A Tale of Three Dinner Plates: Truth and the Challenges of Human Rights Research in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article provides a personal reflection on the experience of human rights reporting in Zimbabwe from 2000. It does so through the prism of a story of violence and counter violence in a rural village in Matabeleland North as it has been told to Solidarity Peace Trust researchers over the course of several months in 2008. The story, which hinges on the fate of three dinner plates, is retold here with the aim of revealing the ways in which lived experiences of violence can blur the categorical boundaries of perpetrator and victim. It sheds light on some of the complexities of histories of violence, the ways violent events are narrated by those involved and blame is attributed. Such complexities are inevitably overlooked, excised or circumvented in the conventions of human rights reporting. Yet recognising such local complexities, and appreciating the ways in which collective attribution of blame can escalate cycles of violence, is a necessary part of any process of healing. Failure to recognise these complexities can lead to well-meaning civic actors inadvertently exacerbating existing tensions instead of reconciling them. In retelling the story of the three dinner plates, the article looks forward to a process of reconciliation in Zimbabwe, which the country desperately needs in order to embrace a future of peace, justice and reconstruction. Such a process will need to include public debate at village as well as at national level, and will need to take account of the complexities of the ways in which people talk about and make sense of their own lived experiences of violence.