[1] Williams was born in Gwanda, Zimbabwe, and was raised mainly by her mother Margaret Mary née McConville, the daughter of an Irish man who emigrated to what was then Rhodesia from County Armagh.

This soon brought Williams' company into conflict with the Mugabe due to his policy of seizing white-owned farms as a land reform measure.

[1] After Mugabe encouraged veterans to forcibly take over white-owned farms, Williams began to protest what she described as human rights abuses.

[1] In 2002, Williams became one of the founders of WOZA, a grassroots opposition movement created in response to a perceived lack of action by Zimbabwe's men against the Mugabe government.

[4] After another arrest in mid-2008, U.S. ambassador James D. McGee called for her release, describing Williams as "a prominent person whose voice should be heard" and the charges against her as a "sham".

[11] Under the umbrella of the German parliaments’ godparenthood program for human rights activists, Marina Schuster has been raising awareness for Williams' work.