Mike Auret

Mike Auret
Member of the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe for Harare Central
In office
2000 – 27 February 2003
Preceded byFlorence Chitauro
Succeeded byMurisi Zwizwai
Personal details
Born14 December 1936
Umtali, Southern Rhodesia (now Mutare, Zimbabwe)
Died10 April 2020(2020-04-10) (aged 83)
Cloghan, County Offaly, Republic of Ireland
Political partyMovement for Democratic Change
OccupationFarmer, politician
Military service
AllegianceFederation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Branch/serviceFederal Army
Southern Rhodesian Army
Years of service1956–1966
RankCaptain

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.