The Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs is working on transferring the functions of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC), whose mandate expires this August to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC).
According to Section 251 of Zimbabwe’s Constitution, the NPRC was established for a 10-year term beginning on August 22, 2013, with the duty of preventing violence, anticipating conflict, and making sure there is reconciliation within communities.
However due to delays in enacting the statute to operationalise the NPRC, the commission only became active on January 5, 2018, sparking concerns that the NPRC would fail to meet its constitutional role of administering post-conflict justice.
Justice Minister, Ziyambi Ziyambi revealed in Parliament recently that his ministry was working on transferring the functions of the NPRC to the ZHRC, as they cannot extend its term limit unless the country’s constitution is amended to allow for that extension.
“We are working on a sunset clause so that we can have a transitional period where the functions can be transferred to the ZHRC. In other jurisdictions, that function is housed there. I do not think we will lose anything. We cannot amend the Constitution now. We are out of time, Parliament is about to be dissolved,” Ziyambi said.
Ziyambi said the government would continue working towards making sure that the critical functions of the NPRC are done by the other commissions, which is the ZHRC.
The justice minister’s remarks came after Harare East MP, Tendai Biti proposed that Parliament revisit Section 251 of the Constitution that limits the NPRC term to ten years.
“The NPRC has important functions which are defined in Section 252 of the Constitution. The key function is to prevent conflict, anticipate conflict and to ensure that there is reconciliation amity in communities. Our country has gone through massive periods of scars, Gukurahundi for instance, the war of liberation and so on, all these are scars in respect of which the NPRC was formed,” Biti said.
“You will agree with me that the issue of peace and reconciliation is a permanent one. It leaves with all States, it does not matter what country it is, you are permanently arrested in conflict because human beings are what they are. My regret is that Section 251 of the Constitution says for a period of ten years, there shall be a Peace and Reconciliation Commission. That means the tenure of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission is only ten years yet the issues that it deals with are permanent issues, and these include issues to do with justice and reconciliation.”
Biti said NPRC had lost five years of work since it only came into effect in 2018 yet Zimbabwe’s constitution was signed in 2013.
“Secondly, it says for a period of ten years after the effective date, in other words, after the Constitution came into being, yet the law is giving rise to the existence of the NPRC that is the National Peace and Reconciliation Act was only signed into law by the President on the 1st of January, 2018. So, it lost five years. The Commission which was supposed to be ten years effectively becomes five years because the enabling legislation was only enacted in 2018 and it has suffered a double whammy,” said the legislator.
