This story is from the BBC News Website as was published on 30th March 2007. 

Courage Shumba, 30, is currently awaiting a decision from the Home Office on his application for asylum.

Here he tells how he was forced to leave his home country and seek refuge in the UK and how he feels the asylum system has, so far, failed him:

In 1999 I enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe to study law; soon after I was elected to the students’ Executive Council as Vice President.

I was the first branch chairman for the Movement for Democratic Change at the university and heavily involved with the National Constitutional Assembly.

I wasn’t a part-time political activist - I was fully involved in trying to liberate our country from the barbaric and brutal regime of Robert Mugabe.

In 2001 I was expelled from the University for political activism. I’d studied law for three years but they refused to give me my results or grant me a hearing.

I became victimised and targeted by the state system, the central intelligence organisation and the police.

On three occasions the police raided the house I was staying in with other activists, at gun point. They would blindfold us, load us into a truck and drive us to the law and order maintenance section in Harare.

They would beat us, pour water on us, make us simulate sexual positions on the floor and threaten us with death.

We couldn’t get any protection from the police because they were the ones doing it. We couldn’t get protection from the MDC because they were also victims of the system.

In 2002, two of our close comrades were murdered by the state system. Batani Hadzizi was brutally assaulted and murdered in his room at the university. And Lameck Chemvura was strangled with a shoelace before being thrown from a moving train.

There was a warrant out for my arrest and fearing for my life I went to hide with an aunt. But she was too fearful and turned me away.

A couple in the UK told me they had been following the situation in Zimbabwe and had read articles and literature on my website. They offered to assist my escape and invited me to stay with them in the UK.

However, when I arrived in England I discovered that my hosts were not a couple as had been represented in our communications, but a single elderly man.

He was expecting some way of compensating for his kindness that I was not able to provide.

He kicked me out. I was destitute. I slept on the streets of Croydon for three days.

Eventually a Zimbabwean businessman gave me a place to sleep but said he would not be able to employ me because of my status.

All the while I was thinking that the situation would get better in Zimbabwe. I was hoping to go home, finish my studies and graduate as a lawyer. But things got worse. There was infighting within the MDC itself.

I submitted my formal application for asylum, rather reluctantly, in September of 2006. I am sure that the asylum system is designed to deter people from using it.

You can wait forever; there is no feedback, no progress update. You have to go to a reporting centre or police station once or twice a week. You are fingerprinted like a criminal.

Plus, financially, you are restricted in what you can do. What kind of society can you join when you only have £30 per week to live on?

If people know that I am an asylum seeker they look down on me. I feel very vulnerable because I have no established right to be here. And so, you see, the whole situation is so humiliating.

I don’t know anything about what happens next. I have written to the Home Office four, five times but they do not reply to my letters. I’ve made several calls but they won’t tell me anything. I am in limbo.

The whole problem is in the delay itself because without knowing when a decision is going to be made you can’t plan your life.

Many times I’ve contemplated suicide because I feel useless and am unable to provide for my family.

My parents in Zimbabwe are wondering why they wasted their time educating me at all. They feel like I have abandoned them.

This is a continuation of the persecution I received in Zimbabwe but without the violence. It’s more of a mental torture.