National Director of Zimbabwe Peace Project ,Jestina Mukoko, In Conversation with Trevor

greetings zimbabwe africa and the world welcome to in conversation with trevor brought to you by titan law i go beyond the headlines and beyond the sensational today i'm in conversation with justina mokoko the national director of the zimbabwe peace project this is a painful and inspirational conversation [Music] justin i'm koko delighted that i've finally puned you down you've been running away from me welcome to in conversation with trevor thank you very much trevor and i'm also very delighted to be here excellent so justina you as i was saying of er you're one of my heroes and um you know when i look at you um a couple things happen you you you remind me of the brutality um of zanu-pf uh the inhumanity uh of zanu-pf and the extent that um zanu pf and this the the robert mugabe government could go to the extents to intimidate you harass you torture you jose is an amazing story but also you you remind me of amazing strength of the human spirit your courage inspires me so much and i'm hoping through this conversation for us i know it might get painful at moments that we delve into what you went through have you fully recovered from what you went through when you go through this trevor you don't fully recover you do not regain your former self you are wounded for life you are able through therapy to get healing here and there but there are times when december 3 arrives i go back to that day when i was held out of the house and that also eats into me so you don't fully recover and and and um you've gone through therapy and and and that kind of stuff we will get into those issues let's but let's go back to december 3 2008 you were abducted then detained for quite some time you were tortured for an extended period of time what crime had you allegedly committed nothing nothing it's the work that i do i work for the zimbabwe peace project and we monitor and document human rights violations and what we do we emphasize who did what to whom when and how and we name and shame perpetrators and i believe that was my crime being able to document things as they happened um i think a lot of people feared that um probably the justice will catch up with them in terms of the work that i was doing and take us through so you get abducted yes in front of your 17 year old son and he witnesses all the stuff and you get detained for some time briefly walk us through your abducted you actually in your night dress and then taken to various places walk us through what to you the painful moments the highlights of this horrendous ordeal that you went through it's uh it's a dawn and my son knocks and says mama there visit us at the gate around 5 00 a.m and i'm like who comes and visits you at 5 00 my vacation was actually supposed to start on that day so i said to him you guys go and deal with the visitors in no time he was back and he says mama the people at the gate are actually police officers and what struck me at that time i just thought that probably a neighbor had been robbed and the police wanted to know if i had seen or had anything so i quickly grabbed a dressing gown and walked barefoot i didn't even have my glasses and i thought i would just be because i knew i had not committed a crime and i was confronted by these huge men there were six of them five men and one woman so as i am approaching the kitchen they come and come the one holds my right hand and the other my left hand that was after i had confirmed that i'm just a number i then said can you give me time to dress they said they did not have time and there i was first marched out of the house it wasn't just my 17 year old son i also had a six-year-old nephew i was staying with at the time and they also this and my two helpers the one outside and also the one in the house and they were shouting as we were walking out to say we just want you to look at a file that we have got in the car and once you tell us what we want to know we can leave you but why are you holding my hands with so much strength and when we got to the gate it was in a marked car a silver mazda familia and i was bundled in the back there was another man who was sitting to the right as i got in and then the other one who followed immediately after me and i was told to have my head on the lap of the man on the right i'm not sure when he last had a bath but it was as i was taking my head down i noticed that there was a rifle on the floor immediately it hit me that this was no ordinary arrest i actually knew it was no arrest and there and then i noticed that music went up they hardly spoke it was through their eyes um and i could also i also sensed that there were other vehicles because five men and one woman came into the house and there there was only four of them in this vehicle so the others must have uh gone to another vehicle or other vehicles that they had and we drove from norton at high speed with this music blatting out and that's when my thoughts were going round i was not dressed and i did not know these people and what was going through my mind i was thinking it was either cio or zanu-pf militia because those are the ones that we dealt with at my workplace in terms of people being abducted and people being tortured and i started to think but what had i done of late the day before i had presented a statement at a function of the women's coalition of of zimbabwe and probably uh i was thinking is that something that i said today or what um you know you yeah you begin your mind is running yes and um it was i think after about 20 minutes of driving the woman then says what time are we getting to mutari i think they wanted to disorient me and then about 10 minutes after that they passed signs with their eyes and the men on the right then picked a woolen item from the floor and he covered my face even covered my nose and my mouth and i complained that i couldn't breathe he then lifted it a bit and within a few minutes the car came to a stop that music had stopped but at this house there was also music blatting out and i was wondering where i was they took me into a corner room it looked like a pantry because it had these shelves and i was asked to sit down and the woolen item was removed and they changed that with a dirty mutton cloth and i was left there and the door was locked within a few hours my ordeal had started [Music] i think there were five or six of them who came and when the blindfold had been removed i started being quest being questioned about my relationship with the mdct i had no relationship with mdct they made reference to a trip that we had made as zpp staff to botswana and i was told that that's when you went and left some people who were being trained in botswana and that was all lies and it seems that i had actually been followed all that long because i had one staff member who used an emergency document and that was spoken about there as well and then they asked me about someone within the mdc who i said i did not know and that's when my torture started there were these two men one was tall and the other one was a short guy and they had these two truncheons one was a horse kind of a thing and the other one seemed to have been it had wire on it and i was told to stretch my legs and they were beating the soles of my feet every time i said what they did not want i would get a beating um and this went on for the entire day because they were saying i was recruiting for the mdct um and then having young people being sent towards one where they would then come back to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism to remove a constitutionally elected government my doctor asked my son do you think your mother is capable of this she said he laughed his heart out and said they don't know what they are talking about and so for an entire day until it got quite dark at that time i actually thought that i would see my feet blood splatching out of the soles of my feet onto the walls um because the pain i was feeling in the feet so how how long did this so december 3 and how long did this torture dehumanization how long did it last there would just be breaks for food and initially in the morning when i got there i told myself i was not going to eat so i told them i had a stomach bag so i didn't want to eat but after going through the initial i think probably it was from about 9am to about 1201 because that's when the lunch came i had no energy and initially i thought i was going to initially i screamed but i then told myself screaming will give these guys satisfaction i am not going to scream so i would really keep the pain inside and it was when they would go out that you know the the lamp in the throat would then give in to to me getting emotional and when lunch came because i had no energy at all i took it and had a bit of sadha it was served with cabbage on that first day and immediately after i finished they came back and the beating went on there was a desk in the room this height i was sitting on the floor and at one time i was asked to raise my feet on that desk and what they had done was i think they had come to um pizza namo or something to get a dress because they noticed that i was in my night clothes and all so i was given a dress initially i said i didn't want and the woman who came said if you know what's good for you you need to put this on and then she spoke something about the toilet because she also had plastic shoes so i had to put on those plastic shoes so i was told to remove the plastic shoes and i was like you have just asked me to put them on so i would raise my feet for them and you know the indignity of your dress then coming down coming down and the beating going on um and you know these were men who had were sprung applying all their power on the soles of my of my feet and they continued to say well you are going to speak but i had nothing else to tell them the people that they were asking me about i did not even know them and at one time they said who do you know at mdct and i said i know the people that you probably know because they're always in the news that's how i know them meanwhile what's going through your mind what's going through my mind is my family can no longer account for me they don't know where i am and at that stage i was worried will my son be able to relay this message to people to say my mother has been abducted what i had also done because remember 2008 was the election year there was a time when we thought we were at risk as human rights defenders and the times i wouldn't go and put up at home i would put up with friends just trying to disguise where i would be and that was the time when i told him that if anything were to happen to me these are the people that you call and i'm told the first phone call that he made was at quarter past five in the morning to say that some people came and they took my mother away i don't know where they took her and that's when the message started so like i said this is this is um december 3 2008 this lasted what um six months nine months you're being held uh your objection they held me in communicado where people did not know where i was for 21 days 21 days which was three weeks and at that stage i actually remember my lawyer saying i went to court but i thought they had done a tundera indira on you even my family thought i had died because when you begin to look for someone the first hour the first day the second day the week 21 days the week is up the second week is up and you are in the third week you actually do not think that that person would be alive i i read in your book which you have written to share your deal that you you start singing church songs yes songs that you remember your mother singing talk to me about that loneliness and the pain and the horror being kept in solitary confinement can actually drive you mad because you begin to hear voices that are not there for some reason i found um you know the gideon new testament bible i don't know who he had left there i would pick um vessels from there some 23 and all but at the end of the day i thought the person that i really needed to be strong were my son and my mother and what i knew was that if my mother was happy there were songs that she sang if she was sad there were songs that she sang and somehow when i didn't know the the word all of the words so i would harm them but somehow they brought me close to my mother and i kept on praying for her strength through all this my sister passed away in 2003 and were only two girls and i was thinking to myself if these guys are going to kill me it means that her girls are done so i needed somehow to strengthen her remotely and somehow every time i sang these songs they brought me close to my mother you know i i say you are my hero because i cannot imagine myself being able to survive your deal as outlined in your book for for 21 days um did you at any moment feel let me give them let me tell them what they want to hear did you did you feel you ought to give up at some point talk to me about it i had nothing to tell them i had nothing to tell them and they wanted a confession there was one day i was taken to i believe it's a house on enterprise road [Music] i always get goosebumps when i pass that house they have recently done the wall outside with red bricks but it used to have panels every time i look at that house i actually think that was the second interrogation center that they took me to in the way that that house always remains closed up it also just speaks to my suspicion so they wanted you to make a confession they wanted me to make it did they tell you what confession they wanted from you um they wanted me to confess that i was working with the mdct to recruit for them and send young people to botswana but there was no place in botswana where people were being trained i had the rare opportunity of meeting someone from botswana foreign affairs who when he was introduced to me he said i can't believe this is the young woman who made us run around in 2008. i said run around for what he said we had to clear our name to demonstrate to zimbabwe that the way there was no training camp in botswana he said at the last moment the people were supposed to come from harare to join them on this trip for some reason they did not make the trip i think they knew that there was no camp in botswan so i think they wanted me to say i was being sent by the late morgan changirai to recruit young people to go to botswana for the training but i was not involved in any of that do you now know who the people that tortured you are um i know people who weigh in the second detention center there is i think he's retired now i shut up for money i think he deals with war veterans and then there was also um i think it's simone i can't i can't remember his uh his second name but he was the head of cio of cid at the time and he's the one who wanted to use a bamboo stick it's the second interrogation center to beat me up um and the others then said no no no no you can't do that um and then he stopped because he was very angry that the guys at the other detention we're not beating anyone we're not ex that those were his words that you are treating him with kid gloves have you met any of these people after being released i met this um simon guy the simon guy at the airport and we came together from cape town and i kept on looking at him and i knew i knew the face so i was with um taban in pofu who's now in the president's office all right and i asked him who is that yeah and he told me his head of cid and he immediately moved away from where we were and got to the other side of the room my friends kept on saying why didn't you greet him but beatrice said i think you did the right thing to just look at him at a distance you mentioned in your book marrarike and broderick with those fellow prisoners or they were part of the team that was beating up broderick was broderick takaweera was the other staff staffer from ztp was also abducted all right after a week they abducted two staff members from the pp broderick takawira in pascal and pascal gonzo the marathi guy i'm not even sure if it was his real name but that's what they called him i don't think they were using their real names and um you said you know when we started when something like this happens to you you you can never be the same again you have undergone therapy am i right i have trevor yeah um it has been drawn out several years um but every time you know december 3 comes and even when i started working on the book it wasn't easy because the times i would sit there and as i'm writing i could actually you know hear these people breathing there was a time when i was in new york i woke up all sweaty and i then looked around and got the relief that i was far away from zimbabwe because i dreamed that i was being abducted again um and so um initially i people thought i had gone through the first phase of therapy and i was okay i wasn't i couldn't sleep i was on sleeping tablets but i think they were not working anymore because i would take a tablet by 1am i would be wide awake i could actually hear dogs cats moving around and maybe i would then fall asleep maybe five o'clock when people are now going to wake up oh i on going to five i would have these palpitations thinking that those people would be back again so i was fortunate enough to get people who funded my therapy i went to south africa at the denmark clinic which is where my son also got that so your son also got therapy my son also got therapy but still for that one i actually got treatment for six months they put me on medication for six months and on the first day that i woke up at nine my son literally jumped up and down and said i can't believe that you can actually sleep i had turned into a zombie trevor i no longer knew i was a mother i would just sleep there and after i started taking that medication i remember there was one time it was just the two of us in south africa and i went all out to make a special meal for us and i had not done that in a long time you know just i think to my son it was his mother coming back it was a very difficult time you know you hear someone turning the key and if anyone just forgot to lock the door i got so irritable and you know one time my my brother then said it's not there they're also human they will forget yeah to tell me they are also human they will forget what goes through your mind when you think of the simon guy and so forth have you forgiven them what's your state of mind i think when i went through my last sessions of therapy with this amazing woman named val i started to realize my life needed to go on because somehow i felt that by holding on to the anger and the pain the anger and the pain was not going to the people no wait it was supposed to it was it continued so i recognized i needed to let go to let go and having been raised as a christian i i thought well i can't talk even talk about revenge um because i think initially when i came out yes i was thinking that they needed to be in front of a firing squad that's how i felt but with time all those things have changed and well i have gone on with my life but that dent will never be removed forgiven forgiven but not forgotten yeah yeah they their names will always be etched there and i think the most painful part is also that there isn't this culture of people then acknowledging what they have done it could make a difference because all these guys they were protected by a certificate that was issued by then minister of state security wow so they will not try to think to think justina that is we're sitting here having this conversation and as the world is watching this conversation the men and women who tortured you are walking the streets of harare they are still out there probably doing the same thing and torturing other people wow um then you the um the supreme court in 2009 a full bench uh found you not guilty of the charges that these guys were bringing against you and dropped all charges against you um so you were found innocent after having gone through what you went through what went through your mind when the supreme court pronounced that verdict you know when i got the call from harrison cuomo to tell me that the judgment was going to be delivered this was three months down the line i thought but why have they done it so quickly because mrs intertwine had told me that it might take two or three years before they deliver a judgment so that's what i was thinking and now this was just three months and they were ready to deliver the judgment and what was going through my mind was i think probably the state might have won in this and when i went to court on that day you know it didn't even take long for them to deliver the judgment that they had unanimously agreed that my rights had been violated and therefore they were agreeing that there be a stay of criminal prosecution i just saw tears rolling down and felt vindicated but at the same time also thinking about how i had been bruised and how my entire family had been bruised being termed a class d prisoner and staying at chikurubi maximum security prison for 68 days was no mean feat you know when you go out you are in leg irons you are in handcuffs humiliation dehumanization you know the first day that i went into court like that my son was sitting in the first row with my brothers i felt i had i had disappointed him as a as the only surviving parent and that took a very long time for me to um remove it from my head it was only my therapist who said it seems there is something that continues to draw you back what is it so i spoke about this and she said why don't you speak to your son about it it took a long time and you did for me to get that courage he loves crime and investigation so we were watching together and this person was handcuffed and i thought that was my opportunity to ask and then said to kudzu how did you feel when you saw me the first time in handcuffs and also leg irons did you know i was in leg irons said how could i miss you in leg irons when the chains were going clink on the on the wooden floor but he started wailing in his eyes and he said i was not disappointed at all mummy actually thought there is my mother representing you know i felt relief and that has also helped in terms of my healing yeah what did your son teach you during this moment the way he reacted and responded to your deal he taught me that a child can actually be very mature you would have bible verses done in small pieces of paper and he would strike relationships with the prison wardens and just put in their hands and say go and give that to my mother wow so every day he came i knew he would be he would be sending that and the fact that he was courageous to take the phone and call people and let them know that my mother has been abducted he's 30 years old he's 13. how is he doing i always think about this and say people wounded my son because at that time because i was always in the news automatically he became a celebrity especially with girls and that kind of disturbed him even at school and i always think if this had not happened no because he doesn't use my surname no one really would have known that he is my son so that is well has had a dent on him yeah and i blame all this for him to have been affected that way the writing of the book was it a process towards closure painful how was it like when the thoughts about putting this on paper came to me initially i thought i'll just get a ghostwriter to do it but when i reviewed the work later on i recognized that my soul was missing from it and my therapist continued to encourage to say it will be a process in terms of your in terms of your healing at times i would probably just punch in maybe 150 words and i would not be able to carry on but at the end of the day i was able to finalize it and i always wanted to tell my own story i did not want it to be told by anyone else so when i finished this book i thought even if i died my story is recorded and it will be told in my own words and what i experienced and indeed it was therapeutic going through writing the book but there was one of the therapists who said you also need to be careful in terms of the people that you want to bring close to contribute to the book maybe your family is not even ready to go back to those years i remember one time asking my son um do you remember the name of that other brown dog that we had and he was like why why why why do you need that name and i recognize the therapist was right he did not want to go there to go there but those dogs were very important to me because on that particular day i don't know how i missed it that if anyone was at the gate they would come to my bedroom and they did and they would bark but on that particular day they did not because they the the helper outside he'd been greased so he yeah he had taken the dogs and put them in earlier than usual so that when these guys came it would they would not coming back at my window yeah they had greased his hands so clearly they they had done some work around the people right around you i was actually told that that for two weeks they had been going around the house um i know you your eyesight is problematic is there any part in this book that you would want me to read i think the very first part the very first which speaks to me getting into court [Music] so this is chapter one um the prologue page two i tried into court room 6. it is 15 january 2009 and this is my fourth quarter appearance since christmas eve 2008. the trial was supposed to start at 11 15 but the prosecution team was more than an hour late my three brothers with their trademark bald heads and my son takuzu lined up in the first row all wearing silent faces i avoid looking my son in the eye somehow i feel i failed him as a mother this is a painful book to read but i think it's a it's a book that all zimbabweans must read exactly so that people are aware of what happens when someone tells you they've been abducted i was also made to kneel on gravel you know initially when they said whence the sky came in two mounds of gravel and spread them where i was i thought it was going to be a piece of cake kneel on them nail on them and this i was kneeling while i was being interrogated for a good two hours on gravel i knelt on gravel you know the small stones started piercing my knees and the pain was out of this world the pain was numbing i remember thinking that um there was this woman i think somehow something left my body i don't know how that happened but i saw myself seeing this woman watching yourself yes going through this excruciating so there was the beating under your feet yes kneeling on gravel what else and then just the psychological yeah where you have to knock on the door to go to the bathroom and you put on your blindfold if they are taking you out you are in blindfold you don't even know who is around you you are told to get into a car you are not sure of who else is in the car one day they took me on a very long drive i don't know where they took me on that particular day i actually thought they're going to kill you they were going to kill me you you um you say i came out of this experience not a better person but a better person help me understand what that means the work that i do is related to victims of injustice coming out of this i actually recognized and realized and understood if someone told me they had been abducted and they had been tortured i know exactly what they are talking about and when i look at people's eyes i remember looking at tawandam chahiwa's eyes when he first came out of the abduction i said to myself this young man must have gone through a lot because the eyes speak even without anyone opening their mouth but i understood better things that happened um in the dark and i think that's where i then also then found my motivation and energy to carry on so you you awarded damages a hundred thousand u.s it's usa or it's is it rtgs and 50 000 for legal costs yes what does this mean to you for me i think for principle sake because the constitutional court it found that the state was guilty through its agents that needed to be done but when you look at the amount that amount was not a joke it's an insult it is an insult you can say that again yeah but i think where i was at the time you also realized that it also came ages after i think yeah ten years after um i also was not in the mood to carry on because it brings things um tell me um tell me just you know there's been so many other people that have been abducted yes this is still going yes what's your sense about this and what happens to you when you hear the mdc women have been abducted conducted students have been abducted my sense is this has always been the modest operandi of dealing with people with dissenting views even during colonial times and it continued during the mugabe era but let's not also forget that a lot of the people in the new dispensation were also part of course of the mugabe system and i have no reason to doubt when people say they have been abducted and tortured i would be the last person not to believe them because the pain that you go through when you are abducted and tortured you cannot inflict that on your own and trevor you are aware our police very good if they want to do stuff they actually have a very good reputation even in the southern african region how can they fail to nail abductors they are failing to nail them because they are also complicit in it otherwise the issue of us talking about a fed hand a fed force kids look and isolate that fed force so that it doesn't continue to do this and it will then separate you from these eels that have become the mainstay of zimbabwe since independence it is clear to me justina that this did not break your spirit point number one point number two it is not silenced you and michael wright that it has actually made you even much more courageous i think you're right what he did initially was to dim my smile i remember one of my friends chinos one time after one of my therapies he said i'm so happy justina you can now smile there you smiling laughing but at the end of the day i feel i i have a role to play because people put their heads on the block for me locally regionally and internationally and i also have a role to play in terms of ensuring that issues that are related to injustice are brought to light and exposed let's let's talk about this person called justina where were you born i was born talk to me about where you're born i was born how are you raised i want the audience to understand the beautiful soul and the beautiful person that you are i was born in guerrero atom tapa clinic yeah in 1967 it was just a year before my grandmother passed on and she had been beaten to naming my sister by her daughter and so when i was born i'm told that she celebrated and said she was ready to be with the lord because there was someone she could give her name my middle name is mungarewa and so i inherited all my grandmother's names justine and mongarewa and mungarewa is so fitting in that i was told that my grandmother was saying that it was a name she was given by her parents because people were just talking in the village and the the parents then said well no no [Music] because we are we come from manic land but my father moved from rosape to guerre where he was working as in the kitchen uh and then he went back to his mother and stayed with his mother in guerrero so that's the home that we know but from grade three i moved from where it was which which school did you go through for grad 3 i went to mukhali primary oh wow okay yes right i was now living in maguey with my aunt's daughter and that's where i lent my belly and this is the justina that you know and that made me then get into zbc because secondary i had secondary school i went to evelyn gill's high school okay yes it was evelyn gill's high school and then fletcher where i did my a-levels okay yeah and then from there from there the university of zimbabwe what did you study at university i studied politics and administration yes and then you went soon after you said you went to zbc soon after you said i actually taught okay in guerrero okay so i started at st patrick's secondary school and then went to matinunura high school in mukhobe but i believe i was not born a teacher i did not like it and then when i got the opportunity at zbc i grabbed it with both hands so for years you were the face of prime uh zbc even even news talk to me about the highlights of that part of your life wow um i think when i started i was on the national languages desk where i would translate news from english to shona and devel and i would be on radio and also the six o'clock news but i always dreamt about being an anchor on the flagship so i kept on trying to um practice doing this and i was fortunate enough to get a mentor in the late shinrai [Music] i loved being under his wing he was a professional journalist some of the things that we see happening on the main news now would never see the light of day during toward us time zb has zbc rather has produced amazing people people like you wayne and and many others what's his name by the way i mean all those amazing people um the the did you sense the political interference in terms of editorial when you were there do you remember anything yes i think from about 1999 uh to 2000 when i eventually broke ranks with um zbc um like i was saying that when we started we were guided by journalistic ethics and also the issue of informing um educating the nation um and then late 1999-2000 the editorial policy was transformed i remember it was over the weekend and news had come through the wire and the sub editors would then just edit the news and give it to the readers to to to read i remember episode 2 was the one on duty that particular weekend and this was news that was talking about the killing of the white farmer in moreover and he said something came through the wires this idea is we have already edited said can you give me all the copies and the original wire and when it came back it was totally different wow we could not believe what we saw and what we were made to read you then begin to recognize how can i be part of this but for me i think what then made me call it a day it was actually over a weekend it was a saturday i had been given my bulletin i had gone through it and we were towards the elections in june 2000 and there were two stories there was a story on mugen changirai holding a rally in motare and there was a story on museums national archives where the late miso tabengwa was being interviewed the mutare story which was related to the elections which i thought needed to have more airplay because it was meant to inform the citizens and educate them about what was happening around them at that particular time because we're due to have an election i think it was less than 30 seconds and then the national archives story went on for a good three minutes um and i said to the producer but why said that's instruction that i got i then said to myself i think that was my cue to leave do you recognize zbc when you look at it now it's um it's tough because like i'm saying some of the things that i hear on the news being made into news items would never have seen the light of day during that time when you look back at your life all that you've enjoyed what's the biggest lesson that life has taught you your life has taught me that um there are changes that will come but you can learn to live with those changes i recall in 2013 2014 i got a fellowship to go to the uk and i was taken to a place called north amberland and we would have a movement around the field and we came across what they called an elephant tree when you look at it it looks like an elephant and it was all because of a storm that it ended up like that and i have appreciated that out of the storm i have become an elephant just like the tree and i'm learning to live as an elephant so that that does not put my energies down any regrets it was a painful experience but i think it has it made me grow yeah it's a painful experience which you went through for me listening to you tell it it breaks my heart like i said it it reminds me of just how cruel as human beings we can be to each other and to think that the people that did this to you are walking the streets they are free to think that the same people that did this to you could actually be the ones that are responsible for the 13 or 14 even more other abductions that have taken place that's frightening that's certainly in in many respects tell me just you know you are a hero to many young men young women do you have a particular message for the girl child who is struggling to make ends meet do you have a message for the young women who are trying to play their role in helping us have a better society in this country who are facing the oppression the difficulties the fear the intimidation afraid to speak out do you have any message for them to the young women who are struggling where ends will not meet let me say i grew up in the same situation i lost my father when i was five and my mother looked after us said selling what are called release going to tourist resorts but the months were never the same at times i would go to school not knowing what vaseline is but just looking on the bright side so life is there for us and as young women young girls they need to be able to look to the future and also um probably prioritize their education i know it's difficult when i talk about education at the moment especially in light of covet 19 with the less privileged girl has no access to classes online not because of their choice but the situation that they find themselves in what i'll say even if you have to bend the midnight oil reading you need to get an education the the sun will always come out and then for the young women who are out there who are already role models because there is something that you are doing well they will come after you let them not break your spirit allow them to do whatever they do to your body but do not allow them to break your spirit because at the end of the day dawn will come yeah help the audience understand just you know your current job what it entails and what you do on a day-to-day basis it's good that you ask this because whenever i meet people they're like where are you working now say why do you say where am i working now i'm still there oh they didn't fire you said no i did not commit a crime so i'm still at the zimbabwe peace process as executive director as the national director yeah but there's always been a perception out there that i'm the founding director of zpt i am not okay there were actually two if not three directors before me i only joined the organization in 2007. the organization having found having been founded in the year 2000 at one time when i was called out to the police when um augustine chihuri made this announcement when he was still commissioner general of police to say justina is on the run you know getting to the police because beatrice had insisted no you need to be speaking to the board members because they are the owners of the organization they said we don't want to hear that we know the organization is yes so she is the one who is supposed to come and answer so this organization i'm really grateful to those who conceived it so we monitor and document human rights abuses right and we name and shame perpetrators because it's not the right thing to do not to allow other people to enjoy and exercise their rights so we operate through um a strong network of courageous men and women throughout the country and throughout the country and at one time when i was being interrogated i was asked to write the name of the names of these men and women i said i don't know them because i was being told that how do you get the information because some things happen at 2 a.m you get it correct in your in your reports and we also we are also involved in peace building in selected communities and at the moment we are running with a campaign as an organization where we are saying zimbabweans need to resist reject and report violations as we head up to the 2023 elections we have actually launched an app it's called spec app and we are saying to zimbabweans if you witness or you go through a violation report so that we know what is happening in your communities i'm also the current chairperson of the zimbabwe human rights ngo forum which also leads the human rights agenda have you noticed any difference if any with the new dispensation in terms of abuse of human rights and as we run into the elections what what what are you picking up as far as violation of people's rights is concerned what we are actually picking up is that the human rights violations that we have noted from the shooting of citizens on the streets of harare on the 1st of august 2018 they are more brazen they are more gross as compared to what we saw in the 37 years so i think something needs to be done if that new dispensation label is to stick you're not seeing it no as far as human rights is concerned no yeah no i think we have a human rights crisis and and what you have taught us through your life and through the book and what you've said you know reminds me of what nelson mandela said that not forgiving somebody is like drinking poison and hoping that is going to hurt the other guy instead you forgive and it removes the burden of you don't keep it inside and you've done that very well justina we love books in this show [Music] and uh delighted that you have written this book which i'm recommending to all zimbabweans africans on the continent and all over the world an amazing painful story but what uh reading what stories have you what what books rather have you read justina that you'd want to to share with our book live audience uh i have read becoming and i've also read uh the pep house driven life right it actually helped me heal um we requiring speaks about do not question why it happened to me he says the lord could have spared his son his only begotten son we saw what he went through but he did not what would be so special about justina not going through pain yeah so those two books stand out for me justina your life as painful as the ordeal was um is so full of instructive lessons and uh i just want to say thank you for finding the courage to continue telling the story and for that smile i love that smile thank you for that smile um the courage to keep on smiling having endured what you enjoyed you are a role model model to many we live in a society where people's human rights are trampled upon taken for granted but this your story says it's important to stand up and speak out and hopefully this message gets out to people so thank you so much thank you so much creating the time i've been chasing you around and finally peeled you down i'm delighted thank you trevor after the two fails i was like okay no but finally making it to in conversation with trevor i'm so happy fantastic thank you allow me justina to tend to our audience who are in zimbabwe uh on the continent all over the world who have made this show the success that it is to say thank you for watching in conversation uh with uh justina mokoko uh and i'm sure that it has inspired you remember we are a weekly show we are out at 7 00 a.m central african time every monday and to ensure that you don't miss out on any of these quality conversations i invite you to click on this red button and you get a lead every time we have one of these quality conversations we've gone a step further and created podcasts for you scroll under this video click onto the podcast for your listening pleasure until next time cheers to you all [Music] you

Channel: In Conversation with Trevor

Views: 77,117

Rating: 4.8165135 out of 5

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Id: N5FNaj7EXPY

Length: 71min 29sec (4289 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021