Photos courtesy of Rutendo Chabikwa ’17
On July 12th, pastor and social media phenomenon Evan Mawarire, who organized peaceful protests in Zimbabwe was arrested by Zimbabwean police and accused of inciting violence. The next day, he was taken to the magistrate’s court where the charge was unconstitutionally changed to treason, which came with a possible death sentence. The shattering of Zimbabwe’s silence had begun, and the nation had reached a tipping point.
Zimbabweans under the age of 30 have only known one president: the man whom the state-sponsored media refers to as “His Excellency, The President, Robert Gabriel Mugabe and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and First Secretary General of ZANU-PF.” For the last 30 years, his paramilitary forces have marched Zimbabweans into voting booths; he has promised that our land would be returned to us – but it never was. When we spoke out, those same para-military forces threatened us into silence. Corruption seeped down to civil servants and the general public, unlike in many western nations where it stays at higher levels. We were silenced in 2008 when the internationally lauded Economic Structural Adjustment Plan (ESAP) further distressed us and left our stores looking like empty shells. Our inflation rate hit a high of 79,600,000,000% rendering all our savings worthless overnight. We were silenced when our parents lost their jobs with their diplomas and degrees in their hands. We were silenced when they tried to implement land re-form that only left us worse off. Land was violently seized from the hands of former colonizers and passed to Mugabe and his elites and never to the general population. We were silenced yet again when the elections were rigged.
I love my country, albeit not blindly, but it is love nonetheless. This past summer that love was tested. I had to stop being a privileged keyboard warrior from afar, posting hashtags on Facebook and Twitter. I had to see it for myself. Statuses like “more power to you” and “my thoughts go out to…” were not enough. To understand the experience and my opinions, we have to take it back a little.
To many western observers, Zimbabwe is not much more than Cecil the Lion, last year’s Harambe. Zimbabwe as I know it has the elements of many post-colonial societies. it is plagued by a history of coIonialism, ruled by a leader who was once lauded by the west but over-stayed his welcome, contains a people trying to understand the so-called independence they celebrate once a year, and riddled with a government so corrupt it requires citizens include bribes in their personal budgets. For a nation with the highest literacy rate in Africa, a nation that was the first to give food aid to an-other African nation, one can say we were off to a good start at independence in 1980. But that was an illusion like independence always is, and we soon realized it. The illusion was shattered when Evan Mawarire and other activists like him broke the silence.
In the past few months especially, Zimbabweans came together under different hashtags: #ThisFlag, #Tajamuka, and #Sesijikile (We are fed up in Shona and Ndebele respectively) to name a few, to state their grievances against the current regime. #ThisFlag is the most common hashtag, and was created by Evan Mawarire. Since then, the action moved from social media to the streets. It is not yet as large as the Arab Spring, or as unified in cause and message, but it is the beginning of a culture of speaking up and standing together.
This past summer, I was fortunate enough to witness and feel this silence shatter. I saw and felt part of Zimbabwe’s growing pains, the pains that every African or western nation must go through once in a while.
On the 4th of July, shuttle (kombi) operators took to the streets and clashed with police who, for a long time, have been squeezing them of their meager earnings at the increasing roadblocks in the capital. They threw rocks in the road, threw teargas back and forth, and de-ported water cannons to one of the high density suburbs. On the 6th of July, the biggest shutdown was executed across the country. Through social media, a message was passed that all Zimbabweans stay at home and do not go to work or school, to stand up to the government for allowing corruption, injustice, and poverty. We did stay away, for the most part. I went into town to check and confirm. The city was dead. Shops were closed, even illegal vendors were absent.
It was here that Mawarire was arrested and almost threatened with the death penalty. Over a hundred human rights lawyers volunteered to represent him. Thousands of Zimbabweans showed up outside the court, myself included, draped in our national flag. We sang songs of protest until the night fell on us. We expected to be met with the same violence the kombi operators were met with previously. Riot police were present with their batons ready. And yet we stayed.
One of the protestors told me “if my parents died today, they have nothing to show for the work they have done from [colonial times] to today. I have kids of my own, and I have nothing to leave for them either. So if we are doing this today, we are do-ing it for real.” Ultimately that is why we stayed through the assumed threat of teargas, water cannons, and batons. Our safety was nothing compared to hold-ing our government accountable and finally speaking up.
This was it, this is it. Over the next few weeks, to this day, more activists have been arrested. More peaceful protests have occurred. More teargas has been thrown by the police. It may have taken years, but the silence has been shattered and cannot be reinstated. We may come under criticism for not stating one objective, for having too many hashtags, or for not taking up arms, but the journey to freedom is neither easy nor short. We will still experience growing pains while the world looks on, but if there is one thing I know, it’s that if we survived 2008, we can survive anything.