The Zimbabwean Experience of Transitional Justice during election periods have been common. However, there is probably a terrible learning that has happened over the decades, and this is that summary executions are not necessary to maintain compliance: this can be done by torture alone. This seems very evident in the strategic aim of the violence over 2000–12. I have not dealt with Operation Murambatsvina,26 or the massive displacements of commercial farm workers,27 and it is clear that there is whole chapter to be written on the use of displacements and the political manipulation of food. These, too, may be systematic and widespread enough to conform to the notion of a crime against humanity, but the paper did not allow for this. So we are left with the legacy of several decades of organized violence and torture as we move towards a new democratic dispensation in Zimbabwe. We hope that we will learn the lessons this time around, perhaps assisted by the knowledge that South Africa and others have done so in new developments in the field of human rights accounting. However, whatever the process of accounting is in the future, it seems critical to future generations that we document our history accurately and honestly, for if we reduce the range of permissible lies, then maybe, just maybe, this will prevent recurrences of the violence. History will not be a panacea in itself, but, as each generation moves further and further away from the epoch of violence, so they become less empathic to the events that afflicted previous generations: it is a serious finding that young people today think that life was better under Ian Smith, or that transitional justice should not concern itself with periods before 1980. Forgetting or ignoring can become a form of impunity, too. 26  The Aftermath of a Disastrous Venture: A Follow-up Report on ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2005); ‘Crime of Poverty’: Murambatsvina Part II, incorporating ‘Hide and Seek’: An Account of Finding the Forcibly Displaced in Rural Matabeleland, July–September 2005 (Harare and Johannesburg: Solidarity Peace Trust, 2005). 27  Adding Insult to Injury: A Preliminary Report on Human Rights Violations on Commercial Farms, 2000 to 2005 (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Report by the Forum and JAG, 2007); Reckless Tragedy: Irreversible? A Survey of Human Rights Violations and Losses Suffered by Commercial Farmers and Farm Workers from 2000 to 2008 (Harare: Justice for Agriculture Trust, Report prepared by RAU, 2008). International Conference on Transitional Justice, Zimbabwe 45

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