The Zimbabwean political figure fighting for her country’s future

Zoe Flood/AlJazeera

Inside a cramped cell at Zimbabwe’s infamous Chikurubi prison in January last year, a group of women took turns to speak.

Among them was Fadzayi Mahere, one of the country’s most prominent young opposition leaders.

Sitting on the cold, urine-stained concrete floor, she listened while her fellow inmates – many wearing the ill-fitting yellow tunics of convicted criminals – shared the reasons for their incarceration.

One by one, they listed violent assaults, armed robberies, and murders.

Then it was Mahere’s turn. “I tweeted,” she said, to the laughter of her cellmates.

The spokesperson for the country’s leading opposition party, then known as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance, Mahere spent seven nights in pre-trial detention before being released on bail.

She was told that she stood accused of communicating falsehoods relating to several of her posts on social media, but only received an official charge sheet nearly 15 months later.

It was not Mahere’s first time in detention, but it was the longest, and the most difficult.

Held in a series of overcrowded, poorly ventilated and squalid cells – where mosquitos thrived and fleas clung to bloodstained blankets – she also contracted COVID during her incarceration.

“There’s a culture of stripping you of your dignity,” says Mahere, 36, explaining how prisoners in Chikurubi are forced to kneel before wardens when speaking to them and are prohibited from wearing a bra, or using a spoon when eating porridge.

“You’ve got all these women lapping porridge out of their fingers,” she adds as we speak more than a year after her imprisonment, her impeccable attire and perfectly manicured nails a stark contrast to the experience she describes.

Vocal critic

Over the course of six years, Mahere has emerged as a vocal critic of the country’s ruling ZANU-PF party, previously led by the removed president Robert Mugabe and now headed by his long-time ally Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Her rapid ascent has placed her firmly in the firing line.

First as an independent parliamentary candidate and now a leading figure in Zimbabwe’s main opposition, Mahere calls out government incompetence and reported state abuses on a near-daily basis – also drawing on her expertise as a practising constitutional lawyer. She is widely recognised as one of Africa’s most promising young political leaders, as women – averaging 26 percent of those serving in national parliaments across sub-Saharan Africa – continue to face immense social, cultural and economic barriers to representation.

A digitally savvy communicator, Mahere has built a powerful online voice with more than half a million followers on Twitter alone. Sharing everything from motivational quotes to posts about spiralling inflation and violence against political activists, she also uses social media to amplify opposition party messages and announcements.

But Mahere’s January 2021 arrest and imprisonment was the first time she was directly targeted for her online activities.

The formal charge sheet she received in March 2022 alleges the crime of “communicating false statements prejudicial to the state”, adding that by posting these statements, Mahere “intended to incite public disorder or public violence” or “undermine public confidence in a law enforcement agency”.

The charges relate to tweets about a video shared online that shows a woman holding a limp baby and berating a police officer in the street. Bystanders can be heard shouting in Shona, “He’s killed the child!”

Initial reports online suggested that a police officer dispersing passengers at an illegal bus stop hit the woman and accidentally struck and killed the child.

In response to the video, Mahere shared posts strongly condemning police brutality. Like many others who posted about the viral footage, Mahere believed that the baby had died.

Within days of the incident, the police issued a statement. It rebutted online accounts suggesting the baby had died, saying that officers, while trying to arrest the crew of a commuter minivan for flouting COVID rules, smashed the windscreen of the vehicle. Although glass fell on the baby, the police said that neither the mother nor child had sustained injuries and that the force did not condone the officer’s actions.

Soon after the police released their statement, officers came looking for Mahere and her week-long detention began.

Police also arrested prominent journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and opposition politician Job Sikhala on similar charges relating to the same incident.