ROHR Zimbabwe was privileged to attend this year’s opening ceremony of Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) held in Harare from 28 April to 3 May.
The event, coined under the theme Enlightenment, marked the 10th Anniversary of the prestigious arts festival, an interesting parallel to the 10 years struggle for the democratization of Zimbabwe.
What we admired most was the fact that at some point in the show, a big screen in front started showing all names of people who were murdered in last year’s election due to political violence engineered by the ZANU PF government as retribution for losing the 29 March elections vote to Movement for Democratic Change. The play captured a trajectory of the evolvement of Zimbabwe from an epoch of chaos and misunderstanding to one that appreciates our individual uniqueness. Enlightenment matures people towards a greater understanding and appreciation of our plurality and we will be far more suited towards tolerating one another during elections.
The theme portrayed at HIFA resonates with our thinking at ROHR Zimbabwe and that of our members we consulted. There is need for truth and justice in Zimbabwe as a pre-requisite for any appeals for forgiveness and/or forgetfulness).
Questions are still asked about what really happened to all the people who died between April and September 2008. Even as the Government is still to finalise appointments of public officials, questions are still raised about the involvement of some of the legislators and cabinet ministers in the violence that swept through the nation like a Tsunami tidal wave. We need answers on who was involved in what and to what end? Why? And how that happened? In any case, the number and kind of questions we ask will determine the number and kind of answers we get!
For people to forgive anyhow, they need to know the person/people to forgive and for what. Mass forgiveness will not work! Without a holistic approach to the subject, the Government’s Forgive and Forget campaign will just be a cosmetic solution to bridging through this transitional period. Unfortunately civil unrest that revealed itself this year in the form of retributive violence will continue and probably transform itself into other forms that we can never begin to imagine at this point.
To know more about ROHR Zimbabwe please visit our website on www.rohrzimbabwe.org or check out our new blog on www.rohrzimbabwe.blogspot.com
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