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Good morning. The fate of Zimbabwe hangs in the balance, as that beautiful and troubled country struggles to break free of tyranny. In December 1980, we went to live in Bulawayo with our young children. Zimbabwe had become independent that year, marking the end of white minority rule. Shortly after we arrived, in February 1981, forces loyal to Joshua Nkomo’s opposition party ZAPU attempted a military coup. We were warned to stay indoors, as tanks rolled into the outskirts of Bulawayo. The uprising was quickly put down. It was a brief interruption in an otherwise happy and peaceful time in my life. Many years later, it was reported that Mugabe’s government had launched a vicious purge after the coup attempt, and thousands of Ndebele people had been massacred. That story haunts me. It’s a reminder of how fragile and illusory peace can be, when it’s built on the silenced stories of the victims. It’s also a reminder of the importance of an independent media, with journalists who have integrity and courage in their pursuit of the facts, especially in these days of alternative news and cyber lies. Yet while facts and evidence are crucial, they’re not in themselves sufficient to constitute truth. To discern truth within the raw facts of history is to be caught up in what philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls the conflict of interpretations. I remember visiting a museum in Bulawayo where the captions on the exhibits were being changed. Terrorists were being renamed as freedom fighters, and history was being rewritten before our eyes. The factual evidence – the photos and artefacts – remained the same, but the interpretation was changing. It’s a reminder of the saying that history is written by the victors. Meanwhile, the trauma of Zimbabwean people continues, as the political battles rage on. It’s too early to know who the winners will be – who will write the definitive history of these turbulent times. Yet behind every official history, there lurk the hidden victims, the bodies of those whose stories disturb our illusory peace. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth?, Jesus did not respond. For me, that silence is an eloquent affirmation that testifying to truth isn’t about abstract propositions and beliefs, nor about factual evidence alone – important though that is. It’s about what we stand for, whom we stand with, and whose stories we seek to tell, in the face of tyranny and despotism.