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In support of the Southern African Zimbabwe Solidarity Movement
The Save Zimbabwe Now Campaign
April 07, 2009

The Save Zimbabwe Now Campaign joins the rest of the world in condemning the recent expose of the horrifying conditions in Zimbabwe's prisons and the appalling way in which people have been left to rot by the Zimbabwean Prisons Service. To allow the citizens of your country to wither away and perish under such circumstances amounts to nothing less than a slow form of the vilest form of torture, degrading, cruel and inhuman punishment.

While the recent Special Assignment images have brought fresh attention to what is going on these conditions have been known by the Zimbabwean opposition and the activists who organise in solidarity for many years. They are the thin end of the wedge of the degrading and inhuman way in which the Zimbabwean state and ZANU PF have used torture and violence to retain their grip on power.

The famous epitaph that says to know a country one must look at its prisons is the aptest way of describing how far Zimbabwe has fallen. The complete and utter disregard for human dignity highlighted by the terrifying images we have seen exists not only in prisons but wherever ZANU PF operations like "Murambatsvina" (Clean Out the Filth) and "Mavhotera Papi" (Punish the Opposition) have destroyed all of those who have stood in their way.

This is the human flotsam and jetsam of the vicious politics of power that are being ignored by the elite deals that have been struck. These are the people who are most vulnerable and for whom the long road of reconstruction holds little relief, today, tomorrow or as far ahead along the road as they can see.

The conditions for prisoners are symptomatic of the way the human dignity of the majority of Zimbabweans has been stripped in the most barbaric ways. The Save Zimbabwe Now Campaign was launched at least partly in response to the appalling ways that the bodies of the dead were left to pile up stories high in morgues across the country. Eye witnesses spoke of cadavers thrown two or three stories down to burst and shatter because the lifts in the hospitals in which they died were no longer working. Relatives were being called to remove corpses that had been gnawed on by rats before they rotted to pulp. If this is how Zimbabwe was treating its dead, the indignity of those still living could scarcely be imagined.

That things were allowed to deteriorate to this point will hang forever as a mantle of shame over SADC and the South African government. While the Global Political Agreement may provide a shaky transitional map towards a people driven constitution and a legitimate election it has come at great cost to ordinary people. People whose will have been ignored and whose needs remain unmet.

The Solidarity Movement in South Africa and the SADC region will continue to apply diverse forms of pressure and find innovative ways of responding effectively to the needs of those who have been cast aside. The direction will come from Zimbabweans themselves but the call to action and the moral imperative to speak out remains a responsibility that lies with all of us.

Aluta continua An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

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