For Jasmine Toffa, the hardest moment of her life wasn’t when she was beaten to a pulp by regime thugs. It happened when a Zimbabwean MP appeared in parliament after surgery, with broken arms in a cast, and the Minister of Justice laughed at her.
The single mother of three went to the council by-election for another member of the opposition, 70 miles from her constituency in the city of Bulawayo. She was at his house when people ran to warn them that hooligans from the ruling party were attacking anyone wearing opposition yellow.
“We locked ourselves in the bedroom, but we heard them knocking on the doors and windows, shouting: “Open!” and breaking glass,” she says. “They broke in, pulled me out and started
