Prosper Tiringindi

Zimbabwe, CAHR, Autumn 2018

My name is Prosper T Tiringindi, I am a citizen of Zimbabwe born 31 years ago. I am the second boy in a family of five, made up of three boys and two girls. I studied on Project Design Monitoring and Evaluation for my first diploma. I have a passion for social change activism that was ignited in my early years because of my background, especially as I come from a community that has suffered a long history of exclusion and marginalization in southern-eastern Zimbabwe.

Since 2008 I have been at the helm of the Zimbabwe National Student Union, an organization which is a conglomeration of tertiary students across Zimbabwe. It provides national student representation plus demand-driven solidarity and support to the student movement and human rights defenders in Zimbabwe. Its primary target group for its initiatives are student victims of human rights abuse in terms of the privatization of education and attack on academic freedoms, and it also strives for female participation in defense of democracy and human rights, as this has proved to be a major challenge for almost all mass movements in Zimbabwe.

The Masvingo Residents Trust has accorded me the opportunity to amplify the voices of many citizens whose rights have been violated.

In 2013 I formed Masvingo Residents Trust, a human rights organization which campaigns for transparency and public accountability in the delivery of social services in the Masvingo province of south-eastern Zimbabwe. The group advocates for the improvement of the socio-economic rights of communities in the province by supporting projects to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development, and organizing peaceful demonstrations demanding good governance from the Masvingo authorities.

The Masvingo Residents Trust has accorded me the opportunity to amplify the voices of many citizens whose rights have been violated. For doing this work my fingers have been burnt. In 2014 I was arrested, tortured and remanded in custody for two weeks, only days before I was committed by Masvingo Magistrate Court for a further 3 months on a "charge" of leading a peaceful demonstration. I was cleared when the Constitutional Court ruled that my rights had been violated by the state through its agents. Since lightning is known to strike twice, at the beginning of 2015 our office was raided by the state security, and me and other staff members were arrested and interrogated on the our organisation's funding sources. Later that same day we were released by the state security with no crimes charged against us.

As a fellow at CAHR, at the University of York, I'm studying effective strategies that will support a strong social movement and the often excluded activists that find themselves in danger, especially in repressive and hybrid regimes like Zimbabwe. I believe in the universality of human rights.