Veteran human rights activist Judith Todd has revealed she was raped on the orders of Robert Mugabe’s government.

Todd, the daughter of former Rhodesian prime minister Sir Garfield Todd, was one of the most active protesters against Rhodesia’s independence and subsequent apartheid-style rule.

She became a target of Mugabe’s regime after speaking out against a brutal attack on an insurrection in Matabeleland which left thousands dead.

In her new biography, Through the Darkness: A life in Zimbabwe, Todd says she was arrested by an army officer one morning and driven to a civilian complex inside the Chikurubi prison outside Harare.

“A servant let us in, not looking at us,” she writes, as quoted in The Australian.

“The (senior officer) led me into a bedroom, opened a bottle of beer for each of us, unstrapped his firearm in its holster, laid it on the bedside table next to my head and proceeded. I did not resist.”

She writes that her attacker appeared “unhappy”, and that it appeared he was under orders to rape her from the Mugabe Government.