For our children’s sake – Zimbabwe must be free

n subjected to a 20 minute beating and torture by five armed police men. After being released from police custody and receiving medical treatment for her fractured arm, battered buttocks, and perforated ear, Lucia immediately hiked home to Gweru to her daughter, Ashely, aged 7.
The only thing within Robert Mugabe’s power is to delay the revolution – each beating, each broken bone, each day spent in police detention has only strengthened our resolve to fight the dictatorship to the end.
I, together with others from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civic groups, joined the Zimbabwe Congress Trade Unions (ZCTU) in their demonstration some weeks ago, in which about 30 of us were arrested and some severely tortured.
I was given a public beating at the point of assembly at Construction House, one officer held me by the hand while another beat me up with a baton stick, mostly on my shoulder. I was then taken to an open truck in which they had already put our deputy secretary for Health, Kerry Kay.
The man who drove the truck went across to the Anglican Cathedral next to Parliament Buildings to talk to two Asian gentlemen whom I suspected to be Chinese, which was to be confirmed in a Mail and Guardian article days later of the deal between the Zimbabwe and the Chinese aimed at capacity building the regime to quell any mass protests.
The Chinese gentlemen wore smart suits and held long-lens cameras, he spoke to them briefly then came back and drove us to Harare Central police station.
There we found comrades including Raymond Majongwe, a freelance journalist and the rest of the members of the ZCTU General Council already in custody. We at this point did not know we had been saved from hell. I say hell because my arm, often massaged by Kerry, was painful until the following night when our fellow protestors – the rest of the ZCTU leadership, MDC’s Ian Makone and Tondepi Shonhe – were transferred from Matapi Police Station to Harare Central. What a sight. Wellington Chibebe was bleeding from the head, he had blood all over his clothes, they all could hardly sit because they were in such pain. Lucia came and sat next to me and Kerry showing us her blue and black body. They looked like victims of a terrible car accident. It was an awful sight. The whacking I had received now felt like a mere mosquito bite.
It is only the flesh that they could hurt or break, but our spirits, our resolve was strengthened at that moment. The ZCTU leadership put up brave faces and accepted that this was the nature of the struggle and there was more of this to come. Robert Mugabe has made it a point since then to remind us that he will not hesitate to kill us. He has proved to all including his African allies how his continued rule can only be extended through a reign of terror.
It took us days, weeks and months of preparation for this moment. Days in which we psyched ourselves to the cost of confronting the regime on the streets, not just to us but our families too.
It is easy for desk top activists or theorists to analyse and theorise on the Zimbabwean question. But for us it is about our lives, it is about how long we stay out of prison, it is about how long we can sustain the struggle until the regime is dislodged. We are in the trenches facing Zanu (PF) everyday of our lives.
For me it is about when I will ever be reunited with my children again in a free Zimbabwe, when I can make them breakfast or watch a movie with them. Something at the moment that seems too far away, a luxury.
And so I cried for our children when Lucia told me little Ashely’s story. All this comes at a time when parliament is debating the Domestic Violence Bill, a noble process indeed, but almost meaningless for me as a political activist if it cannot shield me or my children from state sponsored violent tyranny. Domestic violence in Zimbabwe should be viewed as a symptom of the patriarchal, dictatorial Mugabe regime, whose solution lies only in a change of Government.
When the Bill becomes law, at the moment with the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and other draconian legislation still in place, it will not shield our society from the amount of psychological damage to our children, the psychological rape when they are exposed to horrific stories of us their mothers, who are often arrested, tortured and go missing for some time, or are denied access to lawyers and even food.
My uncle cried when I visited him after the ordeal. Holding me in his arms he said ‘wofa here muzukuru’, (should you die my niece?). I looked at him and said, uncle someone’s niece, daughter, mother, father, husband, wife or friend has to stand up and do it; unfortunately, I am that mother, niece or daughter who has stood up to fight.
I always tell myself that we have come this far as a civic and political leadership to give up, we have lost so much, sacrificed so much, endured too much pain and suffering at the hands of the dictatorship to just give up. However I am aware that as things get tougher in the next months we are going to lose many of those in the leadership as the weak fall by the wayside.
But for some of us there shall be no retreat and no surrender. Instead the more the regime raises its tempo against us, we have to prepare each willing person and organization for the ultimate confrontation. We have to raise the tempo too, and make it costly for Mugabe to arrest, torture or kill any of us. We need that critical mass comrades, to achieve this we have to create centres of resistance in each person, community or organization, across the country.
Our arrest confirmed that it is easy to stretch the regime, they had to bus in youths from the Border Gezi training camp, they had few cars. Many were parked at Harare Central Police Station with no fuel. I know they will not manage or contain a rolling programme of mass action, in different forms from rate boycotts by the residents to the National Constitutional Assembly and WOZA-style street marches.
As a comrade on the ground I feel it that the people are ready for a courageous, resolute leadership, to lead the final phase of the revolution out of this tyranny. As little Ashely asked her mum ‘what were these people thinking?’ I will ask fellow comrades and Zimbabweans, what are we thinking? For the sake of our children may Zimbabwe be free. Aluta Continua!