STATE security personnel should not be involved in the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) processes as they were major perpetrators of political violence, a senior official at Heal Zimbabwe Trust has said.
BY KENNETH NYANGANI
Heal Zimbabwe Trust programmes manager Sithabile Dewa told NewsDay last Thursday that many people were questioning the independence of the commission given the involvement of State security apparatus in its formative stages.
“We are conducting national consultative meetings on the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission scrutinising the NPRC and the Bill that was gazetted in December 2015. We are conducting the meetings in conjunction with different organisations working in different provinces across the country,’’ she said.
“People are questing the independence of the NPRC in light of the involvement of some of the State apparatus as actual perpetrators of political violence. So, we are getting mixed feelings from the people. The Bill is not clear on justice on how the perpetrators are going to be dealt with.’’
Dewa added: “Heal Zimbabwe is conducting a research in terms of carrying out random surveys just to ascertain whether people know the content of the Bill and from the analysis we are getting from the result, it looks 90% of the participants do not know about the existence of the NPRC, let alone the Bill.”
Zimbabwe has five independent commissions namely—Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, Zimbabwe Gender Commission, Zimbabwe Media Commission and National Peace and Reconciliation Commission.
