By Blessing Vava
An unfateful October night
It was
a hot October night in 2009 and my fellow student leaders and I were taking public
transport home after celebrating the birthday of a colleague's son. In our
minds, the trip was to cap what had been a joyful day. None of us knew that
events would take an unexpected turn and we would end up in a cold jail cell.
After
we had boarded a commuter bus at Market Square, one of the busiest
terminals in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, en-route to
our lower-class suburb of Glen View, we joined our fellow passengers in a
conversation about the various social, political and economic issues of the
day. In a Zimbabwe where the space for human rights was limited, people often
shied away from engaging in public discussions of politics and the government's
failures. The conversation was quite emotional and animated. Passengers
passionately and openly expressed their disgruntlement with the continued
deterioration of the economy and the subsequent ruthless clampdown on any form
of dissent.
Robert
Mugabe, still the president at the time was refusing to concede to an inclusive
government arrangement following his loss in the 2008 presidential election to Morgan
Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who later died of cancer in 2018. One of my
colleagues loudly spoke of how Mugabe was the reason for Zimbabwe's political
crisis as he continued to undermine the parties to the conclusive government.
Some of
our fellow passengers shouted that the mere mention of Mugabe could
get everyone in the bus in trouble. Proving those words, the driver
suddenly made a U-turn and drove straight to the Harare Central Police Station.
Upon
our arrival at the station, infamous for being the hub of arbitrary detentions,
four armed police officers who had been briefed about what had transpired
wasted no time in handcuffing us and declaring that we had committed ‘treason.’
For good two hours, we went through interrogations and severe beatings
before we were finally detained in the filthy cells.
Some of
my colleagues were bleeding, but they were denied medical attention. What
followed was 2 nights in police custody until our release.
A
revolution betrayed
This
was one of the many incidents that I encountered as a student activist under
the terrifying years of Mugabe's rule. Insulting or undermining the office of
the president was one of the most common charges used to
persecute Zimbabweans for exercising the freedom of speech guaranteed in
the constitution.
I was
one of the hundreds of student activists arrested, beaten, detained or barred
from attending classes during Mugabe’s reign. After the formation of the opposition,
Movement for Democratic Change in 1999, in which the student movement was very
instrumental, Mugabe's heavy-handedness towards student activists in tertiary
colleges worsened. The student movement became part of the newly formed MDC
party after their grievances on the privatisation of education and generally
deteriorating macro-economic conditions had been ignored by the ruling party
ZANU PF. Student leaders and activists became prime targets of Mugabe’s
politics of repression. For the record, students were killed, some banned from
studying in Zimbabwe for life while others faced severe suspensions. All this
was part of Mugabe’s strategies to silence a critical mass- the
students.
We felt
betrayed by Mugabe and his generation for their selfishness and greed which had
denied the youth the fruits of Zimbabwe's liberation. Economic collapse,
unemployment, corruption and abuse of power motivated me to challenge his
reign, though, it was a dangerous path to follow with disappearances, assaults
and arrests reported on a daily basis.
Yes,
Mugabe is dead: Mugabeism remains alive
After Mugabe's
death was announced Friday, I reflected on his
legacy. This was a man who in his first years in power championed a radical
policy of education for all and to his credit, a majority of Zimbabweans from
poor backgrounds benefited. The dream of education for all by the year 2000
transmogrified into a melodramatic nightmare when Mugabe privatized and
commodified studies resulting in the denial of access to advanced schooling for
thousands of students from poor backgrounds.
As
Mugabe's legacy continues to be debated, it would be prudent for us to ask
whether he was alone in the massive abuse of human rights that characterized
his leadership and the destruction of Zimbabwe's economy. The answer is
no. Mugabe was not alone, he represented a system of governance that I call
Mugabeism. His ouster in 2017 and the events that followed, in particular, the
1st of August 2018 post-election shooting, the 14th to 16th
of January shooting and rape allegations of women among many other rights
abuses have exposed the power behind his 37 years of terror. Zimbabwe's record
of human rights abuse continues and is worsening under leaders who attempt to
disassociate themselves from Mugabe, yet the more they run, the shadow keeps
following at the same pace.
In the
end, Robert Mugabe died on claims of being a bitter man by those close to him
because he felt betrayed by his trusted lieutenants. In as much as Mugabe felt
betrayed, it seems his successors are continuing his legacy of human rights
violation and repression. Despite that the man has gone, he has bequeathed us the
politics of Mugabeism. For the
Zimbabwean pro-democracy movement, it remains: The Struggle Continues”!
This is an updated version of a commissioned article which
first appeared on dw.com
Blessing Vuvuzela Vava is a blogger from Chipinge. He can be contacted on blessingvava@gmail.com
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