23
In all, 260 survivors were consulted during the process, which began with an analysis of the history of
the Liberation and its effects on the participants25. This followed a several stage process, as follows:
Historical analysis: identification of key local events, including battles, arrests, torture,
and the roles played by the participants:
Linkages: identification of linkages between key events and subsequent torture;
Livelihood analysis: identification of modes of coping during this time;
Institutional analysis: identification of major perpetrators and their bases, camps, etc.
This data was collated and then fed back to the participants, with the major aim of providing a local
history of events.
Subsequent workshops then focused on the development of an advocacy campaign, in which the
following themes emerged:
Establishment of a District register of survivors of torture;
Expansion of the War Victims Compensation Act to cover torture survivors more fully;
Expansion of outreach programmes of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to
explicitly target survivors of torture;
Deliberate inclusion in all economic and social development programmes.
The programme was developing extremely well, and the final stages were beginning to be put in place.
These involved the setting up of an organizational structure for the victims, and the start of a campaign
to lobby the Zimbabwe Parliament on the needs of survivors. Unfortunately, this programme came
under threat during the 2000 Parliamentary election, and was forced to close down in late 2000.
4.3.2
“Sellouts”
An additional concern within the advocacy campaign was that of those survivors living within the
community who would have been identified as “sellouts” during the Liberation War. As was noted in
the previous monograph, not all survivors were victims of the Rhodesian security forces, and 10% of
the cases seen reported being victims of the guerrilla forces. Many of those identified by the community
or the guerrillas as “sellouts” were tortured and summarily executed, leaving their families alienated
and unsupported in the community. Many of the families moved away from the community to other
parts of Zimbabwe in order to avoid the stigmatisation that came with the label, but some returned
after a number of years.
The Amani Trust, in both its clinical and community work, came across such persons, and was alarmed
to discover that the labels still applied, and that these folk had not been re-integrated into the
communities in which they were living. A small research project was established in 1999 within the
advocacy programme to identify these families, and to determine their needs and problems. The
intention here was to find ways to re-integrate these families fully into their communities, but,
unfortunately, the project, despite collecting interesting data, was unable to continue after the
elections in 2000.
4.4
Permaculture gardens and income-generation
This aspect of the community programme was predicated, as mentioned above, on the findings about
the poverty experienced by the survivors and their families. It began with a programme of training
representatives of the survivor groups set up in the principles and practices of permaculture. The aim
25
See MHETURA, J (1999), Living with trauma: justice and reparation after the Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe, HARARE:
AMANI TRUST.
AMANI TRUST: Psycho-Social assistance to Survivors of the Liberation War.
A report on Mashonaland Central Province, Zimbabwe.
Select target paragraph3
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