BULAWAYO – President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Gukurahundi hearing process, launched in July 2024 as the Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Programme, is facing strong criticism for lacking any legal backing and falling short of internationally accepted transitional justice standards.
The initiative aims to address the atrocities committed during 1982-1987 in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands provinces, but is widely seen as a superficial effort led by traditional leaders rather than an independent truth and justice mechanism.
The 2024-2025 State of Peace Report by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) released this week has highlighted the absence of credible, independent mechanisms to facilitate truth recovery, accountability, reparations, and institutional reforms that are necessary for national healing.
Critics, including Dzikamai Bere, National Director of ZimRights, have condemned the process as a “pseudo-transitional justice” exercise that excludes authentic participation of victims and lacks an independent commission, as mandated by Zimbabwe’s 2013 Constitution.
“What we are going to have in the chief’s led process is pseudo-transitional justice. We are going to go through choreographed motions of truth-telling that have no authentic participation of the victims” Bere said
Siphosami Malunga, a human rights lawyer, activist, and scholar, has also spoken out on the initiative’s shortcomings.
“Chiefs alone cannot resolve Gukurahundi because on the face of it, it is criminal in nature,” he said.
Operationally, the process reportedly has no policy framework and violates the Guiding Principles for Transitional Justice Policy and Practice adopted by Zimbabwean civil society groups.
It falls outside the mandate of the Ministry of Justice, which critics say has taken over the process without proper authority.
“The process has no legal foundation and operates without any policy framework. The process violates the Guiding Principles for Transitional Justice Policy and Practice in Zimbabwe, developed and adopted by civil society organisations under the banner of the National Transitional Justice Working Group in Zimbabwe (NTJWG) in September 2015.
“It is therefore not surprising that the process has been mainly a backyard show for the Ministry of Justice, which has no mandate to handle transitional justice.
Since its beginning, three activists have been displaced from the Matabeleland region for being critical of the process,” the report stated.
Observers also cite over-securitisation, harassment of critical activists, and a lack of transparency as major concerns, undermining public trust.
The broader constitutional Peace Architecture established in 2013 intended to handle transitional justice, including the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC), has largely failed.
The NPRC’s ten-year mandate ended in 2023 with little progress on Gukurahundi justice and reconciliation, sabotaged by government interference and resource starvation, according to the report.
Mnangagwa, who initiated the hearing process, served as State Security Minister and enforcer for then-leader Robert Mugabe in the 1980s, a period during which the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army massacred an estimated 20,000 innocent civilians.
