I was abducted on the 3rd of December 2008. It was at the crack of dawn. It was 5 a.m. in the morning on a day I thought that my vacation was going to begin. I didn’t know that I was going to end up in an unknown place with my family not knowing where I was. So initially, when my son, who was 17 at the time, came to my bedroom and said, mummy, there are visitors at the gate – and because I really wanted to sleep in, I said to him, “I will not be bothered by people who come and knock at 5 a.m. in the morning; can you attend to them?” In no time my son was back, and I was, like, “What do you want?” And he said, “Mummy, the visitors at the gate are actually police officers.” And at the mention of that, I quickly jumped out of bed.
I was still in my nightdress. All I managed to do was to get a robe behind the door as I walked out. I was barefoot. I didn’t have anything else under beside the nightdress. And as I was walking with my son, we then met up with this group of six men and one woman. And they said to me, “Are you Jestina Mukoko?” And I said yes. And when I said that, immediately, both my hands were held, both the right and the left, and I was force-marched out of the house. But before they force-marched me, I was, like, can you give me time to dress up because I’m indecently dressed. And they said they didn’t have time. I also didn’t have my prescription glasses. I was barefoot.
And so I was walked out of the house like that. And in a split second, I was bundled into an unmarked vehicle that was parked outside my gate. I found myself flanked by two men in the back seat of the car. And the one who was on my right indicated that I put my head on his lap. And as I was taking my head down, I recognized that there was a gun on the floor of the car. I also realized that there must have been another vehicle or vehicles, because there’d been six men who came into the house, and now in this car there were three men and one woman, so obviously, the other men were in another vehicle or vehicles. And this vehicle then started at top speed. And the music was at full blast. And at the time I wasn’t sure if the people who had come for me, my captors, were ZANU-PF militia or if they were the Central Intelligence Organization, because both organizations were known for such activities.
Obviously, I had confirmed that they were not police officers, because if they had been police officers, they would not have made me lie on somebody’s lap, and I would have been taken to a police station, which was very close to where I stayed and it wouldn’t have taken so many minutes to drive to it. I think the drive was about 30 to 35 minutes long, and I suspect that it was in the direction of Harare, because I stayed 40 kilometers outside Harare.
Jestina M. Mukoko is the National Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a nonprofit organization that monitors and documents political violence in Zimbabwe. As Zimbabwe’s premier monitoring body, the organization maintains a strong network throughout the country that is able to bring widespread attention to occurrences of political violence.
A long-time leader in the human rights and activist communities in Zimbabwe, Ms. Mukoko was abducted from her home on December 3, 2008, by state security agents for her work monitoring the brutality of the Robert Mugabe government. During her 21-day abduction, she was tortured, beaten, and forced to confess to a crime she did not commit. She remained detained until a court granted her bail on March 2, 2009.
For her steadfastness on issues related to human rights, Jestina Mukoko was named the 2009 Laureate of the City of Weimar (Germany) Human Rights Prize and a 2010 recipient of the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award. In 2009, Ms. Mukoko was awarded the NANGO (National Association of Nongovernmental Organizations) Peace Award. For her commitment and perseverance, she received the French National Order of the Legion of Honor award in 2011.
She serves on several boards, including those of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, and the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe. A former news anchor for the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, she is also mentoring with the Female Students Network, a youth organization.
A peace and human rights campaigner, Jestina Mukoko is also a mother. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Politics and Administration from the University of Zimbabwe. Ms. Mukoko was the 2010 Fellow at the Oak Institute for International Human Rights at Colby College in Maine. In 2012, she joined other mid-career professionals as a Draper Hills Summer Fellow on Democracy and Development Program at Stanford University.
Mugabe’s social and economic policies have been disastrous. An estimated one-fifth of the population is infected with HIV. Life expectancy has declined dramatically since 1990. Land redistribution in the 1990s cut food production and led to hunger and disease. The government’s mismanagement of the economy led to hyperinflation in the 2000s, reaching an estimated peak of 13 billion percent in November 2008.
Mugabe has stifled democracy and human rights since coming to power. The government cracks down on opposition political parties and civil society groups. Basic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly are not respected. Violence surrounding the 2008 elections led to a power-sharing agreement between ZANU and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Freedom House rates Zimbabwe as not free in political rights and civil liberties, noting Mugabe’s frequent abuses of power, corruption, regime-sponsored political violence, the lack of independent media, and flawed electoral processes.