Kevin Woods Story

Kevin Woods was sentenced to death in Zimbabwe and jailed for twenty years by Robert Mugabe. For more than five years of his detention he was held in the shadow of Mugabe’s gallows, cut off from the world, naked and in solitary confinement. He had been a senior member of Mugabe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organization, the CIO, and was jailed for committing politically motivated offences, on behalf of the white South African government, against the ANC.

From Mugabe’s confidant to condemned prisoner, he recounts his life on the edge as a double agent. He explains the desolation of being abandoned by South Africa when he was compromised and he details his fight to maintain his humanity, self-dignity and sanity in a prison system that belongs to the Middle Ages. Woods has been there and done that when it comes to stress, utter hopelessness and coping while under the most desperate conditions imaginable. His story, unlike so many others, has a happy ending with him hugging his now-adult children and meeting former President Nelson Mandela being the highlights.

“Maybe I made it through those 7,140 days and nights by fooling myself so often. Maybe it was my God. Maybe it was stubbornness and my knowledge that Mugabe and his cronies wanted nothing more than for me to die, of natural causes in that dismal place. (He couldn’t just send the goons to kill me, you see?) I did not want to give Mugabe that gratification, and that was serious motivation for me to persevere. Whatever it was, through all those years of having my hopes eroded time after time, I made it. Whether I am sane or not, I did it. We can all do it no matter how dark things get, no matter how sad, how desperate, how f**king morbid. Reach inside and strive to get through, even if it’s only ‘till tomorrow’.”