Tree of life bears fruit for Chikohwero

I would advise the old man to take responsibility and apologise for the tens of thousands he killed during Gukurahundi, the thousands he has killed since 2000, said Solomon Chikohwero, a South African-based humanitarian and political activist.

I would tell Mugabe to apologise in public for the thousands of displacements he has caused in Zimbabwe, the lives and livelihoods he has destroyed and the humanitarian crisis he has caused in the country as he fights people for their love for the MDC and their contribution towards Zimbabwes development. He must also apologise for the Marange killings, all the shady deals he has led since he assumed power in 1980 and account for the diamond money he has stolen from state coffers and then ask for a dignified exit.

Chikohwero, now based in Johannesburg, is the founding chairman of the MDC Veterans Activists Association (MDC VAA), a three-year-old humanitarian organization set up in South Africa to give material and psychological support to thousands of political activists tortured and traumatized by Zimbabwean security forces and other supporters of Mugabes party since the formation of the MDC in 1999.

We set up the organisation after realising that many activists who, because they wanted to make things right in their country, were living in squalid conditions. They could not even raise something for themselves to eat, let alone have somewhere to live, said Chikohwero.

Chikohwero and another political victim, Godfrey Phiri, with some of the blankets donated for suffering activists in Zimbabwe.

I experienced this when I first arrived here in 2003 and found myself living on hand-outs – yet I was someone who at one time occupied a very high position in the party. What then was the position with several unknown activists who came here with their cases undocumented? I then decided it was time to act so that when the struggle is over and the MDC is in power, we do not have disgruntled people who will begin to confront the government with accusations.

Chikohwero, a former MDC Director of Intelligence, drew empathy from his own personal experiences, having been subjected to all forms of severe torture in the notorious Goromonzi torture camp, after he was charged with terrorism and banditry.

I arrived in South Africa in 2003, still ailing from the injuries that were inflicted on me by the Zanu (PF) regime. However, because I had no relative here, I was forced to live in the open for days in that condition, until I found a job packing agricultural equipment in Kempton Park. I just had to work hard in spite of the pain.

He worked for seven months a dying man earning R35 a day in order to finance his medical bills, which eventually totalled around R5000. The owner of the company where I worked, a kind man that he was, subsidised the costs of my bills and that is how I managed to pull through. A friend helped Chikohwero get South African asylum papers and after he had met a number of fellow MDC activists, some in worse situation than him, he felt the need to act.

We used to hold meetings here in Johannesburg as victims of violence in Zimbabwe and thought we should act. However, the situation was very tough for us because here we were a group of sick people, meeting regularly to discuss a way forward, yet we had no funds and nowhere to stay.

Among us were Oliver Kubikwa, Steve Paradza and Joshua Rusere, who all helped me with food, but had no accommodation to give. We then came up with the idea to form an organisation that would look into the welfare of Zimbabwean political victims based here.

The outcome of that agreement was the Zimbabwe Political Victims Association (ZIPOVA), formed in 2003, for which Chikohwero became the interim chairperson. In the same year, Chikohwero left the audience in a civil society meeting in Johannesburg in tears, after presenting a speech on his experiences at the hands of Zanu (PF) torturers, the conditions he was living in as a refugee in South Africa and the plight of several other MDC activists in the country.

Among the people that were touched were Dolores Cortez, the wife of popular American journalist, Andrew Meldrum and Bev Reeler, psychologists who approached Chikohwero and another activist, David Chiduku, to try and help the Zimbabwean victims.

We formed an organisation called Tree Of Life, which sought to give new hope to displaced victims of Zimbabwean political violence. The organisation deals with the healing of the tortured and traumatized. We took the victims to three day workshops where they were counselled and shown that, despite the brutal torture they went through and the hardships they were experiencing, having lost all dignity in a foreign land, there was still hope in life and that they could still make it and heal other people, added Chikohwero.

He worked in the organisation as a volunteer for a year, during which he was housed by the Centre for Study of Violence and Reconciliation. In 2005, we met again as victims and decided to form an additional support organisation for the torture victims, which would, in addition to counselling, also investigate and document cases of political abuse and give material help to victims. We then formed the Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project (ZTVP).

I shifted responsibilities from logistics officer, verification officer to project officer between 2005 and 2007, when I left the organisation, which had then become the Southern African Centre for Survivors of Torture (SACST). During that time, Chikohwero also became a member of the MDC support group, which was meant to handle the documentation and asylum application process for thousands of MDC activists who had been hounded out Zimbabwe.

However, I kept asking myself what was happening to other MDC activists that were still suffering back in Zimbabwe and in the Diaspora as well. These are people who had lost their loved ones, people who had lost their limbs and body parts and those who had lost their homes and were still scattered all over the world.

I worked closely with some of the fallen victims of the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe, like Talent Mabikwa, Gift Tandare, Tonderai Ndira, Tichaona Chiminya, Patrick Nabanyama and their families know me very well, so I decided that I should honour their legacy by looking after their families and that is how we launched the MDC VAA in 2008. Chikohwero became the founding chairman of that organisation, deputised by the now-late Remember Moyo.

MDC VAA is not a political party, but a humanitarian organisation and pressure group set aside for MDC activists who have been affected and disadvantaged by political violence. The organisation has provided material and psychological support to several MDC activists both in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Blankets, clothes and food have been sourced from various donor organisations and donated to the victims.

Our aim is to assist people across the world, who have been victimised because they chose not to support Zanu (PF), people who have been injured because they chose to work for the MDC and people who lost their loved ones who fought for democracy in Zimbabwe.

We want to also advocate for these people within the MDC, so that they are not forgotten because they are the founding cadres of the party. We know that the MDC, as the party of excellence, will not use and dump people, but we also want to maintain a database of those who suffered outside the public sphere and still suffer in silence. Having gone through such torture, will he ever return to Zimbabwe? Yes, but not while Augustine Chihuri (Police Commissioner) can still publicly say that Robert Mugabe is the God-given leader of Zimbabwe.