Hilmorton Drive 2

Memetai Fukuza, a 26-year-old activist and director of We Lead in Zimbabwe, shares his vision of nurturing young leaders for human advancement. He discusses his recent arrest before a conference in Victoria Falls, highlighting the suspicious circumstances around his abduction from an airplane. Fukuza believes his targeting is politically motivated due to his work in constitutionalism and human rights. He emphasizes the importance of managing public perception and the use of misinformation in justifying oppressive actions by the state. He also mentions the unjust treatment of Senator James Timber and others during a protest in Zimbabwe. First one, please could you introduce yourself and just tell us a bit about yourself. Sure, so my name is Memetai Fukuza. I am 26 years old. I am an activist. I am also the director of We Lead, which is a youth leadership development and advocacy organization. Doing work here in Zimbabwe but also now moving into the region. I'd like to introduce myself by focusing more on my vision, which is basically this aspiration to build generations of young people who assume leadership to advance human possibilities. And the idea of advancing human possibilities is purely a right conversation. Because I believe that no person alive can live up to the heights of their potential and capabilities and possibilities if they live in spaces and places where they arise from our perspective. Thank you for that. Please could you give us just a brief recount of your case from the circumstances leading up to the arrest, the arrest and the trial so far? So I'm not in a position to comment until it's actually done. Okay, that's fine. But I think maybe, because now we have gone through all the ways, like the gender defense, because my legal counsel always say that it's not good to speak about ongoing legal proceedings. Yeah, because if I say something, it could be turned into torture. Okay, maybe just to rephrase the question, maybe you can just tell us what happened. Okay, what happened leading to the arrest? Yeah, leading to where you are right now. What are the facts? What happened? No, it's fine. So, yeah, it's not the first time I've been arrested. And I think it's good to give a pretext, because I think a lot of the targeting that we saw happening during the SADC summit is emanating from certain political persons that, you know, the people thought were of interest. And I think that for me to be deemed a person of interest in this sort of circumstance, it was mostly because you're known for your work, you're known for your work around constitutionalism, around human rights, etc. Yeah, and what basically happened is we had the SADC summit, and I think that our current president had such a strong interest towards, you know, becoming the SADC chairperson. And I think ahead of the SADC summit, you could sense that there was a lot of agitation, I think, particularly with the security system. They seemed to be thinking that people would use that as a platform to demonstrate or to protest and ultimately humiliate the president. Yeah, and, you know, I had recently, you know, gone on leave. I had wanted to get a tooth extraction for, to be sick, because I wanted to get braces in six months' time. So I had gone on leave, and at some point during the course of my leave, I felt a little bit better, and I had an invitation to Victoria Falls from an institution called Trust Africa. It was an African philanthropy conference. So, I mean, the conference itself was nothing political. It's about African philanthropy, and to the best of my knowledge, it's in Grusham Hotel, the wife of the former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was there. So it didn't seem like, you know, a place where there's a lot of political organizing, and it felt safe to attend. So I think on the 31st of July, when I was traveling to Victoria Falls, you know, we were ultimately abducted at the airport. And then that's how all of this started. But I think my sense and hindsight with regards to how all of this happened, because I know for certainty that I had canceled an 8 a.m. flight, and I did meet people when I first went to the airport, but I didn't realize my ticket had been pulled out of the system, because I had communicated to the organizers that I was sick. I had had four teeth extracted. So I wasn't sure if I'd travel or not. So when I got there, I didn't think that they'd pulled my ticket out. So I know for the people that I saw in the morning that were going to the same place, I just know them remotely. They were also under-case activists, lawyers, whatever. They successfully went through the airport. So a part of me feels like what happened to us was partially opportunistic, because I know for certainty that if I'd made the 8 a.m. flight, this probably wouldn't have happened. And also I think just issues to do with the fact that they waited until the engine of the airplane had started. Because we went through immigration, went through securities, and sat at the gate for a good 45 minutes to an hour. We got on the plane, and the doors were closed, the engine started. And they basically gave an instruction to the pilot to turn off the engine, to open the doors. And then they proceeded to actually extract us from the plane. So they grounded the plane to actually extract the four of us. In my sense, it's quite interesting that a lot of those things seemed very opportunistic, because it seemed like it wasn't premeditated. So I account for that time lapse, to think that they were probably making phone calls and trying to seek authorization to be able to move in, and to be able to extract us from the plane. So I think maybe it took them that much time. So I mean, this is what ultimately led to us being where we are, because we were taken to this huge part of the airport. And definitely there was a lot of interrogation. We were subject to not accounted for, held incommunicable for a good eight hours. And yeah, there was a lot of torture as well. So I think in hindsight, when I do look at it, it was a lot of trying to extract information. With regard to, we suspect that you might be organizing a demonstration, so we wanted to extract information. And also, there was the talk that a lot of you are going to Victoria Falls. Maybe that's where you are going to be organizing your demonstrations. And then the arrests that came after that, it's just, this is just in the public domain. It's stuff that we can read about anyway. But the arrests that came afterwards, it felt more like the state had to give us back, to put us back to the public. So the state had to put us back to people. And you've held these people for, you know, and I keep referring to the state, because listen, no one has the power to ground an airplane, to extract people out of an airplane, and then to have these people held incommunicable for eight hours in an airport, which is a highly secure place. So they have to be people that have state influence to be able to, because it's a very high security space. So I'm not saying that, it's very clear, because the circumstances are quite clear, and this was happening, you know, in an airport where you are not going to get access if you are not authorized to have access. And the only people, persons that can have that access are also people working from within the state. So the arrests that followed after, I think for me it was just the recognition that they have to have some way of managing the optics. Because I think this thing had been blown out of proportion already. And you need to be able to justify why these people are worthy of being treated the way they have been. And I have for the longest of time processed a lot of the experience from a place of even, you know, before a genocide occurs or before a war happens, there is a tendency of persons who are violent and intend to use that violent on another person. There is a lot of misinformation, disinformation, rumor mongering, a lot of gossiping. And I think a lot of that is situated around attacking the oppressor so that it psychologically preps those who watch to say, you know, this is actually well-founded that they were treated this way. So I think in our case, there was a lot of like, you are a criminal, you participated in a procession, in a gathering on the, I think it was the 27th of June in 2024. And you were at large, and you were trying to run away, that's why you were at the airport. And it was like creating a lot of like twisted narratives to say that you were worthy to be treated this way. Because you were at large, you were going to meet your other accomplices, and you were to plan more of those things, which in essence wasn't the case. Now, I want just to make an inference to the people who were protesting at Harare Magistrate on the 27th of June, when I was in South Africa at the time, last year. So they were protesting about the arrest of Senator James Timber and 78 people from Avondale. And Senator James Timber is a really good man, he is a wonderful person, and he believes in Zimbabwe. And, you know, when they had a gathering on the 16th of June, it was a private gathering, mind you, and they were commemorating the death of an African child. The place where they were gathering at Senator Timber's house was stormed by police. And they, it was brutal. I mean, women were beaten, they were asked to do nothing.