Community efforts towards rebuilding relations destroyed by
political violence continue to be hailed. Villagers in Buhera West
continue to meet regularly under the Heal Zimbabwe Trust’s Kugara
Hunzwanana peace building programme which was introduced in 2011.
The
programme is a response to the realization that after the 2008
political violence period people in the same community and from
different political parties have not been "seeing eye to eye” due to the
tension and conflict brought by politically motivated violence.
The
situation is made worse by the fact that the violence was between
people of the same communities who continue to see each other more
often. Victims and perpetrators try to avoid each other but their
proximity to each other makes it difficult. Heal Zimbabwe Trust realized
that there are some traditional practices that can bring people
together across the political divide and reclaim community peace that
existed before the unfortunate 2008 violence.
It is sad that most
of the cases of political violence in rural communities are initiated by
outsiders, it might be politicians or state machinery but it is the
local people who are left to do the "dirty job” of writing names of
perceived enemies and doing the actual beatings, killing of people and
destroying their sources of livelihoods.
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