Mike Auret

Michael Theodore Hayes Auret (14 December 1936 – 10 April 2020) was a Zimbabwean farmer, politician, and activist. A devout Catholic, he served as chairman and later director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJP) from 1978 until 1999. He also served as a member of Parliament for Harare Central from 2000 to 2003, when he resigned and emigrated to Ireland.

Born in Mutare, Southern Rhodesia, and raised in the Mberengwa area, Auret came from a family of farmers. After leaving St. George's College in 1955, he served in the armies of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia for ten years. He took up cattle farming in Mberengwa from 1966 to 1978, after which he joined the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. Soon after, he received a conscription notice from the Rhodesian Security Forces and rather than enlisting, fled with his family to the United Kingdom. He returned to the independent Zimbabwe in 1980 and resumed work with the CCJP. During the 1980s, he led the organizations effort's to document and put and end to the ''Gukurahundi'' massacres, perpetrated in Matabeleland by forces directed by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe's government.

Auret left the commission in 1999 and became involved in the political opposition to Mugabe and his ruling ZANU–PF party. In 2000, he was elected to Parliament for the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change. Amid escalating political violence and reportedly due to ill health, he resigned in 2003 and emigrated, first to Cape Town, South Africa, and then to County Offaly, Ireland, where he remained until his death in 2020. Provided by Wikipedia