‘I have reached Mandela moment’: Job Sikhala writes from prison
INCARCERATED opposition politician Job Sikhala has written a New Year letter from Chikurubhi Maximum prison where he has been jailed for a long time.
Sikhala says he is not retreating from his values and is ready to die representing the masses.
Below is the full letter;
BY JOB WIWA SIKHALA
CHIKURUBI MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON
NEW YEAR MESSAGE FROM CHIKURUBI MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON
Dear Zimbabweans and my Worldwide friends:
My dearest Zimbabweans and Worldwide friends, Happy New Year, Happy 2023!!! It is through the grace of our ever loving Almighty God that we are in 2024. Some of our friends and relatives did not make it from 2023. God is the ultimate authority over everything, life or death, tears or joy, pain, agony or happiness. He is a purposeful Lord. Let’s thank him for his gracious love.
From the enclave of repression, where I am in, my dearest friends, the preceding year, 2023, was the year my tormentors flexed and demonstrated their might of oppression against me. Throughout my trials in court, I was always oppressed by my tormentors. I was subjected to the most unfair trials a human being can ever go through. I was denied any decency of a fair trial. I went through grand demonstrations of emotional seizures. Court desks were banged, chairs swayed and doors banged, with faces frowning on me coupled with holistic satanic smiles by the State, on cases without an iota of evidence.
Let me tell you dear friends, that, since birth, I have never witnessed some garbage of embarrassing evidence like the one that was presented against me by my persecutors’ and various witnesses. I even felt pity for them. We shall upload the entire record of my cases on various websites for your attention. Records of court proceedings are public documents that can be accessed by anyone who wants to.
Like I said in my previous communications with you, I long reached the Mandela moment. I will never, ever again continue to sanitise my persecution, by pleading my innocence to scripts that have been choreographed. My persecution is now clear to everyone. It is the exercise of repression in motion against my person by the regime and its agencies, for being a forthright opposition political leader. So be it! I am a political prisoner whose crime is, being the voice of the oppressed and the downtrodden. Believe me, there is nothing that gives me full satisfaction and inner happiness in life, than suffering for the powerless masses. I always tell my oppressors that, they are free to do whatever they want with me, even if they want to kill me, as they long mooted the plan since December 2022.
Since my arrest on the 14th of June 2022, my oppressors kept me under the most horrible and inhumane conditions under the sun, in solitary confinement and always in chains, like a terrorist, at every turn, in the worst prison in the world, Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. They know I have not committed any crime, and that I am not a criminal and I will never be one all my life.
I chose to become who I am, because I stand for something, something worth living for and something worth dying for. Like Steve Biko said, “it is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die”. Rather than tormenting me, those who wield power, should demonstrate themselves the desire to ameliorate every legitimate grievance. We must affirm our unalterable faith in human goodness once released from the blemishes of a society founded on fear. I am one man who by natural designs of nature, will never be forced to retreat or modify positions, especially through coercive means. I am attracted and persuaded by ideas. Great ideals and ideas that are people centered.
You would understand me, if you would share with me, the view and the truth that there are millions of our poor people, abject people, ill-fed, ill-clothed, unemployed, emaciated, drowned in drugs and penury who are gripped in unimaginable sorrow and tears. They need that heart that feels for them, that heart that bleeds with theirs to wipe with tears of sorrow and neglitude from their faces. I repeat, once more again, that I studied law, to help represent the poor, and in my career as a lawyer,
