Dewa Mavhinga
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Dewa Mavhinga (1979 – 4 December 2021) was a lawyer and Southern African Director of Human Rights Watch.[1]
He died of suspected COVID-19 complications.[2]
Mavhinga attended Sandringham mission and then studied law at University of Zimbabwe (LLB) and University of Essex (LLM). In Zimbabwe, he was elected president of the Student Representative Council (SRC) and it was through his student activism that his interest in human rights deepened. For his postgraduate studies, he received a Canon Collins Trust scholarship.[3]
Career
After university, he joined the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition as a Regional Coordinator based in Johannesburg, South Africa.[4] He then co-founded the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, a public policy think-tank based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mavhinga was an on the ground human rights practitioner who spent most of his career working within communities in southern Africa in countries such as Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, and Zimbabwe as a representative of the Human Rights Watch.[5] In a short career, Mavhinga, is celebrated as one of the most tireless defenders of human rights from his generation.[6]