Torture in Zimbabwe: the scars we share
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Today, 26 June, is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. One day out of a year to support the victims of torture is not enough in Zimbabwe. Every day should be a day where we support those who have suffered this horrific form of abuse at the hands of Mugabe and the Zanu PF regime.
You may have heard the phrase “winning hearts and minds” before, a political euphemism to describe a campaign to win over restive populations, usually in military situations but sometimes used during political campaigning too. The term is only as meaningful as the intentions of the speaker, and critics would argue that it is often little more than empty propaganda; nevertheless, “winning hearts and minds” is a useful marker to use to differentiate between Zanu PF policies, and the policies of some our neighbouring countries where human rights and democracy are important.
Look at the following quotes* made by Robert Mugabe over the years of his stranglehold on power - are these the statements of a man who is concerned with ‘winning over hearts and minds’?
1983 - in response to victims in the Gukurahundi:
“We have to deal with this problem quite ruthlessly. Don’t cry if your relatives get killed in the process … Where men and women provide food for the dissidents, when we get there we eradicate them. We don’t differentiate when we fight, because we can’t tell who is a dissident and who is not.”
2000:
“Those who try to cause disunity among our people must watch out because death will befall them…”
2002 - At a party conference in Victoria Falls:
“This is total war. We will have a central command centre. This is war, it is not a game. You are all soldiers of ZANU (PF) for the people. When we come to your province we must see you are ready. When the time comes to fire the bullet, the ballot, the trajectory of the gun must be true.”
2006:
“We hear others say we want to go into the streets to demonstrate, to unseat a legitimately elected government. It will never happen and we will never allow it. If a person now wants to invite his own death, let him go ahead.”
2007 - Directly after the world had seen the evidence of police brutality in the form of images of bruised and badly injured civic leaders, an unrepentant Robert Mugabe uttered these ugly words:
“Our arms of Government, the police will act very vigorously and severely on those who go on a defiance campaign. We hope they have learned a lesson. If they have not, then they will get similar treatment.”
The combination of real violence combined with public promises of more violence and threats of reprisals clearly reveal that this regime is not at all interested in winning over the “hearts and minds” of the population. On the contrary, torture, violence and mass intimidation are carefully used, with calculated deliberation, to trample on the care and consideration that Zimbabweans have for one other - to create divisions, to fragment our society, to drive us apart and turn us against each other. Zanu PF’s tactics of force-feeding our nation a diet of lies, hate and fear is an attempt to fill our hearts and minds with anxiety and dread, to use torture and intimidation as a tool to control us. They want to bruise and damage our hearts; they seek to scar and break our minds.
There are many among us who have been kicked and literally felt the hard boots of cruel thugs, or felt blows being delivered with hatred on their bodies. Many who have suffered terrible physical injuries and still struggle today to reclaim their minds from the awfulness of their experiences. Those who haven’t felt those blows may consider themselves ‘lucky’ to have not had the experience.
But don’t kid yourself: when the Zanu PF government tortures a few amongst us, we all end up carrying the burden of fear and we all share the scars of pain. The Mugabe regime understands this, and deliberately builds seeks to maximize the effects of mass torture, riding high on the symptoms they provoke in an entire nation of people.
The UN Convention Against Torture defines the term as follows:
“Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”
So ‘torture’ includes deliberate state-sanctioned verbal abuse, intimidation, threats of violence, promises of reprisals - all delivered with the purpose of intimidation and coercion.
This is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: as a nation we are all subjected to regular threats of death, threats of violence, and non-specific but all-encompassing promises of “wrath”, whatever that may mean. All of this is mainlined directly into our private lives and homes through our televisions, radios and newspapers, right to where our parents and children can see and hear it too.
The intimidation has no boundaries and extends into every aspect of our lives: our need to source food, our need to buy petrol, to run our businesses, to provide healthcare to the sick among us, to educate our children. Every facet of our lives, what is important to us as civilised human beings, has been infiltrated with the Zanu PF policy of violence and verbal filth.
The price that torture exacts on its victims is considerable. A study** carried out by psychologists between two groups of people - those who had never experienced torture, and those who had - found clear evidence of significant consequences. As a person living in Zimbabwe, ask yourself if you, or anyone you know, experiences symptoms like these (all of these being symptoms extracted from the study results): nightmares; diminished interest in previously enjoyed activities; restricted expectations; sleep disturbance; irritability; concentration impairment; hyper vigilance; startled reactions; living with a continued state of tension; avoidance of trauma and any thoughts of causes of trauma; detachment from others.
It simply isn’t possible for a nation of people to live unaffected by an atmosphere of pervasive fear. Nor is it possible for a nation to avoid the reverberations of fear and intimidation that occur when a few among us are singled out for deliberate calculated violence and cruelty. When Mugabe’s police / army / green bombers / war veterans torture some of our friends and colleagues, all of us end up with a burden that feels slightly heavier, all of us inherit a little of the fear, all of us feel a little more joy stolen from our lives, all of us sink a little further into despair struggling with the knowledge that our children’s future has become a little darker.
Victor Frankl was a man who experienced and witnessed the worst extremes of torture at the hands of the Nazis in the Concentration Camps during WWII. He understood the price that torture exacted from its victims, but he also recognised that humans have the capacity to withstand atrocities in even the most awful circumstances. Frankl says it best in his own words, and so we include here an extended quote:
“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become moulded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.” ***
We all know that we are engaged in a fight for big important principles: democracy, justice, human rights, freedom and equality. But what we need to understand too, is that we are all engaged in a fight for our “hearts” and our “minds”. This is a fight that party politics can’t touch; we as individuals have to cling to our hearts and minds ourselves, and it us up to us alone to stand strong in the face of fear and intimidation.
We also need to understand that, just as we all can’t help but inherit a little of the burden of the victims pain, so we all have the power to choose to lighten the burdens of others. We need to stand by those who have felt the extreme range of violence, and we need to understand that by supporting them, we support ourselves too because in doing so we are ‘fighting back’ and salvaging a little bit of the humanity that the Mugabe regime tries so hard to strip from us.
26 June 2007 is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This is our day, a day when we need to spend time reflecting on how we can support those who have felt the worst extremes of torture, as well as supporting ourselves through the side-effects of having our minds washed daily with putrid abuse. We need to renew our commitment to our sense of humanity, our dignity, our sense of personal purpose and pride. And we need to do this knowing that we do so in the face of a deliberate calculated strategy that seeks to batter our hearts and minds into submission. Ask yourselves today if you really want to remain passive in the face of torture, or if you’d prefer to fight for your hearts and minds and reclaim some of your freedom. As Frankl would say, ‘choose your own attitude, choose your own way’. Only you can make that choice.
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* All quotes taken from the May 2007 report by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, “Their words condemn them: The language of violence, intolerance and despotism in Zimbabwe”
** AM J Psychiatry 1994; 151: 76-81
[http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/151/1/76]
*** Taken from Frankl’s book titled “Man’s Search for Meaning”
July 3rd, 2007 00:24
Dear Zimbabweans -
Usually, the news coming out of Africa is filled with disaster, despair and death. What we in Europe never hear is what happens right before the major disaster.
Perhaps the helplessness of, for example, the victims in Darfur seems to make (being completely honest) terrifying - but also a little provocing. It’s like it’s hard to idenfy with the disaster of people who just sit there, with no hope no future and just look like they have given up. I know why they have, but I also know that those images are too horrible in some way to make people react; simply, they cannot identify on any level. I don’t think like that. I know many do.
However, when I was searching the internet for information about Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation (I’m an economist and I am therefore interested in what actually happens during economic crises), I never thought I would stumble across information like this. You guys are like me - just caught under a terror regime just when the disaster starts rolling for real.
I have read through every single post in this blog and suddenly, hyperinflation is just not very interesting. The story of your lives and how we can help save (and later, improve) them is so much more important. In fact, that is the only thing that is important.
Why doesn’t the World community react? Where is South Africa, where is the UK, where is the EU (in which I reside)? I don’t know, but I promise you that I will, right now, start by sending a letter to the editor of our largest newspaper with the link to your blog in it. He’s an acquaintance and this blog should be read by people like myself to make people put pressure on our governments to help you guys. Now. Moreover, this is an extremely important document of evidence to which sufferings Mugabe is inflicting on his people. Wait, not “his” people - the people of Zimbabwe, I should say.
Please keep reporting. Do not let fear stop you. Ever. What I do know is that if every single adult in Zimbabwe gathered to rally in Harare, you WOULD be able to take down this regime immediately. Rest assured that the power of the people is so, so, so strong. Keep being strong and brave.
With all support possible,
sincerely
C. Kaufmann, Denmark.
July 4th, 2007 17:18
Mr Kaufmann, Thank you for such a heartfelt comment, which we all read and appreciated very much. As far as inflation is concerned, it appears that the imminent collapse of the economy is Mugabe’s biggest enemy right now. Unlike people, he cannot bludgeon or beat it until it is filled with fear. The collapse is relentless and not stopping and we are all caught up in it.
July 5th, 2007 14:11
C. Kaufmann’s posting made me cry. Its been one of those days. I came to the UK four months ago with every intention of going back in June. I am now thinking of staying and everyone tells me this is the right thing to do given how awful things have gotten. I often have real day dreams where i talk to Mugabe to give us back our dignity. Everytime I meet anyone here and I tell them I am Zimbabwean the cricis, and Mugabe takes over. I would like to be proud to be Zimbabwean again. The decision to go back home should not be difficult… it should be automatic. I am fed up of Mugabe defining what we as Zimbabweans are. I want to feel safe and contribute to the development of my country. I want to spend Saturdays gossipping with my sisters in their homes. I want to feel i belong.. these very human emotions have been taken away from me. Instead I spend my days worrying about whethert the Home Office will accepte my request to vary my visa, whether Gordon Brown will usher in new and tougher policies on immigration and what the implactions are for Zimbabweans in the UK. I want to go home and feel at home
July 5th, 2007 16:16
Thank you for your comments.
“for Nora”: Do not forget that you should be proud; after all Mugabe is the monster, not the people of Zimbabwe - I have the deepest respect for you and all your fellow Zimbabweans.
What I wanted to post was that your blog and the attention, I have so far drawn to it here, has made a large Danish paper run a 2-day story on Zimbabwe and the troubles you guys are in. I know this probably won’t change much right now, but I want you guys to know that now even more people will know what kind of sufferings you have to endure. Change WILL come. Soon!
Keep being brave
C. Kaufmann
July 8th, 2007 03:15
Mugabe is being ordered to do this by Bush. If it weren’t for Bush and the neo-cons, none of this would be happening. But it’s not surprising, seeing how Bush’s grandfather was Hitler’s banker and laundered the gold from Auschwitz. When the Republican dictatorship in fascist Amerika ends, the world will again be at peace.
July 22nd, 2007 17:05
Mr Democratic Underground.
Does your meaningless drivel actually have any point to it, Hitlers Banker? Nazi gold? Auschwitz? what is it you are actually trying to say ? and where is “Amerika” ??.
Mugabe is his own self made idiot, he does not take orders from Bush or anyone else you should know that by now, perhaps less time spent under the marula bush would be helpful.
Mr Kaufman
Having read your post I am somewhat perturbed to learn that”You guys are like me - just caught under a terror regime”.Since it appears that you post from Denmark how is it that you come to be “caught under a terror regime”??
You ask “Where is South Africa”, well it’s where it has always been but this was not the intent of your question….South Africa does not do anything because one black leader is loath to criticise another, its just not done ergo SA accepts the situation. SA is just as corrupt as Zimbabwe anyway as is evidenced by a constant and regular flow of atrocities perpertrated upon the black and white populations by the criminal elements.
Mugabe has no concern what so ever for the well being of the people and looks to shift the blame for his own stupidity onto colonialism, the whites, bush, anyone but himself and his murderous policies.
Change will only come when the Zimabweans accept that freedom entails responsibility and democracy means accountable government, and to stop relying on handouts, loans, charity and reliance on handouts which only reinforce the begging bowl mentality.
July 23rd, 2007 19:46
I think C. Kaufman meant “You guys are just like me - (the only difference being you are) caught under a terror regime”. He didn’t say he was suffering in Denmark. As a Zimbo, I really appreciated his comment.
I don’t appreciate YOURS however Hunyani, and the very derogative way you talk about Zimbabweans. You have left a lot of comments on this blog Hunyani - the right hand column today has 5/6 comments left by you. I am beginning to see a common thread running through them - a bitter ‘when-we’ tone.
To us young Zimbabweans, its so boring and irritating to hear. If you don’t want to be a part of a non racist positive change, can’t you just shut-up?
Do you want peace to fail in Zimbabwe so it can satisfy your view that no african country can ever succeed? Could you bear it if maybe you were WRONG and maybe white and black people in Zimbabwe are genuinely united to fight for change in a peaceful non-violent way.
Or are you by any chance Zanu PF CIO - trying to stir up race hate and division?
July 23rd, 2007 19:47
- Well, I didn’t really have to reply, as a kind reader did it for me - but linguistically, the latter interpretation of my comment was the intent. I’m pretty sure you knew, however.
Now, I have no idea what the majority of Zimbabweans thinks of this regime, but I’m pretty sure they are well aware that “freedom entails responsibility” - but it’s just not that easy to change the current government, now is it, Hunyani?
July 24th, 2007 11:01
As a Zimbabwean, I feel that it is my democratic right to express myself in any way I see fit. If you resent the number of posts I have placed here then there is little I can do about that. You are entitled to post as often as you wish to.
It is a pity that you see fit to have to resort to abuse to indicate your feelings. I can assure you that I do not intend to adhere to your order to shut up.
Point: I am not a whenwe and if you think that, well its just too bad.
You obviously claim to speak for all “Young Zimbabweans”, and it is a pity that you are so easily bored and irritated. You have simply posted with a closed mind because you are not prepared to even read my posts properly. I base my ideas on the priciple of equal rights entailing equal responsibilities and this means for all races including yourself whatever race you are, I am not interested in wether you are black,white or green with yellow luminous dots..
If you think I am trying to stir up race hate and division you are well off the mark. I suspect that it is you who are probably sympathetic to the CIO and the idiot mugabe.
July 24th, 2007 14:49
Hunyani,
you are forgetting something: part of the freedom of expression is that you can tell someone to shut up all you want to. Also, you can tell them that your truth is the right one and that no other ‘truths’ exist. On the other hand, you are then allowed to respond and try to counter-prove that.
Accusing each other of being with the ZPF or whatever is really not the point - actually, I hope some ZPFs are involved here as that would give me and many others the opportunity to ask them what is going on in their heads (if anything, that is).
So … don’t go after the man - play the ball instead. If you feel what is being said is not true, then say something else! You kind of lose it after “…in any way I see fit”.
Anyway - remember the quote, which Voltaire is being credited for (although he probably didn’t utter it):
“I disagree with everything you say, but I will fight to my death for your right to say it!”
//CK
July 24th, 2007 17:38
Hunyani, don’t make me laugh! You definitely don’t base your ideas on the principles of equal rights. Why do I think you’re trying to ’stir up race’ hate? Well, it was this comment here that you left on a different post. Here it is again:
“so-called freedom fighters” …..?
“Compare if you will, the number of atrocities carried out by those forces on the black population with the number carried out upon the White population”……?
Do you really expect me to believe that you don’t know that those kind of comments inflame race issues? I don’t believe that someone who cares about equal rights in Zimbabwe TODAY would make those kind of comments. That’s history to us, we’re fighting for now, for today!
However, I think a person who thinks its OK for the majority of people to be deprived a vote; OK for parents to not be able to send their kids to ‘white schools’; OK for black people to be excluded from white clubs; etc; etc; etc; probably would make comments like that.
Because a person who thought like that wouldn’t count that sort of thing as an ‘atrocity’ would they….?
Especially if that person didn’t really care whether Zimbabwe came right or not (I don’t see a great deal of feeling or concern for the Zimbabwean people in any of your comments).
But what really irritated me about that comment is the fact that it was left after an article about how refugees are struggling and having to flee the country and are suffering in South Africa, parted from their children etc. The last thing I was thinking about when I got to the end was making a history race point based on one small sentence in a long article - my head was full of the suffering of the Zimbabwe people being deprived of their freedom. So when I saw your comment — something seemed very wrong, and then I read on through the rest and quickly got the picture.
The suffering of the refugees was not top of your mind Hunyani, you just wanted to make a jibe about “so-called” freedom fighters. What, you think black people were FREE in Rhodesia? PLeeeease! How can I possibly believe you care about equal rights?
July 24th, 2007 21:33
C Kaufmann: So if I tell you to piss off, then I am simply exercising my right to free speech??
It would be appropriate to quote George Orwell in “1984″…. “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
Something Fishy:
My intention is not to make you laugh or just to make jibes, if it was I would have said something funny.
My question related to atrocities committed by the terrorist forces on the black population as compared to the white population. Can you answer the question. I can tell you that the number of black victims of their atrocities far exceeded the number of white victims. Now why is that, why should a black terrorist/ freedom fighter kill the very people he is trying to liberate?
You do however make a number of assumptions about matters to which I made no reference.
Lets keep the expression “Atrocity” within its nornmal and usual meaning. What you are describing comes under the term “discrimination”.
I trust your feelings in regard to refugees extends to refugees of all races and not just the ones you perchance to see on your TV screen who thanks to our objective media machine are invariably black..
Today in Zimbabwe we have the “Free”, sure they are free, or are they? Free to die of aids, free to die from the predations of their benevolent government, free to starve to death etc. Is this freedom, or just a sick joke.
Now, For every right, there is an obligation or responsibility. Rights do not exist in isolation. For equal rights to exist there must be equal responsibilities. Or do you beleive that unequal treatment stems from the amount of skin colouring a person has? No, this is not so, I do not hate a person because he is black, or because he is white. To do so is irrational, I hate a person who is too lazy to think, a person who is indolent, a person who expects something for nothing, a person who is so self centered as to be totally indifferent to the suffering of others.
July 25th, 2007 08:15
There you go again, revealing your true feelings. I rest my case.
Which ‘media machine’ would you be talking about? Certainly not our Zimbabwean one, which takes me back to the when-we point I made in a previous comment.
There’s little point continuing this discussion because you clearly just don’t get it. So its over and out for me.
July 25th, 2007 10:34
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