List of Organisations Represented at the Kariba Consultative Meeting:
Heads of Christian Denominations
Evangelical Fellowship of
National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO)
Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCZ)
Christian Students Union of
Musasa Project
National Association for the Care of the Handicap (NASCOH)
Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP)
NOVASC
Victims Action Committee (VAC)
Center for Peace Initiatives in
WASN
Institute of Theological Reflection Today ITRT
NB: This is only a list of organizations represented at the Kariba consultative workshop. A full list of all organizations in the civic society is in Appendix 5.4
Background: the need for National Reconciliation and Healing
Over the years since 1980, civil society organizations and churches in
After the constitution of the Organ for National Reconciliation and Healing in the new all- inclusive Government of Zimbabwe, the forum heartily welcomed this development and made contact with the Organ to explore ways of collaborating and working together.
The forum noted that Article VII of the historic Global Political Agreement (GPA) of September 15, 2008 states in part that the parties agreed to:
“ … give consideration to the setting up of a mechanism to properly advise on what measures might be necessary and practicable to achieve national healing, cohesion and unity in respect of victims of pre and post independence political conflict”
The agreement took cognizance of the fact that there were periods in
Such periods include:
The pre-independence war period
Gukurahundi
Land re-distribution
Operation Murambatsvina
Violence during elections
Others: as will be defined by the communities in specific localities
For national reconciliation and healing to take place effectively, it is necessary that the entire nation participates in a comprehensive, all- inclusive, holistic and clearly defined national process underpinned by strong political will and desire to reconcile and heal the nation.
At the Church and Civil Society Forum workshop held in Kariba over the period 12 – 15 May, 2009, the Forum, from its vantage position of representing various sectors of the Zimbabwean society, resolved to formally engage the Organ for National Reconciliation and Healing in the facilitation and implementation of national reconciliation and healing as envisaged in Article VII of the GPA.
In engaging Government in this process, the Forum took into cognizance the fact that for an effective, sustainable national reconciliation and healing process to take place, it was necessary to engage all stakeholders, including Government.
Guiding Vision, Principles and Values for National Healing and Reconciliation
Vision
We as CCSF envision National Healing and Reconciliation as a home grown inclusive process that will lay the foundations for a peaceful and cohesive Zimbabwean society; where the security of individuals and communities is guaranteed; where the dignity of the individual is respected; where broken relationships are healed; where trust is restored; and where diversity is celebrated.
Guiding Principles for a National Healing and Reconciliation Process
The following are the principles that should guide a national healing and reconciliation process:
Upholds truth and justice while cognizant that justice delayed is more likely to be justice denied
Rebuilds trust, strengthens relationships and enhances equity and social cohesion so as to ensure a healthy and prosperous society/ nation
Is proactive by laying the foundation for sustainable peace
Is all inclusive attending to particular needs and views of social groups like:
Victims
Perpetrators
The poor and disadvantaged
Minority groups
Women
Children
Facilitates holistic healing by providing psycho-social support, trauma healing, and spiritual restoration.
Provides security to both victims and perpetrators so that they can open up without fear of victimisation
Is contextually relevant by being home grown (By Zimbabweans)
Engages all stakeholders realising that the contribution of all Zimbabweans as individuals and social groups is needed.
Allows the views and healing needs the people express to guide the time cut off points and the healing process.
Guarantees the involvement of communities as equal partners through a grass roots oriented approach that considers community peculiarities.
Is committed to introspection and acknowledgement of the role that stakeholders have played in contributing to the undesirable environment
Is facilitated and implemented by people who acknowledge and address their own need for healing.
Respects and upholds the life, dignity and human rights of all citizens
Core Values for CCSF National Healing and Reconciliation
The following are the core values that guide the relationship between members of the CCSF:
Equality
Transparency
Honesty
Integrity
Shared leadership
Mutual respect
Cooperation
Accountability
Humility
Diversity
To treat each other with compassion
Strategic Objectives for a Sustainable National Healing and Reconciliation Process.
The strategic objectives are based on the observation of the fowlling critical factors:
That
That the resultant framework for National Healing and Reconciliation needs to be informed and guided by consideration of the grassroots’ input, views and desired outcome.
Given such factors, the strategic objectives for a sustainable process are therefore to:
Investigate views that stakeholders particularly the grassroots have regarding what should constitute a national healing and reconciliation process and provide awareness on the current reform processes in
Identify the conflict issues and dynamics that need to be addressed in order to achieve sustainable national healing and reconciliation.
Identify and provide for grassroots situations that require immediate relief interventions.
Built capacity within the grassroots communities for peace building, handling truth recovery and conflict resolution.
Determine the kind of truth recovery approach and justice that Zimbabweans want for sustainable national healing and reconciliation when the environment is more conducive through a generally accepted conclusion of the constitutional reforms that have a bearing on related processes such as media, electoral and political reforms.
Modalities for Implementation
Activities
Structural Activities
The forum will undertake various structural activities as outlined below:
The Kariba document will be presented to the Organ on National Healing and Reconciliation and the engagement of the organ will then be initiated thereof.
Member organisations present at the Kariba Consultative meeting will feedback to their structures on the output of the meeting
The first roll out activity will be the hosting of an all-stakeholder national consultative meeting. This meeting will be mandated to:
Make presentations on the formulation of CCSF to a wider stakeholder base.
Consolidate Healing and Reconciliation as a national process.
Invite more stakeholders into the forum.
Carry out a Peace-building skills audit among stakeholders in order to create database of practitioners.
Intervention Activities
The intervention activities are as ascribed below:
Stage 1: National Sensitization Process
The intervention activities will begin with the national sensitization process which will allow the forum to listen to the people’s concerns, needs and expectations for the national healing and reconciliation process.
Sensitization Process Guidelines:
This process allows for an understanding of the context of the extent of the conflict effects, which will later inform further processes as assessed by the research team of the forum.
The process must firstly encourage open expression of grief & rage triggered by the conflict. This must be within a CONTEXT PROCESS i.e. to be implemented through the cultural and traditional norms and structures of the particular community.
The process can thenspecifically involve the following:
Civic Education on the National Healing and Reconciliation Initiative and its relation to the Global Political Agreement and the Constitutional Reform Process.
Allowing for communities to express their concerns and their desired outcomes from the national healing and reconciliation process.
Recording the concerns and input of the communities for transmission to the research team/department.
Familiarisation with the community members, processes, structures, cultures, history, conflict perspective and other important indicators.
Building relationships with communities.
Stage 2: Mapping
At this stage the sensitization team will then provide information to allow the research team to do the following:
Understand the conflict perspectives in the communities from a practical angle.
Relate the reality on the ground to the national perspective.
Understand the major conflict motivations and their specific context and inter-relations.
Identify immediate key needs for parallel processes that can be followed (e.g. relief work, trauma treatment, trauma counseling, re-integration of displaced, livelihoods programs etc).
Stage 3:
Start to build community capacity building programs for communities as informed by stage 1 and stage 2.
The capacity building programs must address the following:
Dismantling Bias and Prejudice
Conflict grows from biases & prejudices regarding culture, ethnicity, gender, religion, political affiliation, nationality, language, handicap, skills, etc.
Developing Skills in Interest-Based Processes
There will be need to develop skills within local communities to implement agreed strategies e.g. group facilitation, public dialogue, strategic planning, collaborative negotiation, mediation etc. Communities will normally respond to being empowered to run their own programs or to being part of the teams running programs.
Capacity building programs must then be designed for each community (ward or cell) taking into account the arising contextual needs. Some generic outline of such programs will highlight the following:
Communication Skills
Negotiation Skills
Emotional Processing Skills (e.g. working through rage and guilt, assuage of grief & loss
Mediation Skills
Counseling Skills
Conflict Resolution Systems Design Skills (To prevent future disputes and to resolve future disputes before they become intractable)
Stage 4: Institutionalisation
This helps manage or prevent future conflicts within the community without the outbreak of violence, & without outside intervention.
Institutionalisation also involves the creation of “WARD PEACE AUDIT TEAMS” or “CELL PEACE TEAMS” to identify the systematic sources of violent conflicts and potential threats to peace in the community.
Other Parallel Processes
It is important to note that as the linear processes are being pursued as discussed above, there will be need to identify other parallel process that may arise due to the realised needs in the communities.
Re-integration
There could still be persons who were displaced during the conflicts who are still away from their natural communities. Once such needs are realized, reintegration processes must be ensured as parallel processes.
Framework of Re-integration
Reintegration must focus on physical, social, economic and spiritual re-integration of persons back into their natural environments, state of life, mind and heart.
Trauma Healing and Treatment
Some victims of trauma have had no treatment or counseling to-date. It will be important to note such cases and immediately refer them for any such need.
There may also be immediate cases for the need for restitution and compensation. Where any such cases are clear, it will be important to consider them.
Total Framework and Implementation Design
The total framework and design of the implementation process will be informed by the sensitisation from the various communities. The forum will not be prescriptive but will attain input from the affected communities and will thus develop implementation and frameworks based on context and community needs and requirements.
Lobbying and Advocacy
The forum will establish a lobbying and advocacy wing which will engage with the following processes:
Parliamentary and Legislative processes
Constitutional Reform Process
The Political processes (i.e. the GPA)
Community processes
The Media
National Vision building processes in order to counter the inherent culture of violence and disrespect for the sanctity of human life.
Supporting Structures
National Structure
The forum will operate as a coalition of Church and Civil Society organisations, run by a secretariat of persons seconded from the membership. (Refer to Appendix 5.3)
Grassroots Structure
The forum will ride on the available nationwide network of its membership. It will therefore establish provincial and district structures which will eventually feed into the ward and cell structures. The guideline is to facilitate a bottom-up and victim-centered process, which will ensure contextual relevance in all interventions developed.
Functional Structure
The structure of the forum will comprehensively cover the following:
Administration
Fundraising
Media Liaison
Lobbying, Policy Cordination and Advocacy
Research
Documentation and Publication
Resources needed to effect implementation
Personnel trained in peace-building and other requisite areas
Budget
Equipment and facilities
Appendices
Definition of Terms
National Healing – a process of healing the spiritual, emotional and socio-economic damage from dysfunctional conflict, that acknowledges the truth of what happened and upholds justice while implementing peace monitoring and building mechanisms to prevent further such or new counter productive conflict in order to achieve more social cohesion and open the way for socio-economic recovery and progress.
Justice – Establishing factual truth about a case and impartially arriving at a fair resolution that upholds the rule of law and affirms human rights and dignity.
Restorative justice – is a community based way of holding perpetrators accountable for wrongs committed by bringing the victim and the perpetrator to a settlement through establishing and acknowledging the truth, restoring losses so that there wrongs are not repeated and to begin healing of the relationship between the two and that they can build trust to peacefully live together.
Retributive justice – is based on the established law legal means to punish the perpetrator as a corrective and deterrent measure, and a way of making him/her accountable.
Transitional justice – is ensuring justice and fairness in dealing with past offences and crimes in a period of movement from an unwanted post conflict situation to a desired situation that restores normalcy, equity, peace and social cohesion.
Reconciliation – is a process (or the end of such a process) that deals with the past through confession, listening, restitution and forgiveness to restore peaceful co-existence, mutual respect and commitment to building trust between groups or parties that have been at conflict.
Accountability – is to allow the rule of law, an authority or others to assess and determine one’s conformity to a standard through transparency and accepting responsibility over one’s action instead of acting with impunity.
Compensation – is repayment in some form as acknowledgement and redress of injustice perpetrated to somebody in a given society.
Truth telling – is recovering and acknowledging the truth of what happened by allowing for honest verbal disclosure of, and expression of emotions from, the full facts in order to facilitate settlement and healing.
NOTE:
A working group will be set up to work on comprehensive technical as well as theological or sector specific definitions of terms and concepts on the subject of national healing.
Communication Strategy
Father Chiromba (HOCD) will be spearhead all communication on behalf of the Forum.
The role of the media team will be to ensure that any communication from Father Chiromba is broadcast to the intended audience, at the approriate time and in the appropriate manner and form.
National and grassroot structures of the Forum members will also be utilised for communication processes, as cordinated from the Father Chiromba through the Media team.
Other Potential Organizations Under CCSF
Christian Care
Crisis Coalition
General Agriculture & Plantations Union of
Lawyers for Human Rights
LDS
MAZ
Media Institute of
NCFWC
Peace Builders’ Network of
Zimbawe Congress of Trade Unions
ZFCM
ZimRights
NFBCZ
Ruwadzano
ZACH
UDACISSA
Council of Chiefs
Business council of
Law Society of
War Veterans Association
Combined
National Constitutional Assembly
Diaspora
Artists for Democracy
Unthunzini/Mumvuri Association
Funding modalities
The organisations that have been raising funding for the Forum are: HOCD, NANGO and Christian Alliance these have been mandate to continue untill December 2009 when a new funding strategy will be initiatited. Other Individuals organisation will also continue to contribute as needs arise.
