The Zimbabwe Peace and Reconciliation Commission: Towards an integrated national infrastructure for peace?

ABSTRACT The National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) in Zimbabwe is potentially a crucial architect of coordinated and integrated infrastructure for peace (I4P). But it is not without its critics and sceptics. The Commission is the institutional centrepiece of government’s post-conflict justice, peace, healing and reconciliation programme. It is mandated with developing national and sub-national architecture to drive the peacebuilding agenda. The NPRC is relatively young and is in the process of emplacing structures to acquire the organisational capacity to execute its mandate efficaciously within major constraints. While statist, top-down approaches are hardly sufficient to build peace, the Commission is evolving into a broad peace infrastructure, weaving horizontal and vertical relationships with various local stakeholders with the assistance of international partners. The NPRC is leading Zimbabwe’s I4P project in a context-specific manner that promotes the principles of national and local ownership, inclusivity, gender mainstreaming, cooperation and capacity building for sustainability. The Commission, notwithstanding its well-documented weaknesses, has achieved important milestones towards a prospective integrated national I4P. This article broadens the existing literature on the NPRC by examining milestones in the implementation of its mandate, particularly demonstrating how it is morphing into a potential cornerstone of a broad national I4P with external support.