The 8th of March was International Women’s Day and this year was the 100th year since the first Women’s Day was celebrated. As women around the world gathered to celebrate, the Zimbabwe Women Writers organisation took time to mark this remarkable event under the theme, “Promoting equal access to education through literacy”. Women writers both urban and rural, ZWW board and staff, partners and sponsors of ZWW, and the guest of honor Dr Thokozile Chitepo who is the chairperson of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe graced the occasion.

The organisation also took time to celebrate its twenty years of existence. “Gazing at the Environment” was ZWW’s first publication published in 1992. Their latest publication is “The African Tea Cosy” by Violet Masilo. But even in the midst of celebrations the organisation acknowledged that there is a daunting task ahead of them. ZWW believes in women uplifting each other and rejects the pulling each down syndrome. This is evident of the anthologies the organisation publishes – without team spirit these would not have been achieved.

The Zimbabwe Women Writers also launched their Women’s Voices Project. The role of the Women’s Voices initiative will be to advocate the use of hybrid new media amongst women writers and providing a platform for them to interact. The initiative is to take a global stance, thus it will encourage cultural exchange and knowledge sharing. This project is, ‘committed to articulating women’s voices’, as held by ZWW Director Audrey Charamba.

It was uplifting to hear performance of poems by women and speeches from members of ZWW board who have been with the organisation since its inception. Women celebrated victories by singing:

Semadzimai emuZimbabwe takamirira zvakaoma
Kurema kwazvo kunoda madzimai
Azvina mhosva nyango zvorema
Takamirira zvakaoma

A rapist doesn’t have to be a stranger to be legitimate. Someone you never saw. A man with obvious problems. But if you been public with him, danced one dance, kissed him goodbye lightly with a closed mouth, pressing charges will be as hard as keeping your legs closed while five fools try and run a train on you. These men friends of ours, who smile nicely, take you out to dinner, then lock the door behind you.
- Yasmine in For Colored Girls

When people think of rape, they might think of a stranger jumping out of a shadowy place and sexually attacking a woman walking alone at night. The thought of two people who know each other, going for dinner and the male counterpart sexually attacking the female counterpart is rare for some. Rape is an act of aggression and violence so even if the two people know each other well, and even if they were intimate or had sex before, no one has the right to force a sexual act on another person against his or her will.

We have heard, seen victims and read about rape, incestuous rape, and politically motivated rape, HIV infected men raping virgins, ritualistic rape to women raping men. But the cases of date rape being reported are very few and mostly go unreported. A blind eye has been given towards this kind of rape because people simple say it was the victim’s fault. ‘What were you doing in the first place, you seduced him. Don’t worry about it. It happens you might as well continue giving it to him!’ These are the words of our best friends when we share our date rape experiences. Big girls don’t cry but honestly that is so subversive. One would rather cry and not qualify in the ‘big girls’ zone.

I want people to know that date rape can happen to anyone, no matter what age, popularity, race or income group. Date rape is rape. Victims of date rape should not feel guilty. They are victims whose bodies, rights and trusts were violated.

Given a cursory glance, The Zimbabwean‘s Voice of the Voiceless campaign appears to be a noble idea and indeed a small poll of friends confirmed it. The suffering of Zimbabweans is indisputable, poverty unemployment and an estimated 2 million people who will go hungry this year point to a failed economy and bad governance, issues that must be become part of a greater public debate.

I recall reading a study that said people have a 15 second attention span when surfing a website. It’s not surprising then that the exploitative subtext of this campaign is not easy to see:

Should the Voiceless Campaign inspire you to continue to remain informed, you can consider purchasing a subscription through this website. Alternatively, there are many organisations within Zimbabwe that are unable to access the news. Please consider the purchase of a subscription on their behalf, by using the ‘Give a Voice to the Voiceless’ tab on this page.

The Zimbabwean is seeking to increase it market share and thus it’s revenues. There is nothing wrong with this, except that Mr Mbanga seeks to turn the suffering of Zimbabweans into profit. His model is hardly new; it uses the same morally corrupt rationale as the aid industry’s illustration of Africa as pot-bellied children covered in flies, and helpless women who have been raped and battered by illiterate AK-47 wielding primates.

On a list of credible news sources, the Zimbabwean ranks lower even than the Herald. There have been countless times when I have read a story, and have been shocked and alarmed, only to remember that I live in Zimbabwe, I was there when it happened and it was nowhere near the chaotic carnage that the Zimbabwean seems to take pleasure in describing in lurid detail. That is not to say that there is no suffering in Zimbabwe, the pictures on the website are of real people. But it is a shame that they and the photographers who took them would allow their images to be manipulated for the profit of the individual who publishes and edits the paper.

In choosing to publish a newspaper Mr. Mbanga should adhere to industry standards in terms of ethics and principles, none of which he as editor and publisher of the Zimbabwean seems to be familiar with. If he wanted to do something about the situation in Zimbabwe, then he would be a man and employ journalists who are actually in Zimbabwe, he would navigate the legal quagmire and publish here. It may be difficult but it is not impossible. There is no honour in exploitation. All the Zimbabwean really does is add to the misinformation that make people believe Africa is dark continent peopled by even darker savages and that the sum of Zimbabwe, with its different peoples, languages, cultures and experiences of politics is Robert Mugabe. It is not. Like many other alleged Zimbabweans, he has chosen to abandon the struggle and throw stones from a safe distance.

True Zimbabweans who work for progress in this country fight from where they stand. The real fight is on the ground, it is in the rural areas, it is in Chiadzwa, it is in Mbare, it is in a magistrate’s court, it will never be in the safe confines of a flat or hotel in London or Johannesburg.

From PlusNews:

NAIROBI — As the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, women and girls across the globe continue to be disproportionately affected by the AIDS pandemic – HIV is the leading cause of death and disease among women of reproductive age worldwide.

IRIN/PlusNews presents five important ways to reduce women’s vulnerability to HIV:

Education: According to UNAIDS, illiterate women are four times more likely to believe there is no way to prevent HIV infection, while in Africa and Latin America, girls with higher levels of education tend to delay first sexual experience and are more likely to insist their partner use a condom. Educating girls has the added advantage of delaying their marriage and increasing their earning ability, both of which reduce their vulnerability to HIV. Educated women are also more likely to access health services for themselves and their children, and to oppose negative cultural practices such as female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Access to reproductive health services: In many developing countries, women have very limited access to vital reproductive health services. A combination of biological and social factors means women are more vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which, if left untreated, increase their vulnerability to HIV. Women living in humanitarian crises are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and require services such as free, easily available condoms and safe blood for transfusions. Improving access to reproductive health services enables women to make informed choices in determining family size and preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission.

Ending gender violence: One in three women has been beaten, experienced sexual violence or otherwise abused in their lifetime, according to the UN; one in five will be a victim of rape or attempted rape. More often than not, the perpetrators are known to the women. Practices such as early marriage, FGM/C and human trafficking all increase women’s vulnerability to HIV, but more accepted forms of violence, such as marital rape, also play a large part in increasing women’s HIV risk. According to UNAIDS, investment in HIV programming policies and addressing gender inequality and gender-based violence will help to achieve universal targets of HIV prevention, treatment and care.

Economic empowerment: In his book, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, Richard Robbins states that women do two-thirds of the world’s work but receive 10 percent of the world’s income and own just own 1 percent of the means of production. Poverty prevents poor women from controlling when sexual intercourse takes place and if a condom is used, and often forces women into risky transactional sex to feed themselves and their families. According to a 2010 US Government study, empowerment activities such as micro-finance give women access to and control over vital economic resources, ultimately enhancing their ability not only to mitigate the impact of HIV, but also to be less vulnerable to HIV.

Involving men: More often than not, men control the dynamics of how, when and where sex happens. Encouraging more men to use condoms consistently has the knock-on effect of protecting their sexual partners from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Men are less likely than women to seek health services; in the case of men involved with multiple women, this means STIs remain untreated for long periods while their female partners are also at risk of infection. Teaching boys and young men to respect women, to be more involved in family activities and to avoid negative behaviour such as gender violence and alcohol abuse helps groom a generation of men who are less likely to take risks that endanger themselves and their families.

Online at: http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92135

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
- Janis Joplin, American singer

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