Hope for Zimbabwe
I'm on an email list for mennolink that includes peace stories. Susan Mark Landis sent out an email today that included the following story:
ON March 11, 2007 Sekai Holland was lying broken and bloody in a Harare
police cell after being brutally tortured on the orders of the Zimbabwean
President, Robert Mugabe. Last month, she shook the dictator's hand,
accepted his congratulations and sat down to share a snack."
Sekai is now "Zimbabwe's first Minister for National Healing, Reconciliation
and National Integration under the fragile power-sharing agreement between
Mr Mugabe and the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change [MDC], Morgan
Tsvangirai."
She recalls her prison experience saying "They called the leadership of the
MDC in one by one and each of us was tortured ... when they couldn't break
my limbs they finally called in a young man with a crowbar and that was who
finally broke my arm, my leg, my ribs."
"She now hopes to set up a national commission of reconciliation similar to
that headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and is determined that
nothing will get in her way."
"'We are not in the West, where people analyze everything - I'm always
amused by the way you do that,' she says with a laugh when asked how her
relationship with Mr Mugabe is possible. 'Once we decided to go into the
power-sharing agreement we agreed that nothing [would] force us out. It has
to work. And it is going to work because we are not going to leave and we
are going to make sure it does work.'"*
* Sekai's full story is available here:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/mother-love-on-zimbabwes-front-bench-20090327-9e60.html
There was much more in the email about Zimbabwe, but Sekai's story is amazing. Doing what is right at great personal risk, and forsaking desire for revenge...those are greater tasks than most of us can imagine.
ON March 11, 2007 Sekai Holland was lying broken and bloody in a Harare
police cell after being brutally tortured on the orders of the Zimbabwean
President, Robert Mugabe. Last month, she shook the dictator's hand,
accepted his congratulations and sat down to share a snack."
Sekai is now "Zimbabwe's first Minister for National Healing, Reconciliation
and National Integration under the fragile power-sharing agreement between
Mr Mugabe and the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change [MDC], Morgan
Tsvangirai."
She recalls her prison experience saying "They called the leadership of the
MDC in one by one and each of us was tortured ... when they couldn't break
my limbs they finally called in a young man with a crowbar and that was who
finally broke my arm, my leg, my ribs."
"She now hopes to set up a national commission of reconciliation similar to
that headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and is determined that
nothing will get in her way."
"'We are not in the West, where people analyze everything - I'm always
amused by the way you do that,' she says with a laugh when asked how her
relationship with Mr Mugabe is possible. 'Once we decided to go into the
power-sharing agreement we agreed that nothing [would] force us out. It has
to work. And it is going to work because we are not going to leave and we
are going to make sure it does work.'"*
* Sekai's full story is available here:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/
There was much more in the email about Zimbabwe, but Sekai's story is amazing. Doing what is right at great personal risk, and forsaking desire for revenge...those are greater tasks than most of us can imagine.
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