Award winning Zimbabwean lawyer grabs another prize

Zimbabwean lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa is most widely recognized for her zealous defense of journalists being detained or deported by her country's government.

But it is her work defending the elementary civil and human rights of average citizens that has propelled Mtetwa for the past two decades, she said.

The acclaimed attorney is being awarded Case Western Reserve University's Inamori Ethics Prize today.

No stranger to international accolades, Mtetwa, is nonetheless humble and said she shares the honor with "all the people out there who challenge the system knowing there are consequences and yet still do it.

"I come in after they have already exercised their rights," Mtetwa said. "They are the brave ones for doing it. Without them I would have nobody to defend. I feel it is my duty to join them in the battle for basic democratic rights."

Mtetwa previously had been honored for her efforts when the Committee to Protect Journalists presented her with the Burton Benjamin award for lifetime achievement in 2008. The following year, she won the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize for her defense of human rights in Zimbabwe.

Some of Mtetwa's battles in the Zimbabwean courts have been dramatic.

Mtetwa said she 'often found herself urging people to defend their own rights for the betterment of others.

Mtetwa's principles have put her in danger in the past. She's been arrested and beaten by police on multiple occasions for her outspokenness. Her public stance on having an independent and impartial judiciary has not made arguing her cases any easier.

The mother of two said she was well primed to fight difficult battles as the eldest daughter in a large polygamous family, where she began challenging her father's authoritarian and oppressive rules at an early age.

Her defiance sometimes caused her to be beaten.

In the past few years, Mtetwa said despite being disliked, she's earned a measure of respect from many in the police forces.

Nowadays, she said they don't slam doors in her face or threaten her. They mainly comply with her requests for information and quietly ask that she keep their names out of the newspapers.

Despite the human rights climate in Zimbabwe, Mtetwa has an optimistic but realistic outlook.

When asked what future hopes she has for her country, she quickly rattled off this list: an impartial judiciary, a proper human rights commission and electoral body, a police force that understands it is not an extension of any political party and an independent attorney general.