Resist, Reject and Report Violence, #RRRV2023
The March 2022 by-elections, considered by many as a dry run for the 2023 harmonized
elections were also characterized by various manifestations of organised violence and
torture. In the first half of 2022, the ZPP documented a total of 1267 politically motivated
human rights violations and between January and December 2795.
All these examples of violence can, due to their systematic and widespread nature, all be
characterised as gross human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity
as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The fear that is
harvested from the acts of violence hampers participation in public processes as it
results in voter apathy on the part of the electorate. After all, in the words of Gautama
Buddha: “All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life”.
Harvested fear as a tool for political repression
The residual effects of the ethnic genocide of the 1980s left behind a myriad of problems
but more significantly, a legacy of fear that the country’s electorate is still reeling from
today. It is easy to concentrate on the number of deaths as being the only major
negative consequence of the ethnic genocide of the 1980s but for the purposes of this
report, it is critical to zone in on the excessive amount of fear that was harvested during
this period. It is worth noting that aside from the appalling number of deaths, those
years left behind a number of not just physical, but psychological scars. This was the case
for both primary victims (those subjected to direct physical torture) and secondary
victims (those forced to witness such torture) and who all to this day continue to suffer
from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When such victims speak of that
period to their children, and to their children’s children and so on as the cycle of life ebbs
and flows, it is never in glowing terms. They transfer their pain, their suffering, their
sense of injustice, and their general mistrust of government officials and processes each
time they recount the horrors they faced. It is in so doing that secondary trauma is born
and an electorate in a permanent state of fear is raised.
In the last quarter of 2022, ZPP, in partnership with the Forum and the National
Transitional Justice Working Group (the NTJWG) conducted an Election and Human
Rights Dialogue Series in Gweru Chiundura on 29 October 2022. Out of the 88
participants successfully mobilized for this dialogue, 6 identified as primary victims of
past electoral violence while 4 identified as secondary victims. From these ten, only one
of the victims was male.
January 2023
The Zimbabwe Peace Project Monthly Monitoring Report
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