One year on and lucky to be alive: the abduction of Jestina Mukoko

Last year, Robert Mugabe loyalists attacked opposition figures forcing their withdrawal in the run up to Zimbabwe’s presidential elections. Mugabe’s rivals were subjected to violence and intimidation, which led to international condemnation.

Jestina Mukoko was one of those opposition figures that Mugabe so fervently despised. Last December, she was seized by fifteen armed men, who burst into her home in the small town of Norton outside the capital city, Harare.

Ms Mukoko presented a problem to the government. She was, and remains, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), which catalogues incidents of violence and human rights.

The ZPP have a network of hundreds of monitors around Zimbabwe who provide detailed and reliable accounts of the campaigns of brutality carried out by Mugabe’s government.

Ms Mukoko and 17 other human rights and political activists were abducted by state security agents last year. They were tortured into confessing to a plot to topple Mugabe’s government.

Ms Mukoko had found herself a victim of the same human rights abuses that she had fought to prevent. However, Mugabe’s regime had provided a human focal point for outrage at the epidemic of disappearances.

“My interrogators told me I was being abducted because of my work with the ZPP. I think that was a measure of the impact of the ZPP because even the authorities recognised our work around the country.

“The government thought that if they got hold of me then they would have broken the network. But they were not able to break the organisation because of the resoluteness of our monitors.

“Some of our monitors went to the extent of hiding the forms where they write their reports of human rights abuses. That really demonstrates that these people are really fighting for justice in Zimbabwe.

“As an organisation the ZPP are saying that people should account for their actions and the environment of impunity should come to an end. There are still people in Zimbabwe who still believe that things can be done professionally.”

Ms Mukoko was put in a clandestine detention centre outside Harare and was subjected to torture. After her abduction, intentional attentions turned to Mugabe’s government, and Ms Mukoko’s immediate release was demanded by world leaders.

“I had no idea that there was such a huge public outcry. I was really shocked by the support I received and the attention my arrest had caused around the world.

“At the time it didn’t make sense because I didn’t know what was happening on the outside. I wasn’t even allowed to look out the window of my prison cell-for 21 days I did not see the sun.

“I was forced to sit in the corner of a cell and I could hardly sleep at night. Whenever I saw the refection of a car’s lights at night I thought to myself that I was going to be killed.

“Just before I was being released, one of my interrogators said to me ‘Jestina, you must run a very efficient organisation because your organisation has focused the world’s attention on Zimbabwe.”

Political developments since early 2008 have signalled hope for Zimbabwe. After the debacle of the 2005 elections, Mugabe came under pressure to hold elections that represented the free will of the Zimbabwean people.

Morgan Tsvangirai emerged as the candidate that would bring down Mugabe’s government, but he boycotted any potential run-off when his supporters were targeted in a campaign of violence.

After months of tortuous negotiations, Tsvangirai was finally sworn in as prime minister of a power-sharing government, in February 2009, with Mugabe remaining president.

“When the government of national unity was established, it was a historic moment. I’m quite hopeful that this arrangement commits everybody in Zimbabwe to making and developing a prosperous country,” said Ms Mukoko.

“There is also stability in the economy and the inflation is being controlled and food is available in shops. People no longer have to cross the border to buy basic commodities.

“Children are back in school, teachers want a review of their salary but at least they are back in the classroom. A lot of hospitals were closed at the end of last year but now people can walk into a health institution and they will be treated.

“There is definitely an improvement in Zimbabwe and I think most Zimbabweans feel a lot of hope. However, there are still problems and at times when you see one step going forward, there are often two steps back.”

It wasn’t long ago that the government of Robert Mugabe was considered as one of Africa’s brightest postcolonial hopes.
While imprisoned from 1964 to 1975, Mugabe captured the dissenting sentiment of Rhodesia’s independence movement.

When Britain granted Rhodesia independence in 1979, newly named Zimbabwe duly held its first ever parliamentary elections in 1980. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party won a landslide victory and he became the country’s first Prime Minster.

In his first years of power Mugabe promoted peace. At the same time his ZANU-PF aligned militias fought dissenting groups aligned to Zimbabwe’s other main political party.

As he gained power, he became a despot and coined himself as Africa’s champion in the face of western neo-colonialists. At the same time, Zimbabwe’s people struggled with hyperinflation of over 100,000 per cent and drastic water and food shortages.

These shortages were the result of Mugabe’s encouragement of land seizures from white farmers. This land reform program sparked widespread violence and destroyed the country’s agricultural sector.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of Zimbabweans that are going through the same experience that I have gone through. It is those people that need human rights defenders to help them find their voices

“My hope and prayer is that I will be allowed to do the work that I enjoy doing in Zimbabwe. I have a passion for human rights work and I just hope I will be able to continue to prevent people experiencing what I have gone through.”