Harare, Zimbabwe – Job “Wiwa” Sikhala has spent the final 17 months within the Chikurubi maximum-security jail, the longest stretch an opposition determine has been held in pre-trial detention in nearly 4 many years in Zimbabwe.
However the 51-year-old lawyer is not any stranger to jail life: That is his sixty fifth arrest since his foray into partisan politics in 1999 on the formation of the Motion for Democratic Change (MDC), the most important opposition within the Southern African nation for years.
Sikhala’s most up-to-date arrest occurred in June 2022. The authorities allege that he was obstructing justice and inciting public violence by allegedly saying the ruling celebration had killed Moreblessing Ali, an opposition activist.
“My father has been arrested … on principally trumped-up fees. That’s the reason he has by no means been convicted within the nearly 65 instances he was charged,” Job Sikhala Jnr, a second-year legislation scholar and the eldest of his 16 kids, tells Al Jazeera.
When he was 5 years previous, the youthful Sikhala noticed a bunch of males cost into their household home and arrest his father. When he returned free after a number of days, he was jovial, his son remembers. And that sample has continued over time.
“[Now] I’m older and perceive what’s going on,” his son, 23, mentioned. “It’s politics.”
Different critics of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime have additionally endured prolonged detentions.
In 2020, journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was imprisoned for 45 days, ostensibly for inciting antigovernment protests. Opposition chief Jacob Ngarivhume confronted an analogous destiny in 2020, enduring over a month of detention for organising protests towards authorities corruption. One other opposition determine Parere Kunyenzura additionally spent greater than 100 days on pre-trial detention for convening an unlawful church assembly.
Early beginnings
Born in 1972 in rural Masvingo, Sikhala moved to Harare after highschool to start research on the College of Zimbabwe (UZ) in 1995 the place he earned levels in historical past and legislation. Sikhala lower his enamel in scholar politics within the Nineteen Nineties, a interval seen because the golden days of scholar activism within the nation. Earlier than lengthy, he had earned himself a legion of supporters for his combative fashion of management on the college.
“The title Wiwa took place when he began speaking rather a lot about Ken Saro-Wiwa, his work, and his revolutionary actions in Nigeria and he was additionally studying the books that he wrote round sure social, political and financial points in his dwelling nation,” Nixon Nyikadzino, a former scholar chief at UZ on the time recollects to FM.
Saro-Wiwa, a member of the Ogoni ethnic minority in Nigeria, campaigned towards environmental degradation and air pollution of Ogoniland by operations of main oil firms comparable to Royal Dutch Shell and was ultimately hanged beneath controversial circumstances by the dictator Sani Abacha.
Like his hero, Sikhala has battled related tyrannical regimes of Mnangagwa and his predecessor, Robert Mugabe.
For years, Zimbabwe’s antiriot police has been notorious for its heavy-handedness. However as a younger scholar chief on the College of Zimbabwe, Sikhala confronted a unit because it got here to quell demonstrations on the establishment within the Nineteen Nineties on the peak of scholar activism.
“He was overwhelmed up,” the previous scholar chief and activist Nyikadzino informed Al Jazeera.
If something, the beatings appeared to embolden Sikhala who saved hurling insults on the antiriot police, Nyikadzino says. That act of defiance gained him enduring admiration amongst his contemporaries as a daring and fearless scholar chief.
“It’s the identical trait that you just see in him immediately,” he added.
Political profession
Sikhala joined the MDC at 27.
By 2002, he was elected into parliament to symbolize St Mary’s constituency, changing into certainly one of a crop of younger politicians moving into the nationwide highlight. He quickly turned a identified Zimbabwean political dissident, taking his famed fearlessness from his scholar days into mainstream politics.
The next 12 months, he discovered himself in bother with the Robert Mugabe regime for allegedly burning a bus owned by a state transport utility and assaulting 5 villagers in Masvingo. He was acquitted of these fees.
Within the late 2000s, he was a part of the Save Zimbabwe marketing campaign, a coalition of church teams, civil societies and opposition events that frequently spoke out towards the state of the economic system and what was seen as one-party rule beneath Mugabe.
In 2014, the mercurial Sikhala discovered himself going through fees of treason over allegations that he needed to topple Mugabe. He was hospitalised as a result of heavy torture he suffered however once more, acquitted of all the costs. In 2019, Sikhala turned deputy nationwide chairman of an MDC faction that has since turn out to be the Residents Coalition for Change (CCC), Zimbabwe’s principal opposition; that 12 months, he was charged once more with treason by the Emmerson Mnangagwa administration however was exonerated by February 2020.
On the eve of a deliberate antigovernment demonstration in July 2020, the police included Sikhala on an inventory of individuals usually thought of to be troublemakers and who had been concerned in planning the protests. The organisers had been arrested earlier than the demonstrations might occur.
Sikhala, who had gone into hiding, made a video of himself within the bush, receiving meals from sympathetic locals. “If we cease combating these guys we’ll find yourself dying, all of us with nothing,” he mentioned within the video. “They’ve saved this nation hostage for a very long time.”
He was arrested a number of weeks later.
Shedding hope
This Might, Sikhala was given a suspended six-month sentence and the choice of a $600 fantastic in Might, however saved in jail for different fees of incitement to commit violence and disorderly conduct. It was his first-ever conviction.
His celebration, the CCC, has mentioned Sikhala’s continued detention is proof of “judicial seize by the regime”.
“Extra importantly, Job Sikhala’s continued detention is a mirrored image that we’ve many bizarre residents languishing in our nation’s jails with out trial,” mentioned CCC interim youth Wing spokesperson Stephen Chuma. “Sikhala shouldn’t be a legal however a citizen’s hero who desires a greater Zimbabwe for everybody the place elementary rights are revered.”
Khanyo Farise, Amnesty Worldwide’s deputy director for East and Southern Africa urged Harare to cease “weaponising the legislation to focus on opposition figures and bizarre residents, saying “the correct to a good trial” was a common one.
“[His] extended detention whereas he awaits trial is a gross miscarriage of justice and an indictment of Zimbabwe’s judicial system,” Farise informed Al Jazeera. “It exemplifies how authorities are abusing the courts to silence opposition leaders, human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and different essential dissenting voices.”
Nonetheless, Sikhala has remained defiant at Chikurubi, a correctional establishment that homes a number of the nation’s most harmful criminals, authoring strongly worded letters that reveal an unbroken spirit.
“I’m the spoiler of their consolation, an irritant inflicting folks sleepless nights, disturbing the consolation of their energy,” he wrote on his birthday final month, referring to the federal government. “Zimbabweans and the world at massive have seen for what it’s. Persecution by prosecution is a drained previous technique by unpopular tyrannies.
“My mouth had turn out to be harmful, greater than a loaded gun, they are saying it’s vicious and harmful, it spits venom and causes havoc – I needed to be silenced even when it meant assassinating me.”
His household can also be frightened that he might not be launched quickly.
“We’re terrified, careworn and irritated. We have now misplaced hope that our father might be launched anytime quickly as a result of we’ve witnessed different folks being arrested and launched on the identical fees,” Sikhala Jr informed Al Jazeera. “We’re simply ready for God’s time for his launch. It’s now in God’s fingers.”
