They talk of hope that the devastated country still may be able to write a home-grown constitution, which would lead to real elections and recovery from the depths that a decade of increasingly malign misrule has dug.

How can these women, together arrested more than 50 times for leading nonviolent protests against the Mugabe government, still think such things?

"Look," Williams says, flinging out her arms, "we're trying to be optimistic here!" Both women laugh.

The women were interviewed in Washington in advance of Monday night's White House ceremony in which they are to receive the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award from President Barack Obama.

The pair are co-founders of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, whose acronym WOZA forms an Ndbele word that means "come forward." Behind Williams and Mahlangu around 70,000 Zimbabweans have signed on to do that. Like the founders, many have been beaten and worse; the two leaders say more than 3,000 have been arrested for demonstrating.

An absolute for the demonstrations by Woza and its newer male counterpart, Moza, is nonviolence, the founders insist. No matter what, demonstrators are told, do not strike back.

Asked if the movement had been patterned after Mohandes Gandhi's, which ended the British Raj in India, Mahlangu said no, it was modeled on that of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Like King, Williams said, "We do it for social justice." And like King and his followers, they and theirs have paid heavily.

Williams and Mahlangu's latest struggle with Mugabe's judicial apparatus began a year ago after they were attacked and jailed for leading a sit-in to demand food for hungry Zimbabweans and a power-sharing government between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai after the octogenarian president claimed victory in what many believe was a tainted election last year.

"What Woza is doing is putting our lives on the line," Mahlangu said. The aim always is to meet violence with nonviolence, she said.

Williams and Mahlangu expect little from the Zimbabwe judicial system, although Woza and other activists often have been supported by judges who ordered them to be released. Normally the government ignores judges' writs and releases activists only when it wants to, they said.

The government's purpose for prosecuting rights demonstrators is not for the public good, Williams said: "In Zimbabwe, prosecution is for persecution."

An Amnesty International researcher in London accused the Zimbabwean governemnt of "using detention to frustrate the work of human rights defenders."

The government has been formed with Tsvangirai as prime minister, but Mugabe has remained the dominant figure.

Williams, 47, is the granddaughter of an Irish Republican Army fighter who gravitated to Zimbabwe back when it was British-ruled Rhodesia and became the common-law husband of Ndebele tribeswoman Bahlezi Moyo, Williams' grandmother. She is the wife of an electrician and mother of three grown children, all of whom are living in Britain.

Mahlangu is 35 and a one-time sports administrator in her native Matebeleland, the home of the Ndebele. She is smaller and more soft-spoken than her ebulient colleague.

The women formed their organization on Valentine's Day in 2002, after Mugabe claimed victory in an election that many considered fraudulent.

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights is not the first organization to honor Woza and the women who formed it. Among others that have are Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, which awarded Williams an International Woman of Courage award in 2007.