However, the violence continued after Mugabe ascended the premiership. In January 1883, he sent
the 5thBrigade to Matabeleland South, Matabeleland North and Midlands provinces to raid
communities supporting the opposition party Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) According to
a report from the Zimbabwean Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and the Legal
Resources Foundation published in 1997,2these raids referred to as Gukurahundi, resulted in the
“killings of thousands of civilians, the beatings of entire villages and the rape and torture of many
innocent individuals [which] were carried out as part of a planned strategy”. Approximately 20,000
deaths have been related to the Gukurahundi.3
In 1988, with ZAPU demoralized and no longer perceived to be a threat, a General Notice (GN)
257/A/1988 was published granting amnesty to perceived “dissidents”, collaborators and members
of ZAPU. In 1990, the 1988 amnesty was renewed, but this time including the state’s uniformed
forces that had been responsible for Gukurahundi.
Human rights violations continued under Mugabe’s government, including imprisonment, enforced
disappearance, murder, torture and rape. Targets were mainly primarily political opponents and aid
workers. Several amnesties followed in 1993, 1996 and 2000. The latter benefited ZANU-PF
supporters who were implicated in politically motivated violence against opposition supporters.4
By 2000 Mugabe lost the support of the West, which sought to punish him for his human rights
records, as such sanctions against him weakened his economy. The sanctions led to hyperinflation of
almost 231 million percent5, leaving 80% of the population unemployed and crashing the national
health system.
In 2008, the campaign for presidential elections was marked by state-sponsored violence against
supporters of the opposition Movement for a Democratic Change (MDC). The security services and
ZANU-PF militia perpetrated human right violations such as arbitrary arrests and detentions and
enforced disappearances.
To stabilize a deteriorating situation, in September 2008, President Mugabe and both heads of the
MDC factions, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara signed the Global Political Agreement (GPA)
which came into effect in February 2009 and established a unity government in which Mugabe
remained as President and Tsvangirai became Prime Minister.
Mugabe remained in power until he was forced to step down by his party in 2017. Subsequently, his
deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa` was sworn in and he retained the position after the 2018.
This paper seeks to examine the question of amnesty and whether it is pragmatic to effect it as a
healing and reconciliation mechanism within the context of Zimbabwe. This is mirrored against the
background of more than three decades of massive human rights violations, the existing sociopolitical sensitivities and the need for the country to heal and confidently face the future. The paper
critically examines case studies of countries that have gone through similar transitions and uses the
lessons learnt from them to provide pragmatic, country specific and actionable recommendations for
Zimbabwe.
2
Cited in Scarnecchia, Timothy. Op. Cit.
MandikwazaEdnowledge, Op. Cit.
4
MandikwazaEdnowledge, Op. Cit.
5
International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, Crisis
http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/crises/crisis-in-zimbabwe
3
in
Zimbabwe,
available
at:
2