Betty Makoni Speaks Out About Her Work

24 November 2009

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Betty Makoni has worked tirelessly to protect young victims of rape in her native Zimbabwe, also being a rape victim herself when she was a young girl.

Fighting to bring these people to justice has led to Betty being forced from her home now living in the UK.

But all her hard work was recognised this week as she was named as a CNN Hero of 2009. I caught up with her to talk about her work and the future for the Girl Child Network.

- You have been named as one of the Top 10 CNN Heroes for 2009 so how do you feel about this recognition?

I fell like my moral has been boosted and that I have energy because when you are working with victims of crime it feels like all of your energy is drained out and you need someone to come along to tell you that you are doing well and go for it.  So I really feel like my moral is very high at the moment.

- And did this recognition come as a shock?

Yes I was incredibly shocked. As someone who has been forced into exile I thought that no one had noticed all of the effort so I was really really shocked to be on this awards list.

- You are behind the Girl Child Network organisation in Zimbabwe can you tell me a little bit about your work?

I started from very humble beginnings with ten girls in my class and I had noticed that they were dropping out of school and there were many reason why; some were caring for parents who were HIV positive, so I said to them that instead of going to any other clubs that we should start what we would call Girls Club.  It became the first platform to where girls could come so for the first week ten girls turned up and the next week fifty girls turned up.

The more we put out the word about Girls Club the more girls came until the girls from the schools surrounding me starting pouring in looking for me. So by the end of 1999 I had 2000 girls who were my members and the number grew to 20,000, I now have 50,000 girls in Zimbabwe.

So it really multiplied so quickly, and with no radio and no internet, girls walked the distances to reach out to each other and say that here was a place where we can talk and get help. 

- There’s a wide held belief that if a man with HIV/Aids rapes a virgin he will be cured where does an idea like that come from?

When there was desperation for men to get rich during poverty time they believed that if you extracted blood from a virgin girl, and this is why myself and so many other little girls were raped in our neighbourhood, if you extracted the blood, mixed it with some herbs and put it in a shop then people would come in an start buying things and you will become rich. The blood of a virgin brings luck.

Then Aids came and people came desperate for a cure and they believed that if this blood could make people rich and bring luck then it can also take away the virus so they started raping young girls and extracting blood and mixing it with herbs because they believed that it purified the virus. 

- So how much is being done to stop this/or help?

I set up empowerment villages and these are like one stop shops were girls are rescued from abusive situations they come to a pace where they feel comforted, they are reinserted back into school, they are also made to feel that they have potential and also thy begin to receive our self empowerment programme. The programme allows girls to improve their confidence and start going to the police and start going back to school.

And I always tell the girls that they are in the empowerment village to transform from a victim into a survivor and today I have thousands of them who are leaders in their own right who came from the situation.  We have actually set up programmes to help other women and girls in the country and the programme is actually multiplying in terms of the therapy that we give from our own perspective.

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