A local civil society organisation, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition has called on Zimbabweans to engage in collective dialogue to weave the country out of the current problems that are threatening country efforts to gain trust of the international community following the disputed July 30 polls.
In its post-2018 election briefing paper titled, Gunning down people, legitimacy and hope: Zimbabwe’s July 30 Democracy and Legitimacy Test released yesterday, CiZC said the country must avoid the 2008 mistake where citizens were left out of post election problems resulting in an elitist power sharing agreement.
“Zimbabweans across all cleavages of society must engage in collective dialogue around the fundamental challenges face the country and co-create a vision for the nation that every stakeholder buys into and works towards
“This entails avoiding the 2008 trap of looking at Zimbabwe’s challenges as problems between two political actors with the citizens as spectators and pawns in a process that distributes power amongst elites but without dealing with the country’s deep rooted fundamental challenges to which everyone is a stakeholder,” said CiZC.
“Ensuring therefore a multi-stakeholder dialogue and national visioning process that has civil society, government, political parties, business, religious groups and unions on board,” added CiZC.
The organisation also called for an impartial and independent investigations into the Harare shootings and assaults of civilians by members of the military saying the process must establish culpability with guilty parties subjected to the course of the law.
In his Heroes and Defence Forces Day speeches, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has blamed the MDC Alliance for the violence that led to the death of six civilians who were gunned down by soldiers.
