BY OWN CORRESPONDENT
The Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE) will hold its annual healing and reconciliation film Festival dubbed the Asakhe Film Festival from October 25 to 30.
The theme for this year’s festival that will be held virtually is “The Power of Memory.”
The Matabeleland and Midlands regions suffered a genocide between 1982 and 1987, leaving an estimated 20 000 people dead and many others with physical and physiological injuries.
More than three decades later, the legacy of the conflict continues to impact their daily life.
Asakhe Film festival intends to highlight the importance of transitional justice using film and academic lectures by experts in the area of history and genocidal studies.
The aim is to contribute to national healing and reconciliation efforts in Zimbabwe.
This is part of our three-year project titled: Confronting the Past: National Healing, Reconciliation and Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe.
The project is built on three pillars, namely, national healing and reconciliation, transitional justice and research and documentation of human rights abuses.
The project focuses on truth-telling as a way of finding closure for victims and also promoting reconciliation within communities.
Truth-telling helps in community healing and preventing the recurrence of past abuses.
It also helps identify the necessary reforms that can prevent such violations from happening again.
CITE also uses alternative media platforms to promote dialogue on transitional justice in Zimbabwe, focusing on the historical injustices that occurred in Matabeleland and Midlands in the 1980s.
This year’s activities include film screenings, online public lectures, and workshops with journalists on transitional justice.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most of this year’s activities will be online.
On October 25 and 29, CITE will launch Documentaries titled “One night in 1983”, a documentary that tells the story of 11 men from Silobela who disappeared in January 1983.
The second documentary, titled “Children of the Genocide,” focuses on people whose parents were killed during the genocide.