ARTICLE BY COLLEN KAJOKOTO
Collen Kajokoto is a protest poet from Domboshava village in Zimbabwe.
Collen Kajokoto describes his harrowing experiences of repression by members of Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe, and his imprisonment. He outlines the huge personal cost he has paid for his artistic freedom, which has been eroded both legally and through direct violence. He points out the importance of freedom of expression to countering extremism in Africa
Artistic freedom and freedom of speech are under sustained attacks in Zimbabwe, despite these twin forms of freedom being a yardstick of good governance and political enlightenment. In this situation, artists’ voices become fundamentally valuable.
I write as a victim and survivor of state-sanctioned atrocities against myself as an artist. I became a sworn enemy—and a convenient target—of Zimbabwe’s oppressive regime because I attempted to unmask its tyranny through poetry. I protested the dictatorship, and its censorship of art in particular. I was (and remain) perceived as a dangerous poet; as an undesirable political element. In a country where open discourse and free expression are taboo, poetry becomes a precious outlet for disseminating information and empowering citizens.
I resist the erosion of my sovereignty as an artist. For this reason, I have endured threats, intimidation, physical and political harassment, persecution, arrests, detention, imprisonment, and punishment for almost two decades, like chilling, harrowing nightmares. These humiliations were meant to suppress dissenting voices like mine. In a country where the freedom to assemble and gather is practically outlawed, an artist becomes a natural agent of change.
A written word penetrates stone walls and reaches the darkest corners; a painting narrates a sea of tears! Tyrants and reclusive regimes regard the power of expression as a direct threat to their autocratic power. Dissidents and progressive critics are vehicles for liberty, freedom and self-determination: natural enemies of autocratic states. The oppressor tries to maintain a hegemonic stranglehold, choking back voices calling for freedom. The message, and the messengers are silenced through assassinations, abductions, kidnappings, arrests and through prosecutions on trumped up charges or under unconstitutional laws.
Zimbabwe’s dictatorship is abundantly aware of the brewing discontentment and dissent within the disfranchised population. This is the reason for their foolish schemes to retain power through brutality, and through the suppression of artists as proponents of liberty.
In Zimbabwe, laws like the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) have been used to persecute me and many other dissidents and critics of the regime. Media houses such as the Daily News have been forced to shut down. Although AIPPA was later repealed, its powers were smuggled back in to law through rechristening it The Patriotic Act. This Act punishes anyone who criticizes the Zimbabwean regime, even on foreign soil.
I was jailed for seven years after undertaking a one-man demonstration against the worsening political and economic situation under the rule of geriatric strongman, Robert Mugabe. I was arrested in Harare, detained, tortured under interrogation. My right to legal representation was contemptuously rebuffed, as was my right to inform my next of kin of my arrest.
My first transgression against the despotic regime was to pen a poem (‘The Slain Farmer’) in dedication to white farmer Martin Olds who was brutally murdered by Mugabe’s war veterans and his rogue Zanu-PF youth militia. My other transgression was the one-man demonstration I undertook in light of the deteriorating political and economic situation, and the stifling of artistic freedom. I felt then that, ‘as a poet I strongly believed that history and posterity would judge us harshly if we did not add at least a word of discontent towards Mugabe’s crystal-clear mental diarrhea in trying not only to suppress the will of the people but the outcome of the presidential election.’
This was the overture to a stay in prison. After two weeks of detention, blindfolded and tortured, I was finally brought to court. I could hardly walk due to my injuries. The security detail had the audacity to shackle me in leg irons nonetheless. The judge released me on bond so that I could seek medical attention. I instantly went into internal hiding. Meanwhile a Zanu-PF militia rampaged through my village, razing the houses. High on drugs and alcohol, the wolves were baying for blood: my wife’s blood, my mother’s blood. They were captured and severely beaten with logs, boots, and fists. They both later died due to their injuries – the most painful, heartbreaking and inhuman reprisal for my simple poem.
Fearing for my life, I left the country via Botswana, then sought asylum in neighbouring South Africa. My asylum request was later turned down by South African government. I was forcibly removed from the asylum detention centre by the SA State in connivance with the undemocratic Zimbabwean regime. They had been informed that I was a ‘fugitive on the run’ – a glaring and scandalous violation of my human rights and the international statutes on political refugees. The deportation order was a fait accompli. I was handed over to the Zimbabwe security authorities who descended on me like vultures on a carcass.
In Harare, I was arraigned before a kangaroo court which returned a guilty verdict and imposed a seven-year jail term. My incarceration at Khami Prison was a daily cocktail of unspeakable physical, mental, and sexual abuse. The assaults were from both prison wardens and inmates. I was placed in the prison section that housed hardcore criminals such as murderers, armed robbers and rapists. As a result, I was infected with tuberculosis (TB), STIs, and endured physical damage to my body, nerves, bladder… I am now partially blind as a result of torture. Prison was harsh with hunger, filthy cells. I had no time for physical exercises apart from the punitive physical tasks assigned by the prison guards. There was no medication for any of my injuries or diseases.
Poetry forced me to survive. Writing was outlawed. I had to devise a way to write. My mind became a library; a sanctuary of poems of lament and solitude. I learned to write and recite poems by heart. This was a useful ammunition to combat solitude and desolation. And I triumphed!
But for Zimbabwe, triumph for the arts is distant. Artists and dissidents are still suffering. Booker-winning novelist and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga was fined and given a six-month suspended jail sentence after being found guilty of ‘inciting public violence’ during a protest against the government in 2020. And prison conditions remain abysmal. ‘There’s a culture of stripping you of your dignity,’ said Fadzayi Mahere, a young leader of the opposition party, describing humiliations piled upon her during her imprisonment.
It likewise remains mired in corruption; and inequalities and rights abuses are often a tipping point for radicalisation. The UN Development Programme has said that this is a particular problem in Africa, where they warn that ‘Sub-Saharan Africa has become the new global epicentre of violent extremism with 48% of global terrorism deaths in 2021. This … threatens to reverse hard-won development gains for generations to come.’ A majority of funding used to counter extremism is directed at security-driven responses; less than a quarter goes to ‘addressing the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism,’ which includes censorship.
Authoritarian governments would far prefer to have funding for their security forces than be forced to confront the social injustices they have allowed to flourish, which themselves lead to terrorism – social injustices which I, and other artists, have flagged through the power of poetry, music and art. And in Zimbabwe, there is no justice. From the end of the 1990s, criticism of the regime has been brutally repressed.
In 1997, Zimbabwe boasted the strongest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2015, nearly 45% of the population were malnourished. According to Tafi Mhaka, writing in Al Jazeera, in April 2020, inflation stood at 94 percent while, nearly two-thirds of the employed population earns just $51 a month or less. With elections due next year, and decades of discontent and repression brewing, Zimbabwe fits the profile outlined by the UN – of an extreme risk for polarisation and political violence. The artists of Zimbabwe have been warning of this for years, despite brutal repression. It is time to listen to them.