STAKEHOLDERS CONFERENCE on TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE PRINCIPLES IN ZIMBABWE CONFERENCE REPORT AUGUST 2015 subjected to wide-consultation, especially with the victims. It was also noted that since there was a possibility of some future activities of the truth commissions to duplicate work that was already being done by the HRC, there was need to engage already existing commissions more and the conference was part of the process for greater involvement. 3.2.4 Presentation on Draft Principles for Memorialisation In his presentation on Memorialisation Rev Motsi said it is a process in which people as a nation try to remember their past in a manner that allows to building a better future and achieve healing. He said memorialisation is an opportunity to rewrite history and at the same time to process traumatised memory otherwise it may result in another conict. He said memorialisation was both an objective and subjective process. It must never be made a private project. He went on to outline some principles that are fundamental to memorialisation. Plenary Discussions In the plenary, there was an emphasis on the transitional justice journey being a long one even though Zimbabwe is just at the beginning. Therefore there was a need for a strong legal grounding, and the Zimbabwean constitution provides that grounding. It was also noted through the discussions that creating a sense of identity for memorialisation was important through government involvement in National Memorialisation projects. It was agreed that the memorialisation initiative must be implemented as part of a holistic approach to dealing with the past. There was also need to have alternative histories and support of local memorialisation initiatives. Further, there was a call for balance in the multiple narratives, and the politicians are guarded against using memorialisation to re-victimise the victims. There was also need to document memorialisation to avoid distortion or falsication of information by perpetrators that easily transform themselves to be victims by pulling the race or ethnicity card. 20