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The Gukurahundi issue cannot now be swept under any carpet nor need those whose communities were affected remain silent since, with the full backing of President Mnangagwa, the communities are now being invited to say what they saw, and suggest what is needed so it never happens again and as far as possible the damage is ameliorated.
The issue is outside normal party politics, being a national question that is concentrated in the communities, and so it is the traditional leadership in the Matabeleland provinces which will be holding and presiding over the hearings, since these are the community and cultural leaders.
With others, there would be always the danger of tribalism or other divisive forces coming aboard. A traditional community leader is outside that sort of danger and is outside party politics, yet is also known and trusted by the community they can speak for.
So it made sense to push them into the frontline to head the process.
President Mnangagwa stressed this week, when he launched the manual the chiefs themselves have drawn up to guide all traditional leaders in their inquiries and hearings, that the process must be internal, must be run by Zimbabweans, and must not be allowed to be used by outsiders to divide Zimbabweans.
In this, he reflects his own knowledge that a lot of the problem in the first place came from foreign interference, in particular South African military intelligence officers who were happy to play divide and conquer in order to weaken Zimbabwe.
Some of the ground had been prepared in colonial times, where the Rhodesian regimes were also keen on the divide and rule, and pushed divisions on any ground they could think of very hard as a result, since a united people could not be held down.
Unity does not mean some sort of monolithic structure. We all fly the same flag, as the President noted, and we all sing the same national anthem, as he also noted.
But we sing this anthem in our own language, and when we sing together if the words sound a bit different, that reflects our diversity, but the words all mean the same, and that reflects our unity. We can have both.
Our Constitution sets up Zimbabwe as a unitary state, not a federation or confederation or loose accumulation of bits and pieces. But there is also devolution, but that devolution moves decision making from the centre to the geographical communities, essentially the rural district councils and the urban authorities.
None of these is mono-linguistic or mono cultural or some sort of semi-independent entity.
All cover a defined geographical area, and are expected to treat everyone in that area the same, and offer them all the same services, with no one shown preference or denied services because of what language they speak, how they worship God, or any other potential division.
Again, like when we all sing the same national anthem in a swathe of languages, we use devolution to have it both ways, retaining the single unitary state, but being able to work with our immediate neighbours to make sure our own little bit of that state can advance with the rest.
But devolution does not permit variations in tax, or in law. We all pay taxes under the same tax code. We all have to obey the same law. We all use the same courts to seek redress. There is just one police force, one defence forces, to protect us. That is because we are all Zimbabweans.
The school curriculum is the same, wherever you are, although one of the language subjects can be, and indeed should be, your own language and if that requires a class to split up when it comes to the language subject, well no one is fussed.
Our unity is also seen in our political life. Members of the House of Assembly represent constituencies, and these are defined geographical areas that as far as possible do not cross district boundaries. But there is a zero information in the delimitation over what sort of people live in those constituencies, just that they a citizens registered to vote.
And since if you want a seat in Parliament you must win the most votes on election day in your constituency, you have to appeal to a lot of people, You cannot afford to lose votes because you try and limit your message.
This reaches its ultimate in the Presidency. To be President of Zimbabwe you must win at least half the votes cast plus one, that is more people must vote for you than all the other candidates combined, and if no one gets through that hurdle on the first round then the top two go into a second round.
In one sense, this is to ensure that the President can win an absolute majority. But just as important for such an important post, it also means that it no one running for President can split the population and still win.
No community has nearly enough people and any serious candidate for President must appeal across a lot of what might be divisions in another system if they want to win.
When we come to what is already being done to sort out the legacy of Gukurahundi, we are looking at it from the point of view of people, or individuals.
Some people had trouble getting critical documents, starting with the birth certificate and ID. That has been fixed, and many of those people cannot now be left behind.
There have been suggestions of compensation, and President Mnangagwa has stressed that this must be looked at case by case. In other words compensation goes to individuals who were wronged or who suffered for some reason.
That is the only way practically to do it, since you cannot compensate communities, only people.
But it also has the advantage that we are dealing with people, not with vague abstractions.
People died, people were hurt, and those people were Zimbabweans each with a name, not some vague abstraction.
The final result of this exercise will be a put on the public record a lot of testimony over what happened and how it happened. That is needed.
We are a big enough nation to cope with this.
There will also be suggestions of why it happened, and what we can do to both repair the damage and prevent this from every happening again.
Online Reporter