Centre for Applied Human Rights
Nolwandle Simunyu
Zimbabwe, CAHR, Spring 2013
My name is Nolwandle Simunyu. I am 29 years old and I am from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. I am a human rights defender, administrator and programme assistant for an organisation called WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise).
I joined WOZA as a member in 2004when I was 21 years old. I decided that I wanted to be a human rights defender when I noticed that as young women our rights were being violated, our voices were not being heard and lots of my age mates are single mothers just because we are failing to defend ourselves against violations. I am so happy because the day I became a human rights defender my life changed. I am now able to stand up for my rights even though I had no support from my family and the society. I have continued with what I am doing because I chose to be a human rights defender and will continue until we have social justice in Zimbabwe.
I became a youth leader and helped to organise and mobilise people for demonstrations in demanding affordable education, affordable electricity, water and health. I have participated in many demonstrations where I was first arrested during the International Women’s Day. I did a 440-km walk from Bulawayo to Harare in protest of the passing of the NGO bill. The protest walk was a success as the bill was never passed. Most of these demonstrations became successes as education policies were changed and the fees as well as tariffs for electricity have been reduced and now prepaid meters for households are being installed as per our campaign. Due to my age and the work I was doing I was able to inspire some young women to follow my foot steps and now in the organisation almost half of our membership is youths.
I decided that I wanted to be a human rights defender when I noticed that as young women our rights were being violated.
I worked hard in the organisation and was arrested about six times and once sent to prison for 17 days in 2008 and I have also been beaten many times. I face a lot of risks on a daily basis. Every time you move in the streets you have to make sure that you are not being followed and there are some places where you end up not going just because there will be police presence. Our lives have just become a nightmare because we are always aware of insecurities. Now I do most of the support in the organisation especially when people are arrested and injured, liaison with the lawyers and all that. I also do logistics for day to day basic requirements e.g. workshops, travel, meetings, actions, etc., whereby you have to be more careful in choosing service providers as just picking up anyone is very risky because you don’t know whether someone is genuine or not. I also help in the financial reporting and analysing of reports from our members in the communities.
I am now at the Centre of Applied Human Rights where I am conducting my own independent project which is learning more about human rights and international human rights laws as well as knowing how to document human rights violation stories. What I have learnt so far at the Centre is all interesting because I am attending the modules Women, citizenship and conflict , Cultures of human rights practice, Defending human rights and Working safely. In all this I have managed to assess my risks as a human rights defender: I now know about different kinds of human rights violations committed in different countries and also different kinds of ways to document these violations.
All this will help me when I go back home as most of these ways of documenting human rights and the risks assessments will help us in exercising different approaches in our human rights work at WOZA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue3wGMW6kso