Tortured by Zanu PF thugs

May 16, 2008
Sokwanele.com

Her name is Memory 　

This is Memory. Her story was told in an article published yesterday by the Daily Mail. It’s title: How one woman’s extraordinary bravery is a haunting rebuke to a world that is ignoring Mugabe’s genocide. Her experience of torture at the hands of Zanu PF thugs is beyond ordinary imagination. Her lovely face, with its almost serene expression, also protects the reader from the horror of her experiences. And the editorial rigours of the mainstream media buffers us from the full awful truth: the images of Memory’s injuries have been considered too graphic - grotesque - by most to publish.

When you click the read more link on this post, you will see the reality of what happened to Memory.

Writing for the Daily Mail, Peter Oborne tells Sokwanele what happened:
Four men held down her arms and legs, while a fifth gripped her head, placing his hands over her mouth to prevent her screams being heard.
Two others, wielding heavy wooden poles, then took turns to thrash her on the buttocks in a beating that lasted half an hour.

She told me how on arrival at the school (which she had attended as a child), she had been ordered to sit in the playground with a group of supporters of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - the opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

On the dot of 8am, the beatings started. Groups of eight people at a time were ordered out for treatment at the hands of a band of around 200 members of Robert Mugabe’s militia, each wearing Zanu-PF T-shirts and green, red and yellow bandanas signifying the national flag.
Many of them were high on drink or drugs.
She watched as four of her close friends were beaten and kicked to death. A fifth friend later died, and others remain unaccounted for.

The militiamen chanted songs and spat insults at Morgan Tsvangirai as they did their work. They told Memory, whose farmer husband was away: "You and your husband are MDC members so we must beat you.’ They said that she belonged ‘to a party of animals". Memory told me how she could hear her children screaming "Mamma, Mamma, Mamma!" during her beating. They were held back by female members of Zanu-PF. Later, Memory was ordered to sit for two hours on her wounds. Mugabe’s thugs told her she would be thrashed again if she moved a muscle.

"We spent the day without eating or water in the hot sun," she told me. "If we asked for water, they said: ‘Get your water from Tsvangirai’."

Believe it or not, just by being alive, Memory is one of the lucky ones.
The article, which has a lot more to say, is here : it ends like this:
As I stood up to leave the bedside of Memory, I asked if, despite all she had been through, she would still vote for Morgan Tsvangirai in the presidential run-off. Her face lit up with a wonderful, radiant, artless smile. "Oh, yes!" she said. "I would. I will vote with confidence."

While this amazing spirit of courage and optimism remains, there is still hope this wonderful country could soon rid itself of its appalling despot Robert Mugabe - if only the world would stop averting its eyes and finally take the moral responsibility to help end this tragedy.
Memory’s courage is one of the reasons why these images have to be seen and we have to respond to them. Her courage is extraordinary.

Peter Oborne’s article highlights the way the terrible pain of what she has endured has not impacted on her committment to Zimbabwe’s future. But her courage is deeper than even that: readers should be aware that in telling her story, allowing her face to be pictured, showing the world her terrible injuries, Memory is risking reprisal attacks.

But she did it anyway, so you could see and hear what is happening.