DOCUMENTARY FILM REVIEW
TITLE: ARTICLE VII VOICES FOR HEALING (28min, 2010)
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: OKAY MACHISA
REVIEWER: BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI
JULY 2011
“…They were too many. I saw them set my home on fire. They forced me into the burning kitchen that is how I burnt my face. Meaning they wanted me dead. This is the only blanket I’m left with, after these people burnet my homestead,” an old man narrates.
Displaying wounds on his fore head, another old man recounts in documentary film, ‘Article VII Voices For Healing’: “I was axed here, then stabbed here with a knife and then they clobbered my back.”
“They tied our hands and legs then assaulted us on the buttocks and under the feet. I had a six weeks old baby. They ordered me to lay the baby down so that they could beat me up,” a woman reveals.
The film produced by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) opens with harrowing accounts of the brutal beatings, rapes and tortures that took place in Zimbabwe during the March 2008 elections. It shows victims with fresh wounds, displaced families and those mimed and humiliated. It is a story of those hurt by political violence crying out for healing for themselves and their land.
“They beat me up with knobkerries and metal rods. They struck my lip with a knobkerrie as I turned over because of its unbearable pain on my buttocks, so that when I jerked and turned over that’s when it hit my lip. Two of my lower and two of my upper teeth are shaking,” a young man with deformed lips recounts.
“They went on to burn down my home. Everything was reduced to ashes. My wife and children were not home when I returned. As I survived this ordeal I don’t know where my family went to and if they are alive. Also if they know that I’m alive,” he adds.
"Those were painful times! Children were forced into evil acts. Murder, assault and burning properties, all evil acts that anger God happened. Nothing inhuman in behaviour was left out in 2008," Chief Mutekedza laments.
With this documentary, ZimRights examines the question of national healing in Zimbabwe after the March 2008 elections. What results is an engaging film that seeks to explore the origin and redress of political violence in this country. Since the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s elections have increasingly been characterised by violence.
Jestina Mukoko, the director of Zimbabwe Peace Project comments: “We recognise that whenever elections or referendums approach, we have gross human rights violations, which are politically motivated. Where we even see people being murdered, people being maimed, women being raped and people fleeing.”
“Elections cannot be a disease like Aids, No! We come to know that every five years that disease is back, and people are going to die? No, we cannot carry on like that,” Mutekedza notes.
The film reveals that the history of Zimbabwe is characterised by transfers of power, which manifest themselves through violent conflicts. Political, and in particular electoral violence, in Zimbabwe is rooted in colonialism, suggests, Pathisa Nyathi, a historian and cultural leader.
“The kind of violence that we have has its genesis in the colonial period. This is the period when repressive laws were promulgated, where people just disappeared, they disappeared because they were intransigent. People resorted to an armed liberation struggle. Let’s be clear about an armed struggle, it is by nature violent,” says Nyathi.
"Unfortunately, that culture did not abate, neither did it stop nor was it transformed even after we got our independence. People have been dying and that is the modus operandi within Zimbabwe. Therefore in my opinion, this has become a culture within Zimbabwe," says Pastor Ray Motsi.
Nyathis further asserts that election violence is used chiefly to maintain economic interests. The Catholic Parliamentary Liason Officer, Father Edward Ndete takes this point further by adding: “As long as people want to protect their power, and the illegal way they have acquired wealth, this violence will continue.”
The production is the culmination of consultations in rural communities around Zimbabwe on the course the national healing process, provided for in Article VII of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) should take.
The film gives people in grassroots communities a chance to speak out on the direction the national healing process should take, on who should lead the process and what should be done to bring about true healing in the country. It emerged that most communities would like the process to be decentralised so that they can dictate the pace of healing and reconciliation for themselves. People have indicated that the national healing organ must not prescribe solutions, but should carry out consultations on how communities want the process to be done.
The documentary scooped the Best Zimbabwean Production Award at the 2010 Zimbabwe International Film Festival (ZIFF), the biggest film festival in the country. The festival was held from August 27 - September 5, 2010.
It has been screened in Uganda (on NTV), South Africa and Namibia, where it has also earned a lot of publicity as it evokes discussions on the state of affairs in Zimbabwe and whether or not the country is ready for elections, seeing that most people have not healed.
“So it’s commercial politics now. They campaign, people die; they win and are given cars, twin cabs. Next time new candidates win, they get cars… it’s a vicious cycle,” Chief Mutekedza observes.
“The ones who did should be arrested. Also those who were beating up people should be arrested and tried in court. Then we will know that the government has power and there is rule of Law. They must go to prison. We will talk forgiveness with them when they are coming from prison,” a man says.
A significant impediment to national healing is that the architects of the violence are in government, and national healing is a government led process.
In the film, Father Ndete suggests that retributive justice will not work because: “There are some who are viewed as having perpetrated more violence than others. So the moment you start talking about retributive justice, you anger a certain group of people, and this healing will not move.”
For the people, national healing cannot proceed without dealing with the perpetrator. However, there is a widely held fear that because these are powerful and wealthy people, it is easy for them to manipulate or bribe unemployed youths to perpetrate further acts of violence, reversing any progress made.
In bitter voice a woman asks: “Does the law go on vacation? The law does not go on holiday. But how come perpetrators of political violence are not arrested and tried? Why it is the law applies only to us and not to them? Why?”
Another issue the film examines is that of compensation. Is it enough to apologise and ask for forgiveness? Or should the victims be given compensation for their suffering? The documentary even asks at what point in Zimbabwe’s history should national healing start?
The film shows how the current process of national healing has failed those it is supposed to help, as one admits: “We don’t understand the national healing process. In fact we don’t want it. They must consult us first. Not just for them to wake up and say - we are sending people to you. Instructing us to forgive each other. Forgive who?”
A woman adds: “I was beaten up, my three month baby was taken away over night, when they beat me up I messed in my pants. Then they forced me to eat my excretion. How do I forgive someone like that? They later forced me to drink beer so I could swallow my excretion. So how do I forgive such a person?
The documentary shows that any lasting solution has to come from Zimbabweans themselves.
“About the national healing process, the solution should be prescribed by the grassroots. By grassroots, I mean the people on the ground. Not for people from Harare or Head Office to come and tell us how to do the process. We are the ones who hurt each other; we are the ones who are hurt. We should be telling them how to do the process. So I may be able to forgive my neighbor,” a man suggests.
Ends.
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