They have killed Moreblessing Ali !

Moreblessing Ali is has been found dead. Her body was dumped in a well in Nyatsime. An eerie cloud of premeditated spitefulness has hovered ominously over the Ali family.

The trauma is real and unimaginable, what her children are enduring, what she went through – the brutal manner she was murdered.

The story of this single mother, a fighter for democracy, for many years, she gave all she had, now her life too.

What next for her children?

When political temperatures rise, women and children are the most vulnerable.

But who cares?

The regime’s strategy is to increase the cost of that defiance.

Why many in the women’s movement can’t take the risk, speak out for Moreblessing, demand justice, would rather see no evil and hear no evil – shameful.

By default their silence makes them regime enablers. I will talk more on this one day. Today we mourn Moreblessing.

Having worked with the Ali’s from the founding of the MDC back then, this murder should not be dismissed as a random attack, but rather a well calculated one.

It is a foregone conclusion that in horrible conflict situations, currently prevailing in Zimbabwe, women suffer more as targets, they suffer disproportionately to their male counterparts.

It is important for us to talk about Moreblessing, the activist, the mother and the many she represents, this conversation is important for us to be there for her children and secure their futures.

Why?

Because Zimbabweans tend to have a short memory span, this tragic event will soon be off the radar, Moreblessing forgotten and well her children. A footnote in history.

Political vultures who will milk this situation for all its worth – then boom vanish.

Cry beloved country.

The regime’s well calculated horrible spitefulness. Meant to break one’s resolve. Create fear in the community, ‘you see what they have done to Moreblessing and her children?’.

A coldly calculated political enormity, which totally disregards the important role of the police who should be enforcing the law, protecting citizens, who include Moreblessing Ali.

But, no, they are just as complicit. Cursed is the hand that wrote a unsavoury police statement, that meant to slut shame Moreblessing, with the view to justifying her victimisation.

But, again the buck stops with Emmerson Mnangagwa, he is getting dangerously paranoid.

This is the default setting, arbitrary arrests, torture, killings characterise the relentless campaign against citizens by the junta – each time it’s cornered.

The inviolability of the church violated, only this week preachers and congregants who had gathered to pray for Zimbabwe, were besieged and arrested.

As I write they are in police in custody.

In a scene again reminiscent of March 11, 2007, a witness told journalists, “They just started beating everyone up without explanation before they arrested Magaya.”

An astute Bishop Ancelimo Magaya of Zimbabwe Divine Destiny (ZDD), was able to quickly alert the world of the danger that had befallen upon them while praying, he took to social media, a shrill cry of anguish, “I have been arrested for praying for my country.”

All this too shall come to an end.

We go back to the Gambia, the fate that has befallen another dictator Yahya Jammeh, their sins while in office, surely always catch up with them, and I hope as Mnangagwa sits today on his Precabe Farm, he is conscious to the fact that this too will end.

He has to fully understand the consequences of his actions while in office, they will haunt him, his family for generations to come. Some of have even spoken of Ngozi – avenging spirits.

It will end in tears.

Jammeh could run into exile, but not hide. His crimes against humanity committed while in office, haunt him, Gambians want justice for the soldiers and civilians mercilessly killed, tortured and raped, during the time he was in office.

The legal process in ongoing, for Jammeh to be prosecuted from Equatorial Guinea, where he fled to after losing the 2017 elections.

“Laws still have to be enacted, a court has to be established, cases have to be prepared, and Yahya Jammeh has to be brought into custody,” Reed Brody of the International Commission of Jurists, who is working with Jammeh’s victims told journalists.

Furthermore, not even Jammeh’s massive wealth could shield him, money laundered to buy mansions is being unearthed, with the recent seizure of a $3m mansion, in the Maryland state of the United States of America. The mansion is to be sold, the money will be used to compensate victims of Jammeh’s despotic rule. Over a hundred bank accounts have also been identified.

In sad times such as these, as we relive traumatic experiences, tears flow, it’s painful, it hurts, but we look at those who have found victory before us, for consolation, that one day Zimbabweans will get justice.

Rest in peace Moreblessing.

Grace Kwinjeh is a journalist and she can be contacted on [email protected]