Wakanda News Details

Gukurahundi hearings postponed to next year

National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) commissioner Geoffrey Chada says the commission would look into the issue of the Gukurahundi genocide next year during public hearings. Evans Mathanda Chada said this on Tuesday during an NPRC capacity-building workshop in Harare which discussed the commission's activities to be rolled out next year, including the public hearings. He, however, said the commission was facing challenges in that there was lack of dialogue between the NPRC and citizens, adding that people also did not understand its role. Chada said lack of knowledge on the terms of reference of the NPRC, had hindered progress because people were not presenting complaints to the commission. “Issues like Gukurahundi are actually things that we expect to be raised during our public hearings, however, Gukurahundi is not the only crisis that the commission is going to be dealing with next year,” Chada said. “There are a lot of crisis situations in the country like the issue of resettling of the people in Chiyadzwa and other areas like Chimanimani that have been affected by natural disasters. All these issues of need to be well addressed in order to foster national healing”, he said. Chada said the NPRC was in the process of identifying issues of paramount importance that affected people, including those of electoral violence. “People are also allowed to come before the NPRC and ask whether the reports on the 2018 electoral violence were properly implemented so that they put forward their complaints before the commission. “There is nothing that we will leave behind in dealing with the issues. “We are not going to be challenged by anyone, we will work in accordance with the NPRC Act which empowers us to deal with issues of peace and reconciliation,” he said. Chada said there were a lot of sensitive things that would be exposed next year when the NPRC public hearings began, adding that some of the issues would be new to the media and the people of Zimbabwe.

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