together we can stop this zanu evil

The state-led prosecution of Tsitsi Dangarembga, arguably the most globally revered author the country has produced, for joining a peaceful anti-government demonstration could signify yet another milestone in Zimbabwe’s grinding political decline.

Dangarembga, 63, has won multiple literary awards, including being shortlisted for the Booker prize. She wrote the first book by a black Zimbabwean woman to be published in English and is also an accomplished film-maker.

Speaking before her conviction for promoting public violence on Thursday, Dangarembga said that two years of waiting for the case to be concluded, as well as 30 court appearances, had taken a toll.  

Dangarembga admitted she was considering joining the exodus of Zimbabweans from a country where the president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and his Zanu-PF party are operating an increasingly repressive regime.

Amid an excruciating economic crisis, health and education services have collapsed and poverty has dramatically risen under a kakistocracy that came to power in the 2017 coup against Robert Mugabe.

“Every time we say it can’t get any worse it does,” said Dangarembga. “We have to realise that actually there is no bottom so we have to start kicking ourselves upwards.

“I really didn’t want to leave Zimbabwe. I think now, post-coup, is where I see that there are absolutely no opportunities for me in this country. Service delivery is decreasing, the economic environment is critical again, and it seems to me that this is by design. I don’t want to be designed.

“So this would be the time in my life where I would think about it. Which is very sad. I brought up my children here, they had a good education, but it doesn’t offer anything for them. Most middle-class and other families do not have their children in the country. Either people have the money to send their children out or the children find their own way out because they also want prospects.

It is fair to say there has been reasonable progress for women in political leadership and decision-making in the past three decades. Yet, 27 years after the Beijing declaration at the world conference on women, adopted by 189 countries and seen as the key moment for radical change in gender equality, too much remains the same.

This brutal and vicious assault against Godfrey Karembera is meant to intimidate political opposition supporters in Zimbabwe ahead of the upcoming by-elections  Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Southern Africa

Responding to the brutal killing of one supporter of political opposition and the injury of more than a dozen others at a Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) rally in Kwekwe, Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director  for Southern Africa, said:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are many millions of stateless people globally – of which approximately one third are children. In Zimbabwe approximately 300,000 people are currently at risk of statelessness, according to the UNHCR. This report reveals how these population groups have been deprived for decades of their rights as citizens. Denied the documentation enabling them access to education, work, health care and other basic rights, hundreds of thousands of people have been rendered stateless, stripped of any legal status in the country where they have raised families and which they regard as 

“Zimbabwean authorities must stop treating human rights with contempt and start tolerating dissenting views.”