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Christine Mhaka a forgotten heroine of Zimbabwe's struggle
Grace Kwinjeh
March 01, 2008

Her name is Christine Mhaka. She is 28 years old. She is a founder-member of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC), for which she has worked tirelessly for the past eight years.

Christine has been arrested and beaten several times over the years.

She is now a refugee in South-Africa, where she is faced with yet another kind of struggle; a struggle with its own dynamics that make her wonder whether she should have left home after all.

For Mhaka, things came to a head when she was tortured on March 11, 2007. Ghastly scenes of tortured civic and political leaders made international headlines. Many cannot erase from their memories images of the battered civic and opposition leaders.

For those that already had a media profile, their prominence gave them the protection and support they would need.

Little known Mhaka is a forgotten heroine. Her story exposes the dynamics around the struggle for change in Zimbabwe and how it plays itself out for many activists especially those who choose to cross the border into the Diaspora. Harsh circumstances force them out of Zimbabwe but when outside they are essentially on their own.

Mhaka now lives in a makeshift shack in a squatter camp.

"I have to kneel down to get into my home. We have no water; we use buckets to get water about 5km from where I stay," she says while sobbing.

"I have never suffered like this in my life. At times I wonder why God has condemned me to this."

Mhaka was once full of life. Now she does not look like the fearless fighter against Zimbabwe's secret police that she used to be. There has been no reward for her political activism; no one to turn to or to share her agony of police brutality with. Zimbabwe's opposition has not been a source of security to her as an activist.

One would think the benefits and the hero status accorded to her fellow comrades would have at least trickled down to her, or that she would get some form of recognition and be remembered. She has now become a mere statistic - a figure or a case in the numerous reports that have been written about the tyranny that visits those that oppose Robert Mugabe's dictatorship.

A security crackdown that followed March 11 resulted in more arrests and torture of senior civic and opposition officials. It did not end there. Other people, including Mhaka's mother, were harassed as state agents sought information on the whereabouts of those on their list.

"I decided to leave the country, after the torture," Mhaka says. "I could not bear it any more. They beat up my mother because of my activism. My mother worries about me; she worries about how I am surviving."

The Southern African Development Community, (SADC), responded to the March 11 brutality by appointing South-Africa's President Thabo Mbeki as mediator to end the crisis through a negotiated settlement between the ruling Zanu-PF party and the MDC. Months later the much talked about mediation has all but collapsed. The Zanu-PF party has reneged on every promise made in terms of guaranteeing democratic reforms that would rescue Zimbabwe from the prevailing socio-economic crisis.

Inflation stands at a record high of over 100 00 percent. Life expectancy for females is down to 34 and for males 37 years. High unemployment, collapsed health delivery and education systems, increased repression, are the litany of ills Zimbabweans endure as they brace themselves for yet another general election on March 29.

Many like Mhaka, who is one of an estimated 3-million Zimbabweans now living outside Zimbabwe, would like to return home, but she is afraid of going back. That means they must continue to face the rigours of refugee life.

"The police here haunt us every day," says Mhaka, who was brought to the squatter camp by a friend she met while on the streets of Johannesburg. "Night and day we are raided."

The squatter camp is home. For food they scrounge around I dare not ask about the basic needs of a woman, such as sanitary towels. On average a packet of tampons costs R20, a fortune for an unemployed refugee.

A South African researcher with the International Labour Research and Information Group based in Cape Town, Koni Benson says of Mhaka's case: "The politics of elite transition in Zimbabwe is being played out across the bodies of women who dare to speak out, such as women like Mhaka. Instead of supporting their struggle for humanity, as they cross the border into South- Africa in search of survival, they continue to struggle, as the South-African Government does nothing to help."

Benson believes the South-African Government should develop a more honest and realistic approach to the political crisis in Zimbabwe - not one that props up the Mugabe regime.

In January the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg was raided. Refugees from Zimbabwe and other African countries, who live there and receive humanitarian support, were harassed by members of the South-Africa Police Service (SAPS).

Bishop Paul Verryn, who runs the programme, says: "Some of the refugees here ran away from political persecution, but in South Africa they are being subjected to torture, harassment, police brutality and all forms of abuse at the hands of the people who should protect them. Women and children are yet to come to terms with the recent raid.

"South Africa treats Zimbabwean refugees like criminals, which makes it complicit in the gender violence being unleashed on women by the state in Zimbabwe."

Mhaka finally found help after almost a year of destitution and no access to therapy. She made her way to the Southern Africa Centre for Survivors of Torture, (SACST), where she has finally started to receive therapy.

Project officer, Sox Chikowero, a Zimbabwean who is also a victim of torture, says of Mhaka's condition: "Looking a her you can see she is very traumatized and depressed. You can see she is not her self."

Thousands of genuine asylum seekers arrive in South Africa. Chikowero says many are too scared to seek help or to come out in the open because of the continued victimization and the xenophobia of some South Africans towards foreign nationals.

Asked whether it would be easy for Mhaka to deal with the continued social and emotional stress sustained while in South Africa, Chikowero says: "Help comes in stages, It is not a once-off situation. It includes psycho-social, medical intervention and humanitarian assistance. How one responds is not easy to tell after one visit.

"We offer humanitarian assistance especially in the case where drugs are prescribed and if the person needs to eat, we try to provide food," says Chikowero.

He says SACST receives new cases of refugees who have escaped from political persecution in Zimbabwe every week. Chikowero estimates that at least a third of the Zimbabwean refugee population in South-Africa comprises victims of torture or political persecution.

There is yet another problem - that of access to health care and drugs for refugees living with HIV/AIDS. He says they are subjected to discrimination. HIV treatment and care in South-Africa remain a contentious issue between the Government and those advocating for robust policy change.

South Africa does not provide ARVs to all seven million citizens who are infected. Out of a population 42 million, only 200 000 receive ARVs. What this means is that HIV-positive refugees who cannot afford to pay for their own drugs face a dire situation, in an already complex political context over the issue.

There is the case of 44-year old Gift Moyo who was on ARVs in Zimbabwe and is now seeking asylum in South-Africa. He has been denied the drugs and his life is now at risk.

While the South African Refugees Act of 1988 makes it mandatory for asylum seekers with or without papers to access health facilities and to be provided with drugs, this does not always happen in reality.

"My drugs have run out and I have been camping at the Home Affairs centre," he told me recently.

Another March 11 torture victim, Nhamo Musekiwa finally succumbed to the HIV virus. His condition was exacerbated by the beatings he endured on that fateful day and a subsequent break in taking the ARVs. He escaped to South-Africa where he died in destitution late in 2007.

Perhaps one day when Zimbabwe is free again Christine Mhaka will look back and smile that her sacrifices were worth it. For now she deserves a fresh start.

(Christine Mhaka is a pseudonym for a Zimbabwean political activist. This story is based on her real life experience.)

*Grace Kwinjeh is a Zimbabwean journalist based in South Africa.

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