The brutal crackdown in Zimbabwe
Political dissidents who have fled to South Africa face an uneasy, uncertain future
When Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa rose to power, veteran political activist Ishmael Kauzani did not buy the “New Zimbabwe” narrative. He was suspicious of Mnangagwa’s long and brutal track record as one of Robert Mugabe’s top lieutenants. But he didn’t know that things would get so bad.
One incident from Kauzani’s last few days in Zimbabwe keeps playing through his mind.
He can hear the sound of his dog barking in the darkness of a January night outside his home in Kuwadzana township in Harare. Initially, Kauzani dismissed the bark as “misbehaviour”, but when the dog continued to bark, he started to worry. He left the house and walked outside. But in the darkness there was not much he could see.
“I decided to light the torch on my phone. I lit it and I came across eight men. One, who was in front, was holding an AK-47 and wearing a police uniform with an army jacket,” Kauzani said.
He remembers first retreating and then running fast as the men began shooting. “I heard some gunshots again from four different directions. Behind me, there were some guys chasing after me.”
But soon the chasing stopped. The assailants did not seem to be professional assassins. The soldiers closest to Kauzani, in a burst of their own fear, told the other soldiers to stop shooting. They were scared they might be killed in the crossfire.
The shooting stopped, but Kauzani kept running. He found himself in a maize field where he hid, squatting low until he was sure it was safe. He then continued running until he reached a friend’s house where he could safely spend the night.
Eventually, he ran all the way to South Africa, taking his wife and child with him. It is not his first flight into exile. In 2008, he left Zimbabwe amid fears that his own party, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), wanted to kill him. Kauzani’s brother had been killed just a little while earlier.
This time, there was one unusual item he carried with him as he crossed the border: a bullet cartridge his wife had picked up before the assailants could find it.
The Kauzanis do not know the exact identity of their attackers, but they are convinced the Zimbabwean government was responsible. At the time, in mid-january, soldiers, police and a paramilitary organisation allegedly linked to the ruling Zanu-pf were implementing a brutal crackdown targeting opposition party supporters, trade unionists and civil society groups. The crackdown was allegedly precipitated by a national stayaway organised by unions and civil society groups. Zimbabweans were encouraged to stay at home in protest against a huge fuel price hike. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds more assaulted. More than 1 000 people were arrested.
Others, like Kauzani, were forced into a sudden exile. “The numbers have been quite significant. They are in the hundreds,” said Dewa Mavhinga, the Southern Africa head of Human Rights Watch.
Some of this new generation of exiles went to Botswana, some to Zambia, and some as far as Kenya and Tanzania. But most of them ended up in South Africa.
“Beyond the issues of secure accommodation and of food and just keeping them safe, we have faced significant challenges,” said Mavhinga. “Many of them are bruised and battered and in need of medical attention. These are people with no medical aid, nothing. We have had to battle with that. How do we ensure that we have access to the medical attention they need? For some they never got that for three or four weeks.”
But the biggest issue the new arrivals face is fear. Most arrive without their families. “The challenge ends up being overwriting the blanket of fear over what has happened to the families left behind,” said Mavhinga.
Among the new exiles is journalist Thandekile Moyo, who is still getting used to the idea of being an activist.
“I never even considered myself an activist until they called me one. It’s not like what I’m doing is politically motivated,” she said.
Moyo wrote an environmental column for The Standard, a private newspaper. Her column, she said, was a bit “naughty”, because she would use it to comment on inequality and poverty in the country. On Twitter, she was outspoken against injustice. The social media platform became a space in which she would rant about a despotic government and a citizenry she believed was not doing enough to take back the power.
“Me tweeting about it was trying to get people to be less apathetic. You find things happen and nobody calls them out. Zimbabweans have this way of moving on with their lives like nothing is happening and that’s why the system has lasted for so long,” she said.
It was Mnangagwa’s rise to power that motivated much of her commentary. Moyo’s family had survived the Gukurahundi genocide in the 1980s and now Mnangagwa, who has been implicated in the planning of the massacre, is president.
“That was when my outrage really started, because I’ve always been passionate about Gukurahundi. The coup [that toppled Mugabe] to me meant that Zimbabweans are not equally outraged about Gukurahundi, because why would they then say Mugabe must go and be replaced by someone who was actively part of the Gukurahundi?” she said.
Moyo received word that her name appeared on a government list of wanted people. Kauzani’s name was allegedly also on a list, but it is unclear if it was the same list.
At first Moyo ignored the warning, putting it down to “alarmist” people. But then, in mid-january, the govern-