Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare, and the second largest is Bulawayo.
Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council claimed it to be about 1.2 million. Bulawayo covers an area of about 546 square kilometres in the western part of the country, along the Matsheumhlope River. Along with the capital Harare, Bulawayo is one of two cities in Zimbabwe that is also a province.
Pius Alick Mvundla Ncube served as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, until he resigned on 11 September 2007. Widely known for his human rights advocacy, Ncube was an outspoken critic of former President Robert Mugabe while he was in office.
Sean Colin Williams is a Zimbabwean international cricketer and currently captains the national team in Test cricket, who plays all formats primarily as a batting all-rounder. In September 2019, Zimbabwe Cricket named him as Zimbabwe's captain, after Hamilton Masakadza retired from international cricket. Later the same month, Williams captained Zimbabwe for the first time, in the opening Twenty20 International (T20I) match of the 2019–20 Singapore Tri-Nation Series, against Nepal.
Ladies in White is an opposition movement in Cuba founded in 2003 by wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents and those who have been made to disappear by the government. The women protest the imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and then silently walking through the streets dressed in white clothing. The color white is chosen to symbolize peace.
Welshman Ncube is a Zimbabwean lawyer, businessman and politician. He is the founding MDC leader and former President of Zimbabwean political party Movement for Democratic Change – Ncube. He currently serves within the Citizen Coalition for Change (CCC). He is a practicing lawyer in the firm Mathonsi Ncube Law Chambers, where he is the senior partner at their Bulawayo offices. He also runs a number of business ventures, including a farm in the Midlands Province.
Solange Pierre, known as Sonia Pierre, was a human rights advocate in the Dominican Republic who worked to end antihaitianismo, which is discrimination against individuals of Haitian origin either born in Haiti or in the Dominican Republic. For this work, she won the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
Zimbabwe began experiencing a period of considerable political and economic upheaval in 1999. Opposition to President Mugabe and the ZANU-PF government grew considerably after the mid-1990s in part due to worsening economic and human rights conditions. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was established in September 1999 as an opposition party founded by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai.
Jestina Mukoko is a Zimbabwean human rights activist and the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project. She is a journalist by training and a former newsreader with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Hopewell Rugoho-Chin'ono is a Zimbabwean journalist. He has won numerous awards in journalism and has worked in both print and broadcasting journalism. He was a fellow at Harvard.
Mary Kerry Kennedy is an American lawyer, author and human rights activist. She is the seventh child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy. During her 15-year marriage to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, from 1990 to 2005, she was known as Kerry Kennedy-Cuomo. She is the president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a non-profit human rights advocacy organization.
Jenni Williams is a Zimbabwean human rights activist and a founder of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). A prominent critic of President Robert Mugabe's government, she was described by The Guardian in 2009 as "one of the most troublesome thorns in Mugabe's side".
Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera is a Ugandan LGBT rights activist and the founder and executive director of the LGBT rights organization Freedom & Roam Uganda (FARUG). She received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2011 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2015.
Magodonga Mahlangu is a women's rights campaigner from Zimbabwe who in 2009 was awarded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Ginetta Sagan was an Italian-born American human rights activist best known for her work with Amnesty International on behalf of prisoners of conscience.
Isabella Matambanadzo is a Zimbabwean writer, gender and feminist activist active with the African Feminist Forum. With a background in print, radio and television Journalism, she has used media to amplify women's voices. She also has a background in reporting on breaking news stories in and around Africa having previously worked with Reuters News Agency from 1999 to 2001.
Linda Tsungirirai Masarira is a Zimbabwean politician who served as a spokesperson for one of the smaller faction of the opposition parties in Zimbabwe, MDC-T led by Thokozani Khupe.
Rikki Nathanson is a Zimbabwean transgender activist. She founded the organization Trans Research Education Advocacy and Training (TREAT) in 2015. After an arrest for entering a women's bathroom in Bulawayo in 2014, she filed a civil lawsuit for damages which she won in 2019. By that point, she had taken asylum in the US and she now lives in Maryland.
GALZ An Association of LGBTI People in Zimbabwe is an organisation established in 1990 in Harare to serve the needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community in Zimbabwe. GALZ's vision is "a just society that promotes and protects human rights of LGBTI people as equal citizens in Zimbabwe".
