MDC Alliance youth leader and pro-democracy activist, Makomborero Haruzivishe has said the general public must remember that they have combined power that is stronger than that of politicians in power. He writes from his cell at Harare Remand Prison in Zimbabwe we he’s detained for “inciting public violence and resisting a peace officer” after protesting over the deteriorating democratic space. Pindula News presents Haruzivishe’s letter.
Dear Comrades and friends,
In case you’re wondering, I’m enduring prison quite well. I’ve been prosecuted countless times over the past decade that I made a gentlemen’s agreement with pain. Having been arrested an average of three times a year, tortured numerous times since 2011, I have come to appreciate that pain has its place and I don’t mock its power.
But it is a power that doesn’t touch my soul.
This solidifies in me the art of endurance. Yes, ENDURANCE is the word. I knew the word but never had the opportunity to really “feel” it, “touch” it, but was forced by circumstances imposed on me by Emmerson Mnangagwa’s dictatorship to live it. Indeed I’m living it, and I’m not so blind to military state capture to believe that it will end any time soon, as the subsequent capture of the justice system can prolong the seven months I have endured to seven years through more unjust convictions, but to me it doesn’t matter anymore. I will endure it to the very end.
You know, we have to face the facts; things aren’t getting any better. They are getting worse. All we are asking for is a Zimbabwe where every child gets a fair chance of quality education and every adult gets a fair chance of a decent earning, but all we are getting is corruption and abuse — yet in 2017, many believed things have changed, but they changed for the worse.
Just another dictator, ED, with an even worse agenda; the perpetuation of military state capture, a worse type of governance with an increasingly ruthless, ever widening network to act it out.
Who knew before 2017 that there is a terror network of state agents called the “FERRET” squad who would be deployed against unsuspecting citizens with specific order to abduct, torture and harass them?
Who knew before 2017 that there was a car rental company called IMPALA that is contracted by the government to ferry terror squads to our homes and move citizens to torture bases.
Because of such terror networks that are sponsored with our taxes; thoughts of real death, not the remediable conceit now of imprisonment as a unique death, becomes an insistent, strident companion to such an extent that when gunshots were fired during my arrest: I was ready.
Despite all this, we must never waver from the fact that justice is the first condition of humanity, and we deserve pure, undiluted justice.
We must tattoo it in our hearts that “I have the power, you have the power, and together we can make the change because people’s power is stronger than the individuals in power”.
With this tattoo we must action our power through exercising our constitutional rights of freedom of assembly, association, demonstrate and petition in the streets, freedom of expression on social media, for now is the right time to stop agonising and intensify organising. After all, we are the ones we have been waiting for.
More importantly comrades and friends, we must register to vote because after all is said and done, all popular democratic revolutions end in the ballot box.
Worry more about yourselves, the future of our beloved Zimbabwe, the next generation — and worry less about me, for I definitely will come out, sooner or later, dead or alive.
After all, as I was enduring my birthday on 23 April, yeah, ENDURE, because birthday in prison is unlike birthday anywhere else. In prison, one doesn’t exactly celebrate their birthday, one ENDURES it. As I turned 29 years old, I reminded myself that some say life begins at 40, so I’ve got 11 years to 40. But since the life expectancy for Zimbabwean men is around 30 years, I cherished the realisation that I have already lived a full life, so either way I am in charge!
I REMAIN IN CHARGE
Makomborero Haruzivishe
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