The rest of my family lived 275 kilometers away in a city called Gweru. That’s where my mother and my brothers, my other brothers, were. And at that time I wasn’t also sure if my son had been able to raise alarm. I had taken the time to train him as a human rights activist. It was important to let people around you know that if anything went wrong, there were people that they could get in touch with. And all those thoughts were coming back. And I hardly slept. I had no blanket. When I eventually was told that I could sleep, all they provided was a dirty foam rubber, and there was no blanket to use. And I think I just lied there.
And it was all these thoughts that I had to process. But I recognized that on the second day somehow the physical torture was now withheld. They didn’t have their weapons of torture on the second day. And one of them actually said that they didn’t want to cause any pain, but I think I was experiencing excruciating pain in my feet. And the previous night, I – you know, I took time literally to lick my wounds as I looked on the soles of my feet and what they looked like. It was all – it looked like maps on both my feet as I saw, I think, blood forming as a result of the assault that I had received. I couldn’t even fit in the plastic shoes that they had given me. And even when they brought in food, it wasn’t easy to eat.
My son didn’t know where I was. I was the only surviving parent. And during the interrogation, I had actually been threatened with death, and I didn’t doubt that that could happen. And I just couldn’t live with myself to say, is this the way that I’m going to meet my death, in the hands of these people? So for the next few days the torture didn’t happen, the physical torture. But I think from the time that they picked me up from home, I had to endure mental torture. And I was kind of shuffled between two detention centers. And when they took me to the other detention center, I was presented with a very painful question.
One of the men said to me, where did you leave your son? And I said I left him at home. And his response was, are you sure that he’s still at home? You can imagine what that does to a mother. I think I struggled with that sentence for a long time because at the place where they were keeping me, I could sense that there were other voices in other rooms. And I just could not live with the fact that probably one of the voices belonged to my son. And they appeared quite serious about it when they spoke about that. And probably it was deliberate, to cause the torture that’s supposed to go with it. And then on the fifth day I was made to kneel on gravel.
You know, initially, when they said can you kneel on gravel, because I was being accused that I had lied – they had just abducted two colleagues from my office, and – with two sources of information, and people would not synchronize their information. I don’t know what the other guys had told them, but I was being accused of lying from the first day that I started talking to them. And so when I was made to kneel on gravel, I thought, well, this is a piece of cake. But one of the guys said, the last time we made somebody kneel on gravel, they actually messed themselves. I couldn’t believe them. I thought they were just threatening. I was there for probably two and a half hours while I was answering their questions. The pain was excruciating. You know, I then realized it was like I had left my body and I was watching this suffering woman from somewhere. This is what the pain that I went through did to me.
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.