Sodom and Zimbabwe

Sodom and Zimbabwe

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By Trudy Stevenson, MP

"PERHAPS there are fifty just men in the town? Will you not spare the place for the fifty just men in it?”

So asked Abraham of God, according to the Bible, when God was about to investigate reports of massive evil and sin in Sodom.

God replied: “If at Sodom I find fifty just men in the town, I will spare the whole place because of them.”

Abraham went on to reduce the number of just men who might be found to 45, then 40, then 30, then 20 and finally 10, and each time the Lord replied that he would spare the whole town if he found that number of just men. But in the end he did not even find 10 just men, and so Sodom was destroyed in a rain of burning sulphur.

My mind jumped to the government and the ruling party Zanu PF when I revisited this reading recently, because of the dire straits we find ourselves in. We are so desperate for complete change that we are intent on destroying the party and its evil system that has brought us to our knees and separated our families in the most cruel and traumatic fashion.

So would we be right to destroy the entire Zanu PF edifice if we found fifty good people among them? No, I do not believe this would be justified. And if there were only forty-five good people? No. And only forty? No. And so on. But surely we would find at least ten good people in Zanu PF? This would perhaps prevent us from taking the dire action of total and dramatic annihilation wreaked upon Sodom!

There is indeed a great danger, whenever great evil has been perpetrated, that victims will demand that the entire people, institution or whatever that perpetrated that evil be annihilated, without any regard to the rights of the few “just men” who happen to be in the guilty camp.

This danger is at the root of many efforts to get to the truth and instigate a system of justice, reparation and reconciliation in recent times, notably the Nuremburg Trials post-Second World War and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission post-apartheid.

The need for justice for the victims has somehow to be balanced with the need for respect for the rights of those who are not guilty. This is extremely difficult, and even South Africa ’s admirable effort has not been perfect. Indeed it is heavily criticised in some quarters for allowing the guilty to “get off scot-free” for simply telling the truth. The element of reparation seems to be missing in that process.

Before change finally comes in Zimbabwe, as it surely will, we need national debate on the issue of our own system for truth and justice, so that we are agreed before the question arises. How far back do we go – Gukurahundi, Liberation War, Mbuya Nehanda, Ndebele raids, flight of the Khoisan, …?

And also let us acknowledge that the current opposition is not exactly squeaky clean. Indeed, in some instances there is no difference between the two sides. Violence, corruption, greed, power-hunger, arrogance, lust, sloth, deceitfulness – all are present in both sides of the national divide, as they will always be present wherever human beings are present, because these are the eternal human weaknesses and will never be entirely overcome. This is why we will always need laws and a system of police and justice, but we need rule of law, not the selective application of the law we have at present. This is a fundamental difference between Zanu PF and MDC.

National debate on these and other matters needs to begin now, and I submit that it is important to include Zanu PF in this debate. We may find that there are far more than fifty just men in Zanu PF, while there may not be many more than fifty in MDC or any other opposition party or civil society group!

The churches’ effort at instigating this debate with their draft National Vision document, doctored though it was at the last minute, is nevertheless commendable, and worth resuscitating if it can take us forward without destroying each other in a rain of burning sulphur!

Trudy Stevenson is MP for Harare North and secretary for policy and research and also shadow minister for local government and housing in the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara
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