Even two years after the ousting of Robert Mugabe for human rights violations in Zimbabwe on the agenda, writes the student activist, political observer and Blogger, Blessing Vava.
It’s a hot October night, it was in the year 2009. We, a group of student activists sat in the Bus on the way home. We had celebrated the birthday of the son of a fellow students, and the journey should be the completion of a joyful day. None of us knew that the evening should take an unexpected turn at the end, we in cold prison cells were – for reasons of which we would never have believed that they could get us in trouble.
We were at the Market Quare, one of the busiest stations of Harare, in the Bus rose to get us in the modest suburb of Glen View. We came up with other passengers in conversation, and we talked about the social, political and economic problems, the employees in Zimbabwe at the time.
Blessing Vava, a political observer and Blogger
In a country where the space for human rights was limited, the people are actually reluctant to in public discussions about politics and the faults of the government. The entertainment this evening was excited, and emotional; the people in the Bus have brought their dissatisfaction over the continuing decline of the economy and the ruthless suppression of all forms of differing opinions and passionate expression.
Suddenly the driver applies
One of my fellow students said that President Robert Mugabe was not the reason for this is that Zimbabwe developed in a time of political crisis. Mugabe had refused initially, after the draw out of the last presidential election in 2008, the formation of a community government with the then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to agree to. My co-student said: “Robert Mugabe was the main reason, why the government had not come into existence.”
The discussion degenerated into Chaos; some of the passengers shouted, that the mere mention of Mugabe could bring all of them in the Bus in trouble. And in fact, the bus driver turned abruptly and drove us to police headquarters in Harare, notorious as a place of arbitrary arrests. On arrival, wasting four armed police officers applied any time, as they learned what it was about, and laid us on the grounds that we had committed “treason”, a pair of handcuffs.
A good two hours we were interrogated alternately and beaten before they threw us in a dirty cell. Some of my friends were bleeding; medical care was denied to them. After two nights in police custody we were released.
With weapons of violence against the Opposition: police fire on demonstrators (August 2018)open
That was only one of many such incidents that I experienced as a Student during the terrible Mugabe years. President of insult was one of the crimes the people were accused of in Zimbabwe the most, if you have the freedom of speech used, which is guaranteed in the Constitution of the country.
Arrests, beatings, exclusion from the study
How I made hundreds of student activists during Mugabe’s reign of worst experiences: arrests, beatings, exclusion from Lectures and seminars. After having formed the opposition movement for Democratic change in 1999, the student movement played a very important role, was Mugabe’s pressure on activists in Zimbabwe’s universities, only worse. Students were killed; some were excluded from the study in Zimbabwe, while others were temporarily suspended; everything belonged to the means by which Mugabe a critical mass to the Silence wanted to bring: the students.
As young people, we felt us of Mugabe and his Generation, their selfishness and their greed, the fruits of our liberation cheated. The economic collapse, unemployment, corruption and abuse of power brought me so far, Mugabe’s rule out this path for the Individual call – as dangerous as it was. It wasn’t easy; every day was to hear that people disappeared, that students were arrested and attacked.
The ambivalent legacy of Robert Mugabe
Now, after Mugabe’s death, I reflect on the ambivalent legacy of this man. In his first years in Power, Mugabe championed a radical policy of education for all; and to say in its favour that a majority of Zimbabweans benefited from low-income Background of it.
Education for all: school in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe
This dream of education for all was started in the year 2000 suddenly becomes a nightmare, as Mugabe, to privatize a basic right like education and turn it into a commodity – with the result that thousands of students from poor families had no access to education and more.
In the view of Mugabe’s legacy, it would be prudent to ask the question of whether or not Mugabe alone was in the destruction of the economy of Zimbabwe and the massive human rights violations that characterised its time in Power.
The answer is a resounding NO. Mugabe was not alone, he represented a system of power, that’s what I call Mugabe-ISM. This term describes his reign best. His expulsion from office and his death have revealed, what Power is behind the 37 years of his reign of terror. The history of human rights violations in Zimbabwe continues, will be even worse under a government that is trying to be with Mugabe-in connection. Mugabe died a bitter man, betrayed by his closest Confidants.
Blessing Vava is a political observer and Blogger. He is from Zimbabwe and lives in Johannesburg in South Africa
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