**10. Conclusions**

This article set out to argue that the pursuit for peace and reconciliation in Zimbabwe has been taken to another level by religious leaders operating outside the jurisdiction of the mainstream churches in a move that I have called religio-political nonconformism. While upholding the importance of religious soft power (Haynes 2008, 2009), its limitations, which resonate with those of soft power in general (Nye 1990), have prompted religio-political organizations such as CiM in Zimbabwe to invoke hard power, in the form of radical and confrontational approaches. The tendency to accentuate the soft power of religion might obscure the potential and necessity of hard power from religio-political organisations. Instead of sticking to only to the soft approach in pursuing peace and reconciliation, which is associated with religious actors in Zimbabwe, the nonconformist groups have gone for radical and confrontational strategies. This has influenced the public's understanding not only of how religion operates in the public sphere, but also shown that the dynamics of reconciliation such as apology, forgiveness, truth-telling and justice can be pursued in a nonconformist, radical and confrontational way when need be. Furthermore, their approaches have indicated that these dynamics of reconciliation are neither cast in stone nor waiting out there to be discovered. By calling for truth-telling and justice as prerequisites, they redefined and shielded reconciliation from abuse by those in power. The ruling party has a history of burying the truth. A case in point is when the governmen<sup>t</sup> refused to make public the report that was produced by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace on the massacres that took place in the early 1980s in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces (Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe[1997] 2008). Truth-telling is taken beyond its therapeutic use by the victim to being a foundation for justice as well. The nonconformists redefine reconciliation as more than being sorry, forgiving and forgetting. They have as well redefined key elements of reconciliation such as apology and forgiveness so that they do not make reconciliation cheap, a charge levelled against Tutu (1999) forgiveness during the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In so doing, they have call for transformative apology and forgiveness. In general, nonconformists have problematized approaches to peace and reconciliation, and the article argues that the approaches are discursive and variegated, multiple and can appear to be inconsistent. They are contingent on and constructed according to circumstances. So are the pathways to pursue them, they are not fixed but context-specific. The upholding of tradition and culture, which are different and dynamic, through Ubuntu philosophy demonstrates this point. To understand the dynamics of religio-political

organisations, we should not only consider the beliefs and values which define them, but also their practical actions, because adherents to religions do not always follow the dictates of their religion. Restricting analyses to belies and creeds will obscure the lived religion dimension of religious agents. Ultimately this article has shown that hard approaches are not a stubborn departure from the established conventions, but have the potential to positively influence and change socio-political dynamics in the pursuit of sustainable peace and reconciliation.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
