MAVERICK CITIZEN: Pastor Evan Mawarire: ‘Never, ever lose your voice – it is the most important resource you have’

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MAVERICK CITIZEN: Pastor Evan Mawarire: ‘Never, ever lose your voice – it is the most important resource you have’ By Mark Heywood and Nomatter Ndebele

The video went viral and catalysed a spontaneous and indelible movement that became known as the “This Flag Movement”. In 2017, civil society campaign SaveSouth Africa used the same idea when mobilising people to take on corruption and State Capture under then-president Jacob Zuma.

Zimbabwe is a well-endowed country. It’s been known for years as the breadbasket of Africa and that pushed me to ask myself: “What kind of a country would my children inherit?” Not necessarily from the people that currently govern, but from me? I was born in 1977. I’m 42 years old and no, before the events in 2016 that lead to that video you couldn’t have paid me to be an activist in Zimbabwe, under Robert Mugabe especially. It was that scary.

A part of my work involved a lot of counselling of people. There was a lot of interface with real-world problems. Hearing what people were going through, seeing people searching for solutions and sanity. That led to the understanding that a lot of the social problems we were facing as Zimbabweans are actually born in the misgovernance of the country and as a result are starting to show up in the personal and social lives of the people.

I went to Prince Edward Boys High School — at that time considered one of the best schools. I think it was at that school where I gained a love for public speaking and a love for issues concerning the environment, it taught me to think outside the box of just academics. Eventually, after spending two years at that school that became one of the most important seasons of my life that shaped who I was, because I now understood the other side of Zimbabwe, a side that I had been sheltered from.

Moving on from that is education. When you deprive a person of education you deprive them of the opportunity to grow, to think and to see further than themselves.is a very deep-seated value for me. I remember going back as a young person playing football in the streets of one of the neighbourhoods we grew up in, and I remember this day very well because one of the guys we were playing with was a particularly good soccer player but he was also a cheat.

The conversation about the separation of the church and the state and how pastors or the clergy should not dabble in politics is one that Robert Mugabe actually pushed particularly around the time I stood up. His threat to us was that those of us in the clergy should not dabble in politics because he had special prisons reserved for us. Mugabe said, “Leave our politics and we will leave your churches alone.

 

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