There are over 800 prisoners in this jail. It is a filthy place of wire and concrete and echoing metallic noise. The psychiatric cases are in the cells too

Ben Freeth in Harare

I went to visit Pastor Patrick Mugadza in Harare Remand Prison this week.  He bravely held up a placard at Victoria Falls in December 2015, which read: “Mr President your people are suffering!”  They put him in jail for 17 nights for pointing that out to President Robert Mugabe and a group of visiting delegates as he arrived at a Zanu PF conference.

This time it is another “crime”. Mugadza predicted President Mugabe would die in October of this year. Such a statement in a dictatorship like that of Mugabe’s is considered wicked to the core.  He was imprisoned in the middle of January and has been detained for over a month. All bail hearings have been postponed for myriad flimsy reasons.

There are over 800 prisoners in this jail. It is a filthy place of wire and concrete and echoing metallic noise. The psychiatric cases are in the cells too – little crowded cell rooms with 25 people sleeping on the bare concrete like sardines. It’s not hard to go mad in that Kafkaesque hole. And to have the mad ones in there with you keeping you awake all night is a cruel kind of torture, Pastor Patrick later tells me.  

One man he met has been imprisoned for six years. His trial was four years ago but he still hasn’t been delivered a judgment.
 
The waiting in the ramshackle shed to gain entrance was lengthy.  After going through the security checks at the gate, I had handed my little piece of cardboard with Patrick’s name scrawled on it through a two-inch square hole in the 12-foot high metal door of the prison. Even the tiny hole had thick bars across it.  I then went back to the visitors’ waiting shed and waited.

Planks were missing from the walls. Two broad lines of black grime ran around the shed behind the backless benches. The smell of sadza (maize porridge), oil and rotting vegetables pervaded the place.  The fellow visitors were subdued and silent. The man sitting next to me was clutching a loaf of bread.  I asked him who he was visiting.  

“My son,” he said with a pained expression on his face. He did not enlarge.  “I am sorry,” I murmured.

I waited.   

As I sat there, my mind wandered to the crocodile we had found earlier that week.  My wife had discovered it when she was out with the dogs in the early morning. She had seen its thick tail protruding from underneath a blanket a few yards from the main road in the botanical gardens close to the central business district of Harare. President Mugabe passes the spot on his way to Politburo and Cabinet meetings. She was too scared to take the blanket off, fearing there might also be a human body under there. It was incomprehensible that a crocodile, and such a large one, would be in the middle of Harare half covered by a blanket.

I went later to investigate.  When I took the blanket off, I saw an enormous 11-foot crocodile. Its head had been smashed and its jaw and teeth were broken. Its body was crawling with maggots.  I knew it must be something dark.

Shona culture – Mugabe like 80 per cent of Zimbabweans is Shona – is rich with animal associations, and all families have totems (or sometimes bodily organs) that are sacred to that family or lineage. The Shona animal name – for example Hove (fish), or Mbizi (zebra) - is commonly a surname. There are taboos against consuming the meat of your totem, and having sexual relations with someone of the same totem. Mugabe’s totem is gushungo – or crocodile. A Catholic taught by the Jesuits, he is also known to have deep respect for traditional Shona culture. Vice President Mnangagwa is also referred to as gushungo.

Here I was looking fairly obviously at a case of tagati, a form of witchcraft.  Resorting to tagati is not uncommon in Zimbabwe today but, like all dark things, it is not out in the open. It would be pure speculation to guess who was behind this extraordinary manifestation. When questioned, the guard at the gate to the gardens professed to know nothing about the crocodile. A few days later, the great crocodile had disappeared and in its place now lay an enormous, dead python. Python is shato. Naturally, no one admitted to seeing it.

In contrast, the recent social media protest movement, under the title #ThisFlag, against Mugabe and his regime is out in the open.  It is a protest that everyone can see and hear and the exact opposite of the dark underworld of tagati.

That is why the Government will go to such lengths to shut down any form of open protest.  The imprisonments, abductions, torture and disappearances of anyone protesting in the open cause huge and understandable fear levels – but there is a growing tide of courage that is somehow overcoming the fear of what might happen to us when we come out into the light. 

And now I was visiting Patrick who was in jail for predicting the death of our Gushungo President.  Pastor Patrick’s face was shining. He was full of joy.  I couldn’t believe how any joy could exist in this jail.  “I am happy to be here,” he said.  “I was a bit down at first but I now know that God has work for me to do.  I preached to nearly 400 people recently,” he enthused.  “There are people here who are so desperate.  They have been here for years and have been forgotten.  I can now help them!”  

Such an indomitable spirit would surely always win through in Zimbabwe in the end.  “The crocodile with all its darkness will be vanquished,” I thought, “and God’s Spirit will triumph in the end.”  

Ben Freeth MBE rose to prominence in 2007 when he, and his father in law Mike Campbell, took Mugabe’s government to court over their ongoing attempts to unlawfully seize Campbell’s farm. Ben is the author of two books and executive director of the mikecampbellfoundation.com

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