[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm here to to tell you of my journey it's a journey of finding hope and then losing it again and then and then finding it again in very dark circumstances but finding it as a small small ember a glowing little chance that even when we lose hope sometimes we can we can always always find it it's a journey that has taught me to understand what freedom is and what the pursuit of freedom is that it's not an idea that's out there somewhere but that freedom is you freedom is me it is us we are freedom for over thirty seven years Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe and he destroyed our nation in ways that are difficult for me to explain economically our nation had collapsed multiple times under his role in 2008 we ended up with a one hundred trillion dollar note as part of our regime of currencies that's one and 12 zeros the number of people that had lost their lives that had been brutalized over the years or to many dimension and at the height of corruption in Zimbabwe as a father I was frustrated I was failing to look after my my two infant children and so on April 19 2016 I recorded a video was a four minute video and I posted that video on YouTube it was a ranch it was a personal expression of frustration with what Zimbabwe had become in the same video I spoke to my fellow Zimbabweans and I said to them it was time that we stood up and we remember what this flag was all about the promise it made not just once but to our children and that it was our duty and nobody else's to speak up to challenge the authoritarianism of Robert Mugabe this little video then gave birth to a movement that I never never in my wildest dreams expected would have begun millions of people rallied behind it and in the months to come we forced the government to listen to hear us but they wouldn't I remember I made one more video and in it I made a daring call to our citizens to boycott work to boycott school and to bring the entire country to a complete standstill as a way of saying to Robert Mugabe enough was enough who was I there was nobody and yet millions of people responded to that call and one of the first citizen driven actions began to unfold in Zimbabwe hundreds upon thousands of people began to find their voice to speak up to stand up and to say that they wanted a better future but because of that Robert Mugabe jailed me I was arrested immediately after that protest had been a success and I was charged with attempting to overthrow the government I couldn't believe that this is what it did be what it had come to essentially but there was something that I think Robert Mugabe himself and his regime did not expect in that so many people through this movement that we called this flag citizens movement had found their voice and we're now scaling the wall of fear they were now standing up in their own ways even just as one voice to speak truth to power on the day that I was brought to court thousands of people gathered demanding my release it was something that I never expected something that none of us thought that we would ever see but this journey of learning to speak had begun and I think sometimes people may not understand that when you live in a nation where you have been intimidated for so long challenging Authority is a scary scary thing to do and yet here we were a Zimbabweans finding our voice and learning that freedom was about us doing what we needed to do in the face of injustice I was released because of all these people that showed up and immediately I had to take my family out of Zimbabwe I learned that whilst I was in prison my wife was pregnant with our third child and my two children had all been threatened in separate incidences my children had been threatened with death at their school and my wife had been threatened with rape at her workplace we were able to bring them to safety soon after my daughter was born whilst in exile I remember sitting thinking to myself that we still have a job to do in Zimbabwe so I made the difficult decision to leave my family and go back home to Zimbabwe to continue this struggle because I've always believed that every generation cannot subcontract their struggle we must be at the forefront of fighting for the things that we believe on arrival in Zimbabwe on the first of February 2017 I was arrested immediately at the airport I was charged with treason and I was thrown into the maximum-security prison if found guilty I was going to face over 20 years in prison I thought that this was this was the end but we fought on and I was released on bail and as soon as I came out I found that this was not the end but the beginning throughout that whole year we inspired protest after protest we were arrested again and again and yet we knew that at some point we would have a breakthrough by the end of that year 2017 something incredible took place in Zimbabwe something that nobody ever dreamed would happen Robert Mugabe is own party threw him out we as the people were overjoyed we never thought that in our lifetime we could see something like this and so in the hope that our nation was receiving a chance to literally have a second birth to have a second chance we joined in we joined in a demanding that we have a fresh start we joined in demanding that we would see an end to corruption that we would see an end to injustice and an end to the violation of our democracy and our constitutional rights the military who were at the forefront of this promised us that we would have free and fair elections they promised us that we would have a prosperous nation that there would be a departure from the old ways of doing things and that Zimbabweans would be free to be able to stand up and to be able to do whatever they wanted to do in making sure that their nation went forward it is it is hard for me to describe for you in words the disappointment the disappointment that we felt when on the first of August 2018 one day after these promised elections the military was deployed on the street against protesting people who felt the election had been raped and they fired live ammunition to the crowds and killed people it was a shocking moment we couldn't believe it how did we get here we had the chance we had a moment for freedom it was taken from us this man the new president has allowed corruption in just two years to grow so fast that it has destroyed our infrastructure even further has allowed our hospitals to go without basic things like aspirin bandages and latex gloves but we learned one thing under Robert Mugabe that when you were pressed hard by a dictator you don't sit down you stand up but you keep speaking that you keep rising because the freedom we asked for is not what they give to us but it is what we have inside of us and so protest after protest we have carried on they have beaten us but we have carried on in January of 2019 this year I decided that I would make another video speaking about the hardships that our nation was facing and how it was time for the president and his government to review the corruption that they had allowed and to and to allow us the opportunity to be a free nation unfortunately I was arrested on January 16 2019 once again I was thrown into Chikurubi maximum-security prison where I spent three weeks facing a charge afresh charge of subversion and attempting to overthrow the government I cannot tell you how disappointed I was not so much because I was arrested but because the men who I was arrested with who I met in that prison had been beaten so badly their backs and their legs bled they had broken limbs because soldiers jumped on those legs until they broke I sat with my head in my hand and one prisoner I'll never forget walked up to me a man who was serving a long sentence and this is what he said to me he said to me pastor if you can ignore the high walls and the prison guards if you can ignore the chains in the many days of isolation if you can think and speak like a free man then you are freer than those who are free I walked out of that prison holding my flag and with the fresh resolution that we would continue to seek justice for our nation to allow people to exercise their constitutional right to speak as free men to protest and to challenge government because that is what we should be allowed to do you see freedom or the lack of it is is really a result of what you and I decides to do with the different situations of injustice that we are faced with we are freedom in every moment that we refuse to be silenced we are freedom in every moment that we refuse for the handcuffs to convince us that we have lost hope we are freedom in every moment that we are arrested and we leave the jails and the courts and we go right back to demanding the very thing that they arrested US for I've learned that hope is not a feeling but that it is a practice that you must walk every single day what we have given birth to over the last couple of years is not one voice it is not a van it is mounted cheese upon Mountie trees what if used to be silenced it is the voices that keep speaking and that keep picking apart the propaganda of our government it is the doctors who are on strike right now as I speak who have refused to go back to work because they don't want to watch people die because of the lack of medicines in their hospitals it never happened but today it has happened because we realize that we are freedom in the next couple of days I go back to Zimbabwe I was only allowed to leave on temporal release of my passport after my mother and my father submitted title deeds to their home as surety for my return now I do not know what the trial will hold I do not know whether we will be tried but what I do know is that freedom is not what they take away from me as punishment or what they give to me as a gift because it was never best to take in the first place but that freedom is you and freedom is me we are you know civil samurais away Zimbabwe may God bless you thank you thank you thank you [Applause]