Jonathan Bellamy talks with Zimbabwean Robert MacDonald

Robert: I am.

Jonathan: How, as a Christian, do you look back on what you've suffered at the hands of the hit squad, how do you focus and reconcile the experiences you've been through?

Robert: Well, it's difficult you know. But when I think of what my Lord went through for me on Calvary, that He went all the way and died for me while I was a rotten sinner, I got nothing to hate. I don't hate that man, I hate what he's doing. I pray for him that somehow he might find the saving grace of God. Because in the eyes of God there is no big sin - no small sin. Sin is sin and God loves the sinner and wants the sinner to repent. So I've got no business to hate. But I'm fighting for change. I'm telling people to become aware of the problems in Zimbabwe; the suffering, and for them to pray and try and pressurise their peers and the political systems in the West to do something concrete and active.

Jonathan: You mention how you're facing it in terms of your own history and experience, but I understand in the last couple of weeks since we put the article up on the site, you've had some more sad and terrifying developments in your own family?

Robert: Yes

Jonathan: Can you just explain what they are?

Robert: They were travelling in a mini-bus and they were stopped at a roadblock and everybody in the mini-bus was shot dead.

Jonathan: This is your sister-in-law and nephew?

Robert: That's right. You see, the soldiers haven't been paid for two years, and they pillage, they rape; they murder, they raid the farms wherever they can get a bit of food. They kill and take for themselves. You know there's no law and order left in the country anymore.

Jonathan: How did you manage to escape from Zimbabwe?

Robert: It took me a month to cross the border. I swam across the Limpopo into South Africa where I was hospitalised for six months.

Jonathan: And what about the rest of your family?

Robert: My wife and my daughter were placed under house arrest in a town called Bulawayo, and she had been beaten several times and arrested. And then just before Christmas I managed to raise a bit of funds and she escaped through the bushfelt, through the jungle, and people helped her to swim across the crocodile infested Limpopo river.

Jonathan: Wow. Robert now that you are here in the UK and you can honestly speak out much more freely. What is your focus? Obviously you are doing this interview with us, you're raising awareness. What would you want to encourage listeners in a response to what you're sharing?