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Legal Monitor - Issue 132
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
February 27, 2012

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Inside hell

Rebecca Mafikeni and Yvonne Musarurwa have just spent close to nine months in solitary confinement at Chikurubi Maximum Prison.

Prison authorities allowed them only 20 minutes a day out of the confined cell.

In these 20 minutes, the women were expected to complete all chores human beings are expected of in a day - from laundry and bathing to exercising and just "enjoy" a bit of sunlight out of their dingy prison holes. Raw sewer would flow inside the prison cell, and according to Rebecca and Yvonne, the officer-in-charge at Chikurubi identified as Emelda Chifodya would force them to clean the sewer using their bare hands.

The two women's story paints a disgusting picture of the grave situation of Zimbabwe's inmates, especially those arrested on political grounds.

Made to suffer the worst of prison's inhumane conditions, political prisoners such as Rebecca and Yvonne epitomise how universally guaranteed human rights are stripped off political prisoners.

"We had been touching the (raw) sewer with our bare hands because at one time they ran out of gloves. When we asked her about the situation she (Chifodya) said 'It is not my health. It is your health and I don't care'. She pointed out that even prison officers were living under similar conditions and we insisted that this was because the officers didn't know their rights. We knew our rights," says Yvonne.

Yvonne and Rebecca are part of Glen View residents rounded up by police last year as suspects in the murder of Petros Mutedza, a police inspector, who was allegedly stoned to death in May last year.

Police proceeded to round up, mostly supporters and officials of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. MDC Youth Assembly president Solomon Madzore, arrested on similar charges, is still in remand prison. Defence lawyers argue that the suspects were arrested purely on political grounds.

Confined in a mucky cell for more than 23 hours a day, Rebecca and Yvonne say they only survived death through sheer determination to live to see a democratic Zimbabwe.

"It was a hell," Yvonne told The Legal Monitor in an interview after the duo was released on bail last week following months of living in grave conditions.

"You will be in hell because being alone, physiologically it torments you. You will be thinking a lot. I don't even have enough words to explain it but it was painful. It was so hard that if we had not dedicated ourselves to the MDC and the struggle for change we could have died there.

"We might have committed suicide but the fact is we dedicated ourselves to achieving democracy. We want to change the nature of politics in Zimbabwe. That is why we survived. It is life threatening torture to be forced to spend more than 23 hours confined to a prison cell, locked up and all alone. The cell was a tiny little room with no space to manoeuvre," Yvonne says.

For Rebecca, the treatment inside remand prison is just a tip of the iceberg.

Many more inmates, she says, are suffering in silence because they are unaware of their rights under Zimbabwean laws and regional and international statutes.

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