- You yourself have suffered at the hands of this myth so how much was that, and still is, a driving force for you?
Because my abuse was never taken to a police station and when I suffered rape it was my mother that cared for me I was never taken to a doctor, But what I do recall vividly is the pain, the blood flowing out and the limping and all this comes into my head when I see young girls. So when they report a rape case to me and then I help them to get the perpetrator punished I also feel a sense of release and solace when I see somebody punished for raping girls.
- You have fought for so many years to protect these girls and seen so many horrific things how can you bear it?
The thing is each time a girl enters my office or calls me or emails me I do the case up to the end and then all of a sudden she comes to me smiling and you feel that if only I had not done then she was going to wear a sad face and the whole country was going to be a country where women have wounded genital organs. So each time a girl smiles I actually score a point emotionally myself and I tell myself that it is getting better so I also heal through the girls and I enjoy doing it.
- Your work in Zimbabwe came at a personal cost as you were forced to leave your home so why did you have to leave?
I had to leave because the more I had to deal with these rape cases the more enemies I created around me, and I didn’t know that just by assisting a girl to demand justice I was actually evoking bigger powers. The men who raped girls are so well connected and the girls are just the poor and vulnerable people and they got used to the idea that if you raped a girl there would just be silence.
But I really stood up to them to tell them that this can’t be and in the end the militia stormed first into my house and then into my office, it was really dangerous. And I remember one girl telling me ‘Miss Makoni you had better leave they are coming after you we heard them talking in the village.’
- You now live her in the UK with your family so how has your worked changed now that you are away from Zimbabwe?
Thing have changed in terms of the physical touch that I used to be able to do because each time I received a call it didn’t matter that I was high up in the organisation I would go and check myself so that has been a big blow to me.
It’s testing in terms of how much energy I must have to reach out to a girl and it’s really painful when you are trying to reach out and touch someone and there is a block on you being able to touch that person.
- That leads me to my next question how difficult is for you to not be there dealing with it first hand?
It’s really difficult because when you are dealing with young girls you are dealing with them personally and these are issues of the heart so for me I always cry saying ‘I need the girls back’ and just recently the girls were crying for me to come back, so between me and the girls there are lots of tears.
- And is there any chance of you being able to return home?
Oh yes definitely one day I will return home but also I have learnt to actually do everything from behind the scenes by using less threatening individuals in the country, people I trust and people have been through the same thing.
I invested so much in the girls empowerment villages, we have four of them, each bridge I put together with the villagers and when you see sometime see that it’s not according to what I put down it’s really painful it’s so difficult to be away from the project.
- So what impact do you hope this CNN recognition will do for the charity and the issue?
Of course I can be blocked physically in Zimbabwe from highlighting this issue but I needed more voices and since I have been announced as a CNN hero everybody has become aware of the issue and people are writing about it and putting pressure on the government to do something, this is what I wanted to happen. Because I used to speak alone in a village and then I got victimised but now we are all scattered around the globe so no one can touch us.
- Finally what’s next for you and for the charity?
We have found a home, we have found friends and we have found people who support us and we are now going to have Girl Child Network worldwide where I will mobilise all the girls in the world to support the girls in Africa.
It’s also a chance for me to mobilise young girls who are starting to walk in my footsteps we don’t care which race or religion all I know is that the abuse of girls is universal so we want to get a universal approach.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw