Zimbabwe women, receiving rights award, speak out

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama praised representatives of a women's organization whose members have been beaten by President Robert Mugabe's police force and face court trials for challenging the Zimbabwean government. He said their grass-roots efforts could improve the African country.

Honoring activists Jenni Williams and Magondonga Mahlangu, the U.S. president said they empowered women of Zimbabwe to speak out their nation's desperate hunger, crumbling health and education systems, and domestic violence and rape. Obama said the women worked despite government repression and free speech restrictions.

"They often don't get far before being confronted by President Mugabe's riot police," Obama said in awarding them the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. "They have been gassed, abducted, threatened with guns, and badly beaten; forced to count out loud as each blow was administered."

Obama's remarks, and his hosting the two Women of Zimbabwe Arise activists in the White House's East Room for a formal ceremony — signaled the United States' unhappiness with Mugabe's government and how it treats those who question it. He said the organization's motto of "tough love" underscores "the idea that political leaders in Zimbabwe could use a little discipline."

The father of two young daughters then added: "And who better to provide that than the nation's mothers?"

Behind him sat Ethel Kennedy, widow of the assassinated senator, attending the ceremony with members of the Democratic dynasty and human rights activists.

It has been a rough path for the Women of Zimbabwe Arise members who shared the stage. They have been beaten, crowded into lice-ridden jail cells, degraded with nightly strip-searches. Yet they still cling to hope for Zimbabwe.

During an interview before the ceremony, they talked of hope that the devastated country still might be able to write a homegrown constitution, which would lead to real elections and recovery from the depths that a decade of increasingly malign misrule has dug.

How can these women, together arrested more than 50 times for leading nonviolent protests against the Mugabe government, still think such things?

"Look," Williams says, flinging out her arms, "we're trying to be optimistic here!" Both women laugh.

The pair are co-founders of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, whose acronym WOZA forms an Ndebele word that means "come forward." Behind Williams and Mahlangu around 70,000 Zimbabweans have signed on to do that. Like the founders, many have been beaten and worse; the two leaders say more than 3,000 have been arrested for demonstrating.

An absolute for WOZA's demonstrations and its newer male counterpart, MOZA, is nonviolence, the founders insist. No matter what, demonstrators are told, do not strike back.

Asked if the movement had been patterned after Mohandas Gandhi's, which ended the British Raj in India, Mahlangu said no, it was the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like King, Williams said, "We do it for social justice." And like King and his followers, they and theirs have paid heavily.

During his remarks, Obama tied them to civil rights struggles around the globe.

"It is the way of the maid walking home in Montgomery; the young woman marching silently in the streets of Tehran; the leader imprisoned in her own home for her commitment to democracy," Obama said. "It is the way of young people in Cape Town who braved the wrath of their government to hear a young senator from New York speak about the ripples of hope one righteous act can create."

Williams and Mahlangu's latest struggle with Mugabe's judicial apparatus began a year ago. They had been attacked and jailed for leading a sit-in to demand food for hungry Zimbabweans and a power-sharing government between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai after the octogenarian president claimed victory in what many believe was a tainted election last year.

"What WOZA is doing is putting our lives on the line," Mahlangu said.

Williams and Mahlangu expect little from the Zimbabwe judicial system, although WOZA and other activists often have been supported by judges who ordered them to be released. Normally the government ignores judges' writs and releases activists only when it wants to, they said.

The government's purpose for prosecuting rights demonstrators is not for the public good, Williams said: "In Zimbabwe, prosecution is for persecution."

An Amnesty International researcher in London accused the Zimbabwean government of "using detention to frustrate the work of human rights defenders."

The government has been formed with Tsvangirai as prime minister, but Mugabe has remained the dominant figure.

Williams, 47, is the granddaughter of an Irish Republican Army fighter who gravitated to British-ruled Rhodesia and became the common-law husband of Ndebele tribeswoman Bahlezi Moyo, Williams' grandmother. She is the wife of an electrician and mother of three grown children, all of whom live in Britain.

Mahlangu is 35 and a one-time sports administrator in her native Matebeleland, the home of the Ndebele. She is smaller and more soft-spoken than her ebullient colleague.

The women formed their organization on Valentine's Day in 2002, after Mugabe claimed victory in an election that many considered fraudulent.

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights is not the first organization to honor WOZA and the women who formed it. Among others that have are Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, which awarded Williams an International Woman of Courage award in 2007.