shields and at times used as bait to trap opponents. Zimbabwe Government of National Unity(GNU) principals with President Thabo Mbeki, (2008) Source: Reuters/Antony Njuguna Gukurahundi: Was the first post-independence conflict that led to fatalities.43 A traditional leader in Tsholotsho described Gukurahundi as “an armed conflict displaying an unproportional response to the so called dissident threat which made the conflict and ethnic genocide.”44 According to the affected communities, Gukurahundi conflict had different levels of conflicts namely (i) the State vs. Citizens, (ii) Ndebele versus Shona and then (iii) Ndebele vs. Ndebele etc. Initially, the state sponsored the violence against dissidents and their proxies who it perceived as sources of political instability. They were not separated from ordinary citizens who were of Matabeleland origin. The blur of identity led to mass killings of innocent civilians. Second, the victims of the Gukurahundi (in the Matebeleland and Midlands provinces) shifted the blame from the state, (the sponsor of violence) to the Shona people; hence a continuous tribal conflict between the Ndebele and Shona people emerged. Third, hatred escalated among Ndebele people who were in PF ZAPU versus those in ZANU. Enos White, L. (2003). The assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and politics in Zimbabwe. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. 43 Tauten, B. (2015). “A recipe for another war of revenge”: The Lasting Impacts of the Gukurahundi on Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. Dissertation. Oxford Brookes University. Retrieved from: http://architecture.brookes.ac.uk/research/cendep/ dissertations/BenTeuten.pdf 44 Personal interview with a War Veteran Leader in Mbire on the 6th of July 2016. 42 25