Photo credit: the Irish News
A Zimbabwean pro-democracy activist who described surviving gunshots, and a year jailed as a political prisoner has said gaining a scholarship for refugees at a UK university gave him “hope in a hopeless place”.
Independent reports that Makomborero Haruzivishe said he was an “ordinary” 19-year-old student when he joined the University of Zimbabwe to study psychology in 201, but his activism over education rights and corruption led to him being arrested 37 times, banned from university, tortured, imprisoned and nearly killed.
Speaking about his experience at the University of Kent, the 32-year-old told the PA news agency he is studying law and politics degree two years after he fled his country in the middle of the night to South Africa.
He said, “Leaving Zimbabwe, it was painful.
“I couldn’t afford to say goodbye to my parents, to my siblings, tto everyone.
“I lost most of my old colleagues, some of my colleagues were abducted, never to be returned.
“And that was the moment when I, for the sake of my life, I just had to get out.”
He said he didn’t know where he was going and that the only thing that kept him sane was the determination to get an opportunity for education.
He is a former secretary general of the Zimbabwe National Student Union (ZINASU). He fled the country after being released from prison in 2022 after a public campaign from Amnesty International and advocacy from the House of Lords to free him.
His arrest and detention was described by Amnesty International as “politically motivated” in a bid to silence him and other peaceful political activists, including on a charge of inciting violence during a 2020 protest – by blowing a whistle.
His memories of his country are of pain and prison, triggered by dirty toilets which remind him of his time spent in an overcrowded cell with around 120 inmates and one toilet.
According to him, he was always “living on the edge’ before jail to decrease his chance of being abducted. He would always check if he was being followed. He slept no more than three hours a night out of fear of being attacked.
He said, “I had gunshots fired at me, I managed to survive.”
Mr. Haruzivishe said he did not intend to claim asylum in the UK. However, on a short visit to meet parliamentarians and activists from human rights charity Acrion for Southern Africa (ACTSA) in London, he said things were “really serious” with the Zimbabwean government once officials realized he had left the country.
According to him, they were very annoyed and they even threatened to send hitmen on him in the UK. He applied for asylum in February 2023 but said after handling his documents and attending screening appointments, “I felt like a nobody”.
He said he was sometimes worried about his asylum claims and thought, “what if I’m denied my asylum claim, whar if they deport me?”
However, he gained his refugee status in October 2023.
On becoming a refugee, he said: “No-one chooses to be a refugee.
“I can tell you the pain of being a refugee, how much I yearned to just go back home, be with my parents, with my siblings – it is not a choice.”
