SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
Rebecca Mafikeni is the MDC-T Youth Assembly deputy Organizing Secretary who died in Harare on Monday. The MDC-T has described her as a ‘fearless fighter, grassroots mobiliser par excellent and a great soldier of the people’s struggle’. 29 year old Rebecca was still in police custody at the time of her death. She was arrested in May 2011 after the death of police Inspector Petros Mutedza, when police started rounding up the 29 MDC-T activists who are still on trial over the death of Mutedza. All of those arrested deny the charges. In the last year several of the activists, including Solomon Madzore the President of the Youth Assembly, have been released on bail while Rebecca and four others remained in custody. She, together with colleague Yvonne Musarurwa, was being held in solitary confinement in the male wing of the Chikurubi maximum security prison. A statement released by the Youth Assembly, said the party and the entire nation has lost a promising leader and visionary who aimed to bring freedom, liberation to all Zimbabweans. Promise Mkwananzi, the secretary-general of the Youth Assembly, told SW Radio Africa’s new program Speak out/Padare that the state should take full responsibility for her death.‘The Zimbabwe Prison Service has been negligent in the way she met her death. They reluctantly let her seek medical attention when it was already too late.‘She had gone blind in both eyes and despite numerous pleas from her legal team to seek urgent medical attention, the authorities refused until such time it was late. The state led by Robert Mugabe is wholly and unreservedly responsible for her death,’ Mkwananzi said. Obert Gutu, the outgoing Deputy Minister of Justice said it remains a mystery why and how Rebecca and Musarurwa were still being held in solitary confinement even before they had been convicted of any crime. ‘For starters, the way Chikurubi is set up is not meant for women convicts. It is designed for high security convicts, people who commit serious crimes like murders, armed robberies and others. As you know the MDC activists were still on trial and had not yet been convicted.‘I know Rebecca and Yvonne were only allowed to be out of their cells for 20 minutes each day and frequently had to use their bare hands to scoop raw sewage from their tiny dark cells.‘Even the strong inmates can break down, it is dehumanizing to hold people in such conditions,’ Gutu said. Rebecca will be buried in Harare on Wednesday and mourners are gathered at number 34 Five Avenue, Warren Park in the capital.