A Zimbabwean pro-democracy activist who described surviving gunshots and a year jailed as a political prisoner has said gaining a scholarship for refugees at a UK university gave him “hope in a hopeless place”.

Makomborero Haruzivishe said he was an “ordinary” 19-year-old student when he joined the University of Zimbabwe to study psychology in 2011, but his activism over education rights and corruption led to him being arrested 37 times, banned from university, tortured, imprisoned and nearly killed.

Speaking about his experiences at the University of Kent, Mr Haruzivishe, 32, told the PA news agency he is studying a law and politics degree two years after he fled his home country in the middle of the night to South Africa.

“Leaving Zimbabwe, it was painful,” the aspiring barrister said.

“I couldn’t afford to say goodbye to my parents, to my siblings, to everyone.

“I lost most of my colleagues, some of my colleagues were abducted, never to be returned.

“And that was the moment when I, for the sake of my life, I just had to get out.”

He added: “I didn’t know where I was going, I think what was keeping me sane was, ‘no, I’m going to get an opportunity for education’.”

The former secretary general of the Zimbabwe National Student Union (ZINASU) escaped the southern African state after being released from prison in 2022, following a public campaign from Amnesty International and advocacy from the House of Lords to free him.

Amnesty International described Mr Haruzivishe’s arrest and detention as “politically motivated” in a bid to silence him and other peaceful political activists, including on a charge of inciting violence during a 2020 protest – by blowing a whistle.

His memories of Zimbabwe are of pain and prison, triggered by dirty toilets which remind him of his time spent in an overcrowded cell with around 120 inmates and one toilet.

Makomborero Haruzivishe
Makomborero Haruzivishe now studies at the University of Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Before jail, he recalled “living on the edge”, always on the move with other people to decrease his chance of abduction, checking if he was being followed and sleeping no more than three hours a night out of fear of being attacked.

He said: “I couldn’t stay in one place for like an hour. It was just not safe.”

“I had gunshots fired at me, I managed to survive,” he told PA, adding that he was ambushed by a “hit squad” in four unmarked cars in Harare, before he was hooded, bound and dumped at a police station.

Mr Haruzivishe said he never intended to claim asylum in the UK, but on a short visit to meet parliamentarians and activists from human rights charity Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) in London, he said things got “really serious” with the Zimbabwean government once officials realised he had left the country.

“They were fuming, they were even threatening me to send hitmen on me to the UK,” he said.

Mr Haruzivishe applied for asylum in February 2023, and said after handing in his documents and attending screening appointments, “I kind of felt like a nobody”.

He described being with other asylum seekers, adding: “Different backgrounds, different languages, sometimes you find yourself speaking the same language of fear of ‘what if I’m denied my asylum claim, what if they deport me?’

“It was lucky because some of my threats against me were documented online. Without them I would not be able to prove this is my situation.”

While living in Southend-on-Sea awaiting his asylum decision, he re-met another Zimbabwean activist who had “spent years” trying to prove his asylum case to the Home Office because of a lack of physical evidence.

“I knew his life was in danger,” said Mr Haruzivishe. “He had nothing online, no documents of his case.”

On his own refugee status, which he gained in October 2023, Mr Haruzivishe said he was “relieved”.

Now he feels “really at home” at the Canterbury campus, working with Amnesty International, ACTSA and other activist groups while also working as a kitchen porter at a restaurant in Whitstable, which he finds “therapeutic”.

He is one of 13 sanctuary scholars at the university which aims to help those seeking refuge in the UK access higher education by granting fee waivers and a bursary towards living costs.

“Life takes people through different routes and the route that we’re sanctuary scholars, it’s kind of hope in a hopeless place, and we hold on to that hope, come what may,” he said.

Mr Haruzivishe wants to become a “world class lawyer” working on economic law for his career, before he hopes one day to return to Zimbabwe.

He said: “It’s our generation that needs to rewire the social order and economic order there.

“Who knows, maybe one day become president.”

On becoming a refugee, he said: “No-one chooses to be a refugee.

“I can tell you the pain of being a refugee, how much I yearned to just go back home, be with my parents, with my siblings – it is not a choice.”