Roy Bennett

To the delight of the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans and huge numbers of supporters around the world who have been waiting for this day, Roy Bennett was today released from prison in Harare. Zimbabwe’s most famous prisoner of conscience and icon of the struggle for freedom and democracy, walked free from the regime’s notorious Chikurubi high security prison, which in recent years has come to represent the brutal face of Mugabe’s fascist tyranny.

There were emotional scenes when Bennett was reunited with his wife, Heather, outside the Chikurubi Prison. The reunion was a low key event deliberately because no one had known for sure that the regime would comply with even the most rudimentary standards of justice by observing the convention of remitting one third of the sentence for good behaviour. When they saw him, family and friends immediately commented on how thin the once burly Bennett now was – 27 kgs (4.25 Stone) lighter than when he was committed to one of Mugabe’s hell-hole prisons.

Roy Bennett

On May 26 two of South Africa's foremost constitutional lawyers will appear in Zimbabwe's Supreme Court to mount the most serious legal challenge yet to the continued incarceration of the country's celebrated prisoner of conscience, Roy Bennett. Due to appear before Zimbabwe's highest court in Harare on Bennett's behalf are Advocates Chaskalson SC and Gauntlett SC.

Roy Bennett was elected Member of Parliament for Chimanimani constituency in the 2000 Parliamentary elections. He is a leading member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party who enjoys a huge popularity among his rural, almost entirely black, constituents. Fluent in the vernacular he was, until his forcible ejection from his farm in the eastern highlands, a successful coffee farmer, and respected as a good employer who had the interests of his employees very much at heart. Prior to the year 2000 he had been a staunch supporter of ZANU PF but, in response to the increasing levels of corruption and nepotism in the ruling party, he threw his weight behind the fledging opposition movement. Despite receiving death threats from senior ZANU PF politicians, a police commander and the local CIO boss, Bennett stood for the MDC and won by a huge margin.

Roy Bennett (left) Archbishop Pius Ncube (right)

On Saturday 5th February, far beyond the reach of any reporters or the probing lens of any cameras, an event of major significance took place. In the prison compound at Mutoko, some 140 kilometers north-east of Harare, one of Zimbabwe's leading clerics and outspoken critic of the Mugabe regime, met and talked with a prominent member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), now a prisoner of conscience incarcerated by that regime. Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo met Roy Bennett the imprisoned opposition MDC member of parliament for the Chimanimani constituency.