An unlikely pastor has been thrust into the forefront as a key societal leader against President Robert Mugabe’s longtime authoritarian rule.
Evan Mawarire, 39, an evangelical priest, was arrested and detained in June after a video he had posted the year before sparked a social movement calling for an end to government corruption and Mugabe’s ironclad 28-year-long rule.
After posting the video in April 2015, which showed him wrapped in a Zimbabwean flag and arguing that the country needed change, it went viral online and sparked dozens of protests in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare. The movement came to be known as #ThisFlag.
