Betty Makoni
Betty Makoni has worked tirelessly to protect young victims of rape in her native Zimbabwe, also being a rape victim herself when she was a young girl.
Fighting to bring these people to justice has led to Betty being forced from her home now living in the UK.
But all her hard work was recognised this week as she was named as a CNN Hero of 2009. I caught up with her to talk about her work and the future for the Girl Child Network.
- You have been named as one of the Top 10 CNN Heroes for 2009 so how do you feel about this recognition?
I fell like my moral has been boosted and that I have energy because when you are working with victims of crime it feels like all of your energy is drained out and you need someone to come along to tell you that you are doing well and go for it. So I really feel like my moral is very high at the moment.
- And did this recognition come as a shock?
Yes I was incredibly shocked. As someone who has been forced into exile I thought that no one had noticed all of the effort so I was really really shocked to be on this awards list.
- You are behind the Girl Child Network organisation in Zimbabwe can you tell me a little bit about your work?
I started from very humble beginnings with ten girls in my class and I had noticed that they were dropping out of school and there were many reason why; some were caring for parents who were HIV positive, so I said to them that instead of going to any other clubs that we should start what we would call Girls Club. It became the first platform to where girls could come so for the first week ten girls turned up and the next week fifty girls turned up.
The more we put out the word about Girls Club the more girls came until the girls from the schools surrounding me starting pouring in looking for me. So by the end of 1999 I had 2000 girls who were my members and the number grew to 20,000, I now have 50,000 girls in Zimbabwe.
So it really multiplied so quickly, and with no radio and no internet, girls walked the distances to reach out to each other and say that here was a place where we can talk and get help.
- There’s a wide held belief that if a man with HIV/Aids rapes a virgin he will be cured where does an idea like that come from?
When there was desperation for men to get rich during poverty time they believed that if you extracted blood from a virgin girl, and this is why myself and so many other little girls were raped in our neighbourhood, if you extracted the blood, mixed it with some herbs and put it in a shop then people would come in an start buying things and you will become rich. The blood of a virgin brings luck.
Then Aids came and people came desperate for a cure and they believed that if this blood could make people rich and bring luck then it can also take away the virus so they started raping young girls and extracting blood and mixing it with herbs because they believed that it purified the virus.
- So how much is being done to stop this/or help?
I set up empowerment villages and these are like one stop shops were girls are rescued from abusive situations they come to a pace where they feel comforted, they are reinserted back into school, they are also made to feel that they have potential and also thy begin to receive our self empowerment programme. The programme allows girls to improve their confidence and start going to the police and start going back to school.
And I always tell the girls that they are in the empowerment village to transform from a victim into a survivor and today I have thousands of them who are leaders in their own right who came from the situation. We have actually set up programmes to help other women and girls in the country and the programme is actually multiplying in terms of the therapy that we give from our own perspective.
- 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
Betty Makoni has worked tirelessly to protect young victims of rape in her native Zimbabwe, also being a rape victim herself when she was a young girl.
Fighting to bring these people to justice has led to Betty being forced from her home now living in the UK.
But all her hard work was recognised this week as she was named as a CNN Hero of 2009. I caught up with her to talk about her work and the future for the Girl Child Network.
- You have been named as one of the Top 10 CNN Heroes for 2009 so how do you feel about this recognition?
I fell like my moral has been boosted and that I have energy because when you are working with victims of crime it feels like all of your energy is drained out and you need someone to come along to tell you that you are doing well and go for it. So I really feel like my moral is very high at the moment.
- And did this recognition come as a shock?
Yes I was incredibly shocked. As someone who has been forced into exile I thought that no one had noticed all of the effort so I was really really shocked to be on this awards list.
- You are behind the Girl Child Network organisation in Zimbabwe can you tell me a little bit about your work?
I started from very humble beginnings with ten girls in my class and I had noticed that they were dropping out of school and there were many reason why; some were caring for parents who were HIV positive, so I said to them that instead of going to any other clubs that we should start what we would call Girls Club. It became the first platform to where girls could come so for the first week ten girls turned up and the next week fifty girls turned up.
The more we put out the word about Girls Club the more girls came until the girls from the schools surrounding me starting pouring in looking for me. So by the end of 1999 I had 2000 girls who were my members and the number grew to 20,000, I now have 50,000 girls in Zimbabwe.
So it really multiplied so quickly, and with no radio and no internet, girls walked the distances to reach out to each other and say that here was a place where we can talk and get help.
- There’s a wide held belief that if a man with HIV/Aids rapes a virgin he will be cured where does an idea like that come from?
When there was desperation for men to get rich during poverty time they believed that if you extracted blood from a virgin girl, and this is why myself and so many other little girls were raped in our neighbourhood, if you extracted the blood, mixed it with some herbs and put it in a shop then people would come in an start buying things and you will become rich. The blood of a virgin brings luck.
Then Aids came and people came desperate for a cure and they believed that if this blood could make people rich and bring luck then it can also take away the virus so they started raping young girls and extracting blood and mixing it with herbs because they believed that it purified the virus.
- So how much is being done to stop this/or help?
I set up empowerment villages and these are like one stop shops were girls are rescued from abusive situations they come to a pace where they feel comforted, they are reinserted back into school, they are also made to feel that they have potential and also thy begin to receive our self empowerment programme. The programme allows girls to improve their confidence and start going to the police and start going back to school.
And I always tell the girls that they are in the empowerment village to transform from a victim into a survivor and today I have thousands of them who are leaders in their own right who came from the situation. We have actually set up programmes to help other women and girls in the country and the programme is actually multiplying in terms of the therapy that we give from our own perspective.