Pastor arrested on return to Zim
“THANK God I am well. Hello, everyone. Unfortunately, I have been arrested. I hope we will get through this. This is home and I have committed no crime and I am allowed to come home,” was the message #ThisFlag pastor Evan Mawarire sent out by a short video clip soon after he was arrested at Harare International Airport.
He was in handcuffs when he sent out his calm message to Zimbabweans late on Wednesday. The message ripped around the cellphones of Zimbabweans at home and around the world.
He left Zimbabwe six months ago after he was released from prison on a technicality.
But many Zimbabweans were furious and disappointed when Mawarire fled the country and went to the US after he was released from prison last year, after charges against him collapsed in the Harare Magistrate’s Court.
The “crime” Mawarire had committed, according to the State, was to use his cellphone to send out social media messages criticising the harsh life most Zimbabweans endured. He criticised the Zanu-PF government – in inoffensive ways – and sent pictures of himself wrapped in the national flag.
His encouraged people, twice, to stay at home and not go to work. The first call coincided with a large, one-day strike in Harare by civil servants who had not been paid. His second call was largely ignored.
He was then arrested and taken to filthy cells at Harare Central Police Station and charged. But when he arrived in the Harare Magistrate’s Court later in the week, the charges had changed and the magistrate had to release him.
Mawarire then fled Zimbabwe to Johannesburg. The charges against him are that he had attempted to overthrow a constitutionally elected government, or “soft” treason, as some Zimbabwe lawyers describe this law.
Days after Mawarire arrived in South Africa, he addressed many students around Johannesburg and continued to use his cellphone to stay in touch, until his pregnant wife and two children arrived, and then he went to the US where she had her third child.
He protested in New York when President Robert Mugabe arrived to address the annual meeting of the general assembly of the UN.
Following his departure from Zimbabwe there were several demonstrations in Harare and more then 100 people were arrested, and many were beaten up and eventually released on bail. Most of those arrested will be on trial next week. Some will repeat what they have said in their statements that they were not at the small demonstrations which were heavily tear-gassed by police. Lawyers say they will also claim that they were beaten up in ZanuPF’s headquarters after being arrested. Some were admitted to hospital.
It is not clear yet whether Mawarire was denied refugee status in the US and had to come home, although he always said that he would return to Zimbabwe. He was defended in court last year by Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights’ Harrison Nkomo. He went to the Harare Central Police Station to attend to Mawarire, who had not even been through immigration, when he was picked up by plain-clothes officials at the airport.
Mawarire had a small congregation of worshippers in Zimbabwe who he led in prayer and song in the suburbs. After his hashtag on social media became popular last year, he said in an interview in Harare: “The state of the economy prevents me from looking after my family. This is to me, as a Zimbabwean, extremely disappointing. I could not pay school fees, and I was at my desk and I saw a small flag on it, and began to examine the distance between the promise of the flag and the reality. I realised people receiving the messages were identifying with the frustration and joined in.
“The government told us we would have 2.2 million jobs. It was my democratic right to talk to people. And we have to make sure that people avoid violence, do not insult people. People heard these messages and joined in,” he said.
Mawarire was part of the social media movement Tajamuka (we are outraged) that were talking to Zimbabweans in many ways, via their phones, as all radio and television is controlled by the state. Several members of Tajamuka were arrested and are on trial. A member was arrested in Harare earlier this week.
Tajamuka leader Promise Mkwananzi returns to Harare from Johannesburg soon as he is on trial next week. He is a long-time activist and has been arrested several times over the past few years.