Gomoza, in Lupane, is an area that has become synonymous with the violence of the 2008 presidential rerun. Since the initial mediation intervention, GTH has been working with and in the community to normalise the situation.

One of the basic tenets of peacebuilding is the necessity of tracing the root causes of the particular conflict one is dealing with. Sometimes the real cause might be hidden and in the case of Gomoza, quite unrelated to the current conflict.  After months of probing is has come to our attention that the real cause of the Gomoza violence lies beyond the current political culture of intolerance. There has been a long standing feud between the two men leading the two political parties, which started way before ZANUPF and MDC became a factor and is a social rather than a political issue. The political antagonism simply presented an excellent opportunity to settle old scores and the sad thing is that the community nearly destructed itself over a trivial issue which doesn’t concern them. They were fighting a proxy war they know nothing about.

Unfortunately this acrimony has not spared the young people of this community. Firstly, they were used as the foot soldiers during the violence; secondly they are being made to fight their parents’ wars. This came about during a recent peacebuilding workshop for the young people in Gomoza. They complained that, although they wanted to have peace in the community and among themselves, they were forced by their parents to continue their feuds. Specifically, they said their parents have told them not to talk with their enemies or to associate with their children. This puts them in an insidious position as on one hand they don’t want to disobey their parents and one the other it doesn’t make sense for them to be involved in these wars that rob them of community cohesion. 

It has been said that, a community that has been exposed to traumatising events over a long period of time, tends to lose it respect for the sanctity of life, particularly where mass killings of a genocidal proportion are concerned (de Zulueta 2007).  It would appear that for most of these people violence becomes a common part of their lives. Wittingly or otherwise, they seem to assimilate violence into their daily life styles. Again a case in point is the discussion that ensued during the Gomoza workshop: in discussing the causes of conflicts among them, the issue of girlfriend snatching came up and it was shocking to listen to some of the things that were being said.

They young men unanimously agreed that they would beat up a girl who double dated them. In fact they said they the two men concerned would gang up and beat the girl to ‘discipline’. One got the feeling that they saw this almost as their divine right.  I say divine right because when asked what right they had to beat up someone else’s daughter, it was if they would actually be doing the girl’s parents a favour because ‘she lacks discipline’. What is more shocking is that none of the young ladies present voiced any disagreement on this one. Its either they didn’t feel secure enough to oppose that or it’s acceptable to them. Our conclusion is that it seems that the young ladies have accepted this as a norm, perhaps it reflects what happens in their homes, we suspect.

The challenge we face, not only in this community, is the transformation of this world view. We have given ourselves the responsibility of working with these young people intensely in an effort to begin a process of deconstructing this culture of violence and plant the seeds of nonviolence. Change of mindset is a generational business, perhaps in another 10 or so years the next generation of youth will have internalised nonviolence and sanctity of human life as part of their dispute resolution method.