Meet Mugabe's Victims
Kirchick, James
Meet Mugabe's Victims Thousands have been killed or tortured by the Zimbabwean dictator. Here are the stories of three. By James Kirchick Harare and. Johannesburg For 17 years, Holly Moyo was...
...He was forced to sign resignation papers, was dismissed from the force in February 2004 with a pittance for severance pay, and his house was put under 24-hour surveillance by the security forces...
...In a country with such a weak economy, his job was his only means of caring for his wife and children...
...As Holly Moyo says, "He's murdered so many people...
...Most impressive about this remarkable man who displays more joie de vivre than most people who can see is that he has made a name for himself as a cricket commentator on the radio...
...Neighbors took him to the hospital where administrators gave him a bed but denied him treatment, other than painkillers, for four days...
...He began taking the Daily News, an independent newspaper, to work, in order to share it covertly with like-minded officers...
...We know whom you voted for," Moyo was told...
...To understand what happened to Dean du Plessis, one must first understand something about Zimbabwean cricket...
...They beat him, and his parents told him to "leave because you are going to die...
...This was the last straw...
...The chances of Chari's returning to Zimbabwe anytime soon are slim...
...He was lucky to receive political asylum...
...Years ago Mugabe never used to be like this," he says, shaking his head...
...I didn't want anyone else to get involved...
...But Moyo chose to stay, even to become more forthright in his politics...
...Zimbabwean agents have been known to infiltrate the exile community (estimated at between 1.5 and 3 million people) in South Africa...
...Yet we should not forget about Robert Mugabe...
...In late 2003, in spite of the certain political repercussions, he oversaw the arrest of 37 ZANU-PF supporters for rioting...
...He and others were accused of being "British spies and stooges...
...Moyo was a dutiful employee of the police force, but he took seriously his public servant's pledge to uphold the rule of law...
...I like girls, good beer, and loud music," he tells me when I meet him at a favorite bar...
...They said our salary is being paid for by Mugabe," Moyo recalls...
...Now he must do so in exile...
...Like many Zimbabweans, he too has fond memories of Mugabe's early years...
...In May of this year, Chari attended the annual conference of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) in Harare...
...My wife screamed, she screamed...
...He keeps photos of his wounds—"in case we want to go to court one day...
...At around 11 p.m., when he was on his way home from town, six or seven men emerged from a Land Rover and began to beat him...
...Many wonder why Zimbabwe has not experienced an armed revolt under Mugabe...
...He sent his children to his parents' home, and on December 30, 2004, friends helped push him through his bathroom window at 3 in the morning so that the men watching his house would not see him escape...
...We decided to continue with the demonstrations until our fellow comrades were released," he told me...
...In general, he was a very good man...
...The men took a knife to his genitals, and Moyo soon passed out...
...Mugabe, I've got a terrible headache...
...With international news coverage heavily slanted toward the Middle East and what little space is given to Africa focused on the continuing genocide in Sudan, the crisis of Zimbabwe has been all but ignored...
...Unable to obtain painkillers once he left the hospital, he started drinking heavily to dull the pain...
...This regime can do anything," he says...
...Student-led protests at the increase of tuition fees and other, more grave political provocations are a common occurrence...
...Being away [at school] in South Africa I was deprived of growing up in the country I love so much...
...Disappointed with his insubordination, the men twisted his feet and beat his soles with a fan belt for half an hour...
...He hasn't seen his children for almost two years...
...Why are you asking me...
...His staying in power [after the rigged 2002 election] was illegitimate as far as we were concerned," Chari says...
...His hands are so full of blood...
...Dean du Plessis is one of the few white people left in Zimbabwe...
...He says he lost consciousness for about 30 minutes yet somehow managed to escape just as someone threw a glass bottle at him, scarring his face...
...They told him to come with them...
...I didn't want to cause any attention," he says...
...In the run-up to the March 2002 election, Moyo says, officers from the Police Internal Security Intelligence (PISI) infiltrated the police so as "to find out who was against Mugabe...
...They then played a recording of the broadcast in question...
...Over the past several years, black and white players alike have quit as a result of political differences with those in charge...
...He thinks he is the first blind sportscaster in the world...
...I am bound to be his voice when he is oppressed and is voiceless, I am bound to speak for him...
...He was assigned to the corps that handles crowd control at large protests...
...it's not fair on them...
...One is the lingering awe for Mugabe as liberation leader that some still no doubt feel...
...But it was only in October that year that things spiraled out of control...
...My vote is my secret," Moyo responded...
...He was told, "The only secrets belong to ZANU-PF," and handed a resignation form, which he refused to sign...
...In a foreshadowing of his future outspokenness, du Plessis piped up as the First Family made their way to their car, "Please, Mr...
...Neglecting him when I am benefiting from the tax that is coming from his sweat is tantamount to betrayal...
...He made his way to South Africa in late May and was staying in Johannesburg when I met him in mid-August...
...But at around the same time Mugabe began authorizing violent seizures of white-owned farms, he packed the Zimbabwe Cricket Union with ZANU-PF hacks...
...Forty-eight students including Chari were arrested at the end of the three-day conference on trumped-up charges...
...But by the time of the 2002 presidential election, Moyo wanted change...
...He broadcasts daily from 5 to 6 p.m...
...In a December 2005 broadcast, du Plessis stated the obvious about the condition of Zimbabwean cricket...
...So when the election finally rolled around, Moyo decided to take a risk and call in sick...
...But he too has been a victim of the Mugabe regime, and his story shows how depraved it has become...
...The Daily News had suffered firebomb attacks on its Harare office...
...What's more, men like the three I met—nonviolent political dissenters subjected to torture—were lucky: They were not killed...
...Although du Plessis could not see them, he knew what they had in mind...
...Consider Holly Moyo's experience...
...For most of his schooling, he attended the Pioneer School for the Blind, in South Africa...
...The country is now crippled by 80 percent unemployment, astronomical inflation rates, and massive shortages of food...
...I am bound to free that individual...
...The police spy even described what Moyo had been wearing...
...Three days later, when Chari arrived back at school, he was promptly rearrested, detained, and beaten again...
...Like his father before him, he served in the Zimbabwean Republic Police, in the southern city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest...
...His wife found him...
...As he tells me this, and shows me a photo of his younger self as a proud police officer in uniform, Moyo is in tears...
...One hears the complaint, especially among blacks in the region, that Zimbabwean blacks are too docile, too kind, too respectful of authority for their own good...
...Zimbabwe's system of higher education, heavily dependent on state funds, has suffered greatly from the country's economic unraveling, which has predictably led to student unrest...
...He met the president in 1982, when Mugabe and his widely admired first wife, Sally, visited du Plessis's school...
...Police officers vote at their workplaces, under the careful eye of their superiors, not at neutral locations like town halls or civic centers...
...Zimbabwe soon posted high literacy and economic growth...
...Over the past few years especially, as political turmoil increased in this once prosperous southern African nation, his was a busy job...
...The people are resigned," a Zimbabwean journalist told me...
...Please don't put on the sirens...
...At Bindura, the outspoken Chari was president of the Student Representatives' Council...
...You can hear my voice," du Plessis responded...
...A plainclothes police spy saw him at a public polling place on Election Day and reported him immediately to his supervisors...
...When he got home that day, he found PISI officers searching his house...
...In April 2004, Heath Streak, one of the country's best cricketers and the national team's captain, was forced to resign over disputes related to racial quotas that led to the firing of many white players...
...The national cricket team, like nearly every other facet of Zimbabwean life, has been forcibly politicized in recent years...
...Moyo's ploy failed...
...Aside from his disability, he is a regular guy...
...Johannesburg For 17 years, Holly Moyo was one of the many loyal foot soldiers who helped keep the government of Robert Mugabe running...
...I criticized the people that run Zimbabwe cricket," he told me matter-of-factly...
...since...
...Up until our interview, du Plessis had not spoken of this torment...
...After a week, he was discharged...
...As a student at Bindura University of Science Education, in the ZANU-PF stronghold of Mashona-land Central Province, Chari helped to lead a democracy movement...
...They came to me during the night," Moyo recalled, familiar words to many a Zimbabwean...
...One of President Mugabe's ubiquitous portraits was hanging in the conference room...
...Parts of his mutilated penis were on his knee...
...In those years I was very scared of the sirens," he explains, speaking of the president's ubiquitous motorcade...
...He was thrown into a brown Toyota pickup where drunken thugs beat and spit on him, threatening to kill him...
...Our economy was going to the dogs," he said...
...They said I was going to die for Tsvangirai," he said, Morgan Tsvangirai being the leader of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change...
...He himself feels an obligation to the ordinary Zimbabwean, whose taxes support higher education but who often cannot send his own children to college...
...Moyo says he and his colleagues were told by their boss, "You put your 'X' on ZANU-PF," the ruling party...
...Moyo figured that his secret ballot was the only weapon he had to use against the dictatorship...
...To him, the risk was worth it...
...The motorcade left quietly, "like sedate human beings," du Plessis recalls...
...The day after his broadcast, two men came to the Harare Toyota dealership where du Plessis works as a customer service representative...
...Moyo believed it was only a matter of time before the government returned to finish the job...
...He and his wife now live in South Africa, in a tiny, one-room house—apartheid-era servant's quarters in the backyard of a luxury home—in a tony northern suburb of Johannesburg...
...I love my country...
...But it is being paid for by the common people...
...on the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and has also done commentary for the BBC...
...A Zimbabwean exile organization helped cover the costs of reconstructive surgery...
...He felt he had no choice but to leave Zimbabwe...
...His wife was jailed for eight days for making a report to the police...
...Like most black Zimbabweans, the 42-year-old husband and father once was a supporter of Robert Mugabe...
...In October 2005 he was suspended, not for academic infractions or hard partying, but for allegedly sowing "feelings of hate and dislike...
...He is 29 years old and blind...
...Thanks to sympathetic nurses who took him into their care, the damage was not as bad as it could have been, but his testicles were "cut into pieces" and the scars of his skinned penis will never go away...
...And things have only gotten worse James Kirchick is an assistant to the editor in chief of the New Republic...
...We are going to go back home...
...So the students carefully removed the presidential portrait and turned it over to the police officers standing watch...
...The most acute reason, however, is that any dissent within the security forces, even from low-ranking officers, is met with a strong show of force...
...Still, du Plessis did not make a scene...
...The idea of respecting him and having his picture in our conference room was like legitimizing" his election-stealing...
...it would eventually be shut down...
...But there are other reasons a coup—at least a coup emanating from the military or security forces—is unlikely...
...Mugabe became a Mandela-like figure for the country's black majority, and in 1980 was elected president in the country's first democratic vote...
...It used to be one of the best cricket teams, if not the best, in the world...
...He told me he was planning on leaving for another African country (which he could not disclose) out of fear for his safety...
...Du Plessis continues to broadcast, but he is careful about what he says...
...As every major election-observer group (except, notably, African ones) would confirm, "Mugabe incorporated the police into his own instruments" for stealing the election...
...one of the men asked...
...Few American college students could readily identify with the difficulties endured by Givemore Chari, age 23...
...This is a form of torture common in Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and human rights NGOs have reported its being perpetrated against many individuals...
...Is that you...
...When released, he returned to join mass protests at his school...
...It was at this time that he was "forcibly abducted" by intelligence officers...
...There was blood everywhere...
...The people of Zimbabwe could tell countless stories like these three...
...The president rubbed his head...
...Known as "falanga," it is used in other locales and is popular with dictatorships because it leaves few visible signs as the soles of the feet are thick and tough...
...The two men drove him for about a half hour, took him to an air-conditioned room, and sat him in what he describes as a "comfortable chair...
...Given Zimbabwe's 13 universities and large student population, it is not difficult to see why the government considers students "a major threat within the composition of the democratic forces" in the country, Chari says...
...Things are going to be okay in Zimbabwe one day," he tells me...
...I still remember when he was in jail," Moyo says, citing the ten-year period that began in 1964...
...They don't know anything about the sport...
...In prison, he and the others were "brutally assaulted" by guards and denied access to any sort of medical treatment or food until the next day—and then only after human rights lawyers intervened...
Vol. 12 • December 2006 • No. 15
