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Gukurahundi was a dark stain on the early years of Zimbabwean independence. 

While so much has been done to rectify the errors and cement national unity, there are still gaps that the Second Republic is now tackling.

President Mnangagwa, in an interview with Brick By Brick magazine recently, once again emphasised what still needs to be done. 

The people, the communities, that were most affected must be allowed to speak, must have their voices heard. 

This is the culmination of the process of finding out what went wrong and how it went wrong, so that, as he noted, we never make similar mistakes.

As the President has stressed before, and as he stressed again, this is an internal process by Zimbabweans. 

It is not there to score points; it is not there to meet external agendas. It is a deliberate and careful process to complete national healing and that means Zimbabweans must speak out, and especially the Zimbabweans in the affected communities, so we all know.

This will not be easy and that is one of the reasons why the traditional chiefs in Matabeleland are presiding over the process. They are in the communities, they are trusted by the communities and by virtue of their office they have experience of listening to their communities and can bring up the unadorned truth. And we need the truth and we need it straight.

Others on the outer ring, such as the media, have also been sensitised. Basically the media are to report the hearings fully and fairly and keep their own voices out of the process. They are to let the people speak and record what they say, not what others say and not what others think.

The President is right to stress this Zimbabwean and people-centred approach. Outsiders and the internal voices of outsiders have had their say, at length. We know what they think but now we need to hear the voices of those who were affected and who were right there at the time. 

Some of what will be said will be harrowing. So we must hear it. The purpose of the hearings is three-fold: first and secondly to let the true story be told and to let the rest of Zimbabwe hear that true story. The third purpose is to learn from that true story and make sure that we continue to take the action required so that something like that never happens again or even comes close to ever happening again.

The basic causes are well-known. The nationalist movement had suffered splits and fissures throughout the struggle, often driven by Rhodesian intelligence if what officers from those services said after the liberation war was true. 

The major effort at independence to create a more unified Government through coalition did break down, when perhaps it should not have.

The Zimbabwe National Army was still being created, bringing in combatants from all sides and forces. 

The basic organisation was in place but training was still in the early stages and had largely concentrated on conventional war, the most probable threat, rather than the far more difficult counter-insurgency war, which requires exceptionally high levels of training.

South African military intelligence, determined to preserve apartheid, had a policy of trying to ensure neighbouring countries were in a state of total disorder, both to scare their own constituency and to make sure the neighbours were never a threat. They had the model they had lucked into in Angola, where they could create the conditions of internal war; they still controlled Namibia; and they wanted Zimbabwe and Mozambique in chaos by recruiting, indoctrinating, training and arming disgruntled young men.

The ZNA, suddenly faced with this threat, saw their problem early and training was intensified, although this could not be instant. 

Counter-insurgency war requires exceptional levels of initiative and know-how among non-commissioned officers and junior officers. 

It is, simplistically, called a corporal’s war, but that simple label does express the training needs.

Eventually all units involved had graduated from advanced training and the observers who had no axe to grind did report a dramatic change in both effectiveness and in the way the operation against insurgents was fought. 

This training came to the fore when the South Africans launched the other thrust of their policy, having built up the Renamo military side, but the ZNA now knew how to fight within the border areas of Zimbabwe and in Mozambique itself to preserve the corridors to the sea. Mistakes were not made.

The ZNA has maintained this continual emphasis on training, to the extent that Zimbabwe is one of a tiny group of countries that has its own defence university as well as the basic training, advanced training and staff training done continuously. Regional forces are delighted to take up places in our training courses, so strong is the reputation of  the ZNA training.

The political disunity was radically addressed by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo in the National Unity Accord, which integrated the nationalist movement, not just unified it. 

The single nationalist party was integrated from cell to politburo level and by now the majority of members have joined that single party from the start of their political life and have no direct memory of the splits. 

A thin layer of the most senior members do remember, and thus continually stress the need for unity, a stress that is built into the united party and is one reason to explain why the ruling party has never succumbed to the continual splitting and reforming seen in the opposition. 

The other reason is related: the members own the party.

So we did learn, and have been applying what we learned. But we now have to complete the process and that is what we are about to do as we hear in detail what happened. 

It has been described as a healing process, but that goes beyond the healing for those who speak out. 

It must also involve everyone else, the rest of us who will be listening, and trying to understand, and then as President Mnangagwa so often stresses, make sure that we apply that understanding so that we never again come even close to repeating what went wrong.