Through a dark tunnel
Tapiwa, Tairos, Gomwe and Bright. Moses and Tatenda. Shamva, Chiweshe, Chipinge, Uzumba, Dzivarasekwa, Warren Park, Mudzi, Masvingo.
The names, places, pictures and stories of post-election murder and violence have been swirling in my head.
A few weeks ago, the domestic worker at the house where I rent told me his 15 year old nephew had been among those assaulted in Rusape. The perpetrators broke both his arms and gouged out his eye.
And then there’s Tondi. CHRA and MDC activist Tonderai Ndira, who has been arrested 35 times – and tortured in custody on many of those occasions – was abducted from his home in the middle of the night and has not been located for days.
Then yesterday, I learnt about Better Chokururama, whom I’ve known since 2002. In February and March, he could often be spotted in an MDC campaign vehicle plastered with posters, Chinja jingles blaring loud, confident, exuberant, and full of promise.
Three weeks ago, he was beaten so badly he was on crutches. Earlier this week, he was abducted, shot, stabbed, and left for dead on the side of the road.
Lately I find I’m spending a lot of time with my heart in my mouth and my head in my hands. Trying to hold my brain in. Trying to make sense of the brutality.
But, of course, it is completely and utterly senseless.
I’m reminded of the words of a woman who has spent much of the past weeks working directly with victims of this violence:
Yesterday I was physically ill having presented a briefing on the post election political violence. Over the past ten years I have seen the results of, and personally witnessed, a lot of brutality. However, the events of the past five weeks have left me shell-shocked. The calculated, evil state sponsored and perpetrated violence against, and beating to death, anyone construed to be opposition, as well as MDC office bearers is to say the least barbaric. A doctor friend who is involved in human rights abuses almost 24/7, told me yesterday that she was felt the same. We are living in a dark tunnel that is close to overwhelming those closely involved with the tragedy unfolding in our beloved Zimbabwe.
I hear people asking how someone could so lose touch with their humanity they could beat another person to death. But I look around Zimbabwe – and I think about our contemporary and historic parallels of violence and brutality – and I’m questioning instead how any of us manages to hold on to our humanity in the face of atrocity, and wondering how to stop this violence peacefully and put some sense of sanity back into things.