3. The context of violence and impunity in Zimbabwe Zimbabwe is a country that has been engulfed by a culture of violence and impunity since pre-colonial times. This phenomenon can be traced to the historical tribal wars during the pre-colonial era. The violence was to be further evidenced in the arrival of the colonial settlers who unleashed violence on the indigenous populations in Zimbabwe up to 1980 when the country gained independence. Moreover, violence was predominant during the war of liberation amongst the black liberation fighters themselves. This has not been well-documented. Well-documented evidence abounds for the atrocities in Matabeleland in the 1980s, the violent invasions of farms starting from the year 2000 and in the various elections held in Zimbabwe. In 2005, the Government of Zimbabwe was involved in serious human rights violations during the controversial clearing up of slums exercise in 2005 known as Operation Murambatsvina. Most recently, Zimbabwe is still grappling with the aftermath of the violence that gripped the country in 2008 during the Harmonized elections in March 2008 and the failed June 27 Run off Presidential election. Impunity and the failure to hold perpetrators accountable have largely prevailed in most of the situations that have been mentioned above. Human rights abuses perpetrated, encouraged or tolerated primarily by the state and its agents continue to this day. Most of these violations have constituted criminal and civil wrongs and have led to loss, pain, grief, distrust, uncertainty, suspicion, grievance, anger and dislocation. Tracing Policies of Impunity in Zimbabwe The Lancaster House Constitution that brought independence to Zimbabwe was fraught with agreements that abetted the culture of impunity over human rights violations that had occurred since the colonial days. Silence about the past was supposed to heal the nation and assist the politics of reconciliation that was being advocated for by the Mugabe government at independence. Thus on independence day in 1980, Mugabe persuasively told the nation that: 11