Keynote Address Transitional justice is not reducible to four or five pillars and a package deal of interventions flown in by experts and funders, who may advise that one cannot look back any further than 1980 or 1960 when the living-memory-times before clearly shape the now. Public state-led efforts at changing the mainstream narrative are to be handled with care, always. Transitional justice needs its mechanics and its time periods so that efforts at repair and restoration can be handled by legal and other state processes. At the same time, dealing with the past is not and need not stay limited within those bounds. Hence, the processes we create around official transitional justice and state measures are as critical as are those at the centre of attention. Dealing with the past happens with or without the transitional justice experts, and not all stories can or should be told in a temporary, often symbolic, transitional justice process. Multiple spaces can be made where they are told. The African chance in being the central focus of transitional justice efforts worldwide is to innovate, to refuse the pre-packaged deal and to be inventive: How de we enable acknowledgement and the concrete repair and betterment of lives for those who suffered? How do we enable consciousness and transformation for those who inflicted harm, on grounds of their own unseen, unattended pains of the past? This is not to romanticize traditions that badly need an overhaul but to use their deep cultural resourcefulness for dialogue, in a quest for justice and peace. It is also not to vilify international criminal justice as a mere Western hegemonic invention set to neo-colonize Africa but to point out its contradictions, its limitations in the African context. It is not to be naive about bringing the victims and perpetrators of particular deeds together, thinking that speaking and encounter is always beneficial. There is a need to create spaces where Zimbabwe can have the conversation about itself – past, present and future – as it becomes possible, and especially across generations, with young people. There is a need to allow young people to make up their own minds, rather than lecturing them about experiences they have not had, that are not part of their reality. There is a need to speak about how men and women have experienced the situation differently and what they need to recover, transform and heal. I reiterate that the African chance is to innovate – to refuse the pre-packaged deal. Not to buy what the transitional justice experts, like myself, say, but to make your own, using your own vitality creativity and courage. Follow your hearts and invent the best possible conversation for this moment in time, be it national, or International Conference on Transitional Justice, Zimbabwe 17