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Roy Bennett

Message of hope arrived in Zimbabwe

by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

January 13, 2005

If you are one of the average Canadians or Americans who responded to Canadafreeepress.com's request for emails of hope and encouragement to Heather Bennett during the recent holidays, it worked.

As the months of her husband MP Roy Bennett's imprisonment by the Robert Mugabe Government wore on, Heather, facing life without him, was getting depressed and discouraged.

Just before December 25, there was a surge in incoming emails from North America to FreeRoyBennett.com, and it made Heather and her two children feel a little less alone.

"We take it one day at a time. We try to be positive but it's not easy," a grateful Heather told Canada Free Press in a telephone interview from Zimbabwe yesterday.

Without a court trial, Roy Bennett began one year's hard labour in prison on October 28.

"He's lost so much weight. They only feed them twice a day. Just one cup of rice and one serving of cabbage stew, no meat. I am so worried about him," Heather told CFP.

Time hangs heavy for the anxious wife who is permitted to see her husband just twice a month, and only for 10 minutes per visit.

Roy Bennett, the only white farmer Member of Parliament in Zimbabwe's opposition, is being forced to work long hours under the hot Zimbabwe sun. Badly blistered, he is covered with body lice.

There was no court of law to take testimony for the crime of which he was accused. Bennett was tried and sentenced by the same people who have harassed and tormented his family and workers ever since his election: the Robert Mugabe government–the only law in current day Zimbabwe.

What kind of crime could land him in jail without a trial? The crime came from his angrily pushing Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who had taunted him publicly, on the floor of Parliament. Chinamasa had called Bennett's father and grandfather "thieves" and "murderers" and told Bennett that he'd never be able to again return to his coffee plantation, taken by Mugabe's treacherous ZANU-PF government.

Bennett's sincere apology to the Justice Minister brought no sympathy and no justice.

Since first being elected in 2000, Bennett has consistently stood up to Mugabe's treatment of the Zimbabwean people.

Just two months after Election Day, Charleswood, ZANU PF thugs raided Bennett's hard-worked coffee plantation. The plantation, which hired hundreds of blacks, and had just paid off all of its bank loans, was driven into bankruptcy. Its animals were slaughtered wholesale, and the tons of coffee that came from plants long nurtured were exported to faraway Germany.

During the raid, Heather, four months pregnant at the time, was held hostage at knifepoint and made to dance and sing ZANU PF songs in the rain. Two of the plantation's workers were killed in front of her. When she finally managed to escape with their two children, she had miscarried their third child.

Like so many other Zimbabweans, Roy, Heather and their children were forced to start all over again from scratch. Even that did not stop the feisty MP. Always a farmer at heart, he took a job as a travelling salesmen to keep his family together and the bills paid.

Given all that has happened to them, the separation is particularly painful. Their 20^th anniversary passed with the couple being separated. Ditto for Christmas and New Years.

In the beginning, there was always the hope that outrage expressed by the international community would soon set things right.

But the outside world seems not only to have forgotten Zimbabwe's loneliest political prisoner, but the longsuffering people of Zimbabwe.

No matter how dim the wick, the candle of hope keeps burning in Zimbabwe.

www.FreeRoyBennett.com.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com