In an article titled Thoughts on Gender based violence and international development Pamela Scully writes:

We need a far more expansive understanding of gender-based violence as a category of analysis. We need to move beyond seeing women as victims and men as rapists. A more nuanced definition would see the ways that men are forced into particular roles either as rapists or as victims themselves of sexual violence.

In addition, we have to query the solutions that the international development community is currently using to try to end GBV. I worry that we focus so much on the state. The models of intervention, of what makes a good society, emerge from places where the state largely works. Yet the state is in basic collapse in the kinds of conflict and post conflict settings that are receiving much attention for the problem of sexual violence. We need to look to local institutions such as women’s societies, religious communities, consumer cooperatives, and traditional councils far more than is currently done as staging places for dialogues about ending sexual violence.

Pamela Scully is a professor of women’s studies and African studies at Emory who teaches courses on feminist theory, sexuality and genocide, and post conflict societies in Africa. Scully is the author of books on race, sexuality, and colonial cultures. You can read the full article here

Today’s Newsday reports the story of a 20 year old teacher, Fanuel Dube, who ‘proposed love’ to his fifteen year old pupil and impregnated her.

The reporter writes:

In his defence, Dube claimed that though he knew the girl was still doing primary level of education, he believed she was grown up due to her big frame and big breasts.

Judging from the sentence for what is statutory rape, Filabusi magistrate Shillah Nazombe, must have been sympathetic to the poor man’s plight. After all, it must take superhuman strength to resist the pert breasts and firm buttocks of an underage girl. The man was given a 20 month sentence, 6 months of which were suspended for five years on condition of good behaviour, and the remaining 14 months were commuted to 490 hours of community service where no doubt there will be other mature looking underage girls.

Fanuel Dube’s case is not unique. Several studies and reports conducted by the Girl Child Network, USAID and other organisations observe that sexual exploitation of girls aged between 9 and 16 is rife in the education sector. The studies found that the perpetrators were most often young male teachers aged below thirty with less than five years of teaching experience.

‘Arepa ngachekwe! (Rapists must be castrated!)’

Hundreds of women marched from Harare Town House to the Gardens on Friday, chanting, demanding that various authorities put a stop to the sexual violence perpetrated against women and children.

During the proceedings at Harare Gardens a representative from the Family Support Trust noted that girls were being pressured into not reporting by their women family members. She related the story of a little girl who was raped by her father. She reported the incident to her mother and was taken to a police station to file charges. Unfortunately, the girl’s tete’s (paternal aunts) pressured the girl to recant her story, saying that they would have no one to provide for them, and that it was not part of Zimbabwean culture. The girl recanted her story and still lives with her father.

In another message, a ZINATHA representative stated that members of ZINATHA did not condone sexual violence against women and children, and that this was in fact contrary to Zimbabwean traditions and culture. He also demanded that those traditional healers who prescribed forced sex with children also be prosecuted along with the perpetrator.

Director of Katstwe Sistahood, Talent Jumo noted the alarming rise in rape cases over the past year. She said that it was up to women to protect themselves, their children and each other from sexual predators. Jumo also urged women to report the incidents as soon as they occurred.

We asked several women what they hoped the march would achieve. Here are some of their responses:

Ini ndinofunga kuti march iyi ichachinja unhu wevanhu muno muZimbabwe. Ivo vanoda kurepa, kana vanorepa vakadzi vavo, vachivamanikidza kurara navo ivo vasingade. Kunyanaya kuvarume uku vachatitarisawao sevanhu, hatisi mhuka kana kuti chii. Takangofanana navo. (I hope this march will help to change to attitudes of men who go out and rape, or men who force their wives into having sex. I hope men will begin to see women as people, we are not just animals that they can use for sex.) Listen

Ita zvhinu zvinhu zvino enderana nemunwe wako waunenge uchidanana naye. Kana ndichinzwa kudawo ini zvinongo nakidzawo, asi ukaita zvekundi manikida, hapana zvinondi nakidza. Ava vano repa vana vadiki: tsvaka musikana. Vakazara kumabhwa varikutsvaka vanovanyenga asi havaendeko, worepa mwana mudiki. Urikudestroya life yemwana iyeye. Ngavaite kufunga kuti dai ndirini, kana mwana wangu ndinonzwa sei? ((To men) you must aim to please you partner. If she also wants to have sex then everything is fine and you will both enjoy it, but if you force her, there’s nothing for her to enjoy As for you men who rape children, there are lots of women looking for men at bars, but you don’t want that you want to rape young children. You are destroying their lives. You must ask your selves how you would feel if it was you or your child that was being raped.) Listen

Kazhinji kacho, nyaya iyi irikuti shungurudza, vana vari kurepwa vari vana vadiki. Kouya kumapurisa, vanoda chioko muhomwe, kuzvipatara, varikuti shaudha. Ma PEP (Post exposure prophylaxis) anodawo chioko muhomwe iwe usina. Saka zvinhu zviri kuti shungurudza. (This is causing us unrest. Children are being raped while they are still very young. When you got to the police they want a bribe, at the hospitals they shout at you (for being raped). Post exposure prohylaxis is only available when you bribe someone, and we have no money. These are the things we are marching about.) Listen

In an analysis titled Debating Zimbabwean-ness in Diasporic Internet forums, researchers Wendy Williams and Winston Mano explore the way in which national identity and citizenship were debated in an online discussion forum on the tabloid news site NewZimbabwe. The analysis focuses on an online discussion of Makosi Musambasi, who participated in Big Brother UK 2005, providing an interesting insight into how we as Zimbabweans construct our collective identity.

Like many Zimbabweans of my generation and more in the succeeding ones, all I wanted to do after high school was leave the country. Yet it was when I left and had experienced otherness in another country I wanted nothing more than to come back.  There is nothing that makes you feel more Zimbabwean than leaving Zimbabwe. In my time away, I spent hours on the Internet looking for anything and everything I could find that might possibly bring home to me. Including other Zimbabweans and time and time again I was disappointed. The group that was supposed to create a soft landing for fellow émigrés was mired in infighting and political struggles. Other Zimbabweans would get in touch only when they needed something.  I remember one African Union like gathering that was so overwhelmed by Nigerians that there was nowhere for them to sit. And even though there were several thousand Zimbabweans living in that city, our table for ten could hardly find three people. This is not to imply that that we are an exception among nationalities, but it is peculiar that even Zimbabweans themselves have observed that we are the least united of all the nationalities. There is not a single person living in or who has returned from the Diaspora who cannot recount at least one story of Zimbabweans being taken advantage of, excluded and sometimes even oppressed by fellow countrymen. An example is the news story of the man who was accused of selling the names of undocumented Zimbabweans to the Home Office in the UK.

The report observes that the Internet has provided a means for Zimbabweans both in and out of the country to set up a vibrant media culture, therefore a space for a more robust and inclusive debate regarding Zimbabwean-ness. It also notes that ‘[t]he discussion has shown how diasporic Zimbabwean media culture incorporated and subverted mainstream representations on the British media. The intensity and scope of the debates around the participation of a Zimbabwean nurse, Makosi Musambasi…are a good example of the mobilising aspect of national identity on the Internet.’

Disappointingly, those posting comments on the forum reject Makosi’s authenticity as a Zimbabwean because her parents were not born in the country.  Reflecting on this, Williams and Mano write:

Although Makosi had lived her whole life in Zimbabwe, forum participants excluded her from the nation in similar ways as the Zimbabwean Government sought to disenfranchise Zimbabweans of Malawian, Zambian and Mozambican descent from their citizenship. In this way highly exclusionary notions of the nation were thus reproduced on the New Zimbabwe forum.

I can see why the state chooses to broadcast propaganda, it works. And ironically it has worked on the very people who by virtue of their location outside Zimbabwe are economically if not politically opposed to the party’s authoritarian grip on everything Zimbabwean, including identity. But regardless of where they live, their political affiliation and even skin colour, for many people being Zimbabwean is no longer defined in terms of what country you were born and grew up in or common experiences. As Zimbabweans we define our Zimbabwean-ness in terms of what it is not, rather than in terms of what it is. We are just as guilty as ZANU-PF of perpetuating a nationalistic misconstruction of our common identity. Individually, we divide and create an ‘other’ based on what is perceived as mis-culture or acculturaltion. This becomes personally unacceptable, and instead of uniting and embracing the diversity within our culture we reject each other for petty small-minded reasons. It’s no wonder then that there are people in Matebeleland who believe in creating a separate Ndebele state, or that Zimbabweans of European descent are first white then Zimbabwean. In fact depending on where and how we grew up, we are all Zimbabwean second.

I am disappointed by Zimbabweans. Even as we create conversations and actions about rebuilding Zimbabwe, the same breath is used to exclude other equally capable Zimbabweans, be they ZANU-PF or MDC-x members, Diasporans, white farmers, or Angolan/Malawian/Mozambican/Zambian-Zimbabweans. Surely this is a process that will require every Zimbabwean, regardless of location, language preference, political affiliation and most especially ethnic origin.

I don’t think that when Rumbi Katedza wrote Playing Warriors she had a great message in mind. I think she simply wanted to tell a story she and the women she knew could relate to. The film is a snapshot in the lives of Nyarai (Kudzai Sevenzo), Maxi (Nothando Lobengula) and Nonto (Prudence Katomeni-Mbofana), three women in their late twenties. Maxi is an irreverent lawyer who is having an affair with a prominent politician. Nonto is the quiet friend who is about to be married and Nyarai, the central character, is a high flying career woman with a meddlesome mother.

From the beginning of the film it is obvious that Nyarai does not fit in the mould of the traditional Zimbabwean girl. The film opens with a dream sequence set in ancient Zimbabwe. A young warrior places the lion he has slain at Nyarai’s father’s feet.  He, apparently, is seeking Nyarai’s hand in marriage. Nyarai’s father looks to his wife for approval, this she gives with a smile. Everything appears as one would expect on such an occasion. The camera focuses on Nyarai’s face and the audience finds that rather than being breathless with excitement at having such gift presented for her hand, Nyarai does not look as pleased. In fact she almost looks annoyed.

Traditional Zimbabwean women are supposed to want marriage above everything else. Particularly to a man who so obviously can provide. In the film is it understandable that Nyarai will not commit to her ridiculously self absorbed toy-boy Che. Their relationship is simply about sex. It is he who needs her to survive. Nyarai’s relationship with Leslie, a well-heeled divorcée arranged for and heartily supported by her mother is far more complex. He goes to great pains to woo her, closing down a restaurant just for her and performing that rarity among Zimbabwean men, cooking her a meal. Even the audience feels that there might be a happy ending. But Leslie is merely mutton dressed as lamb. He confesses a bad relationship with his children, and gives them the kind of parenting that reduces his role in their lives to a bank account with a face.  He is arrogant, impatient and only acknowledges Nyarai’s relevance as his woman, not as her own person. This film is bold in claiming that women need more from their men than material security. Despite his money and their sexual chemistry Nyarai rejects Leslie because he doesn’t listen and therefore doesn’t understand her needs.

Nyarai’s mother, who embodies the traditional and cultural expectation placed upon young women, is perplexed by her oldest daughter’s impractical insistence on marrying only for love.

Maxi’s brazen and abrasive rejection of her burden of expectation provides an alternative angle to Nyarai’s gentle questioning. Fiercely independent, Maxi is everything a good Zimbabwean girl shouldn’t be. She smokes, she’s loud in her denouncement of traditions and cultural roles and she’s having sex with a married politician for pleasure and professional gain. But despite herself and everything she knows to be true about her lover, she falls in love with him.

In contrast to Maxi’s and to a lesser extent Nyarai’s tumultuous relationship with tradition is Nonto’s active acceptance of it. The film takes the audience through her experiences as a bride.  When she announces that she is getting married her friends question her decision not to have premarital sex and how she would cope with the disappointment should he be a bad lover. But Nonto is steadfast in her faith in her relationship, and as a born again Christian in the wisdom of her God. The film also depicts the processes involved in traditional marriages. There is a hilarious roora scene, where the groom’s munyayi (negotiator) uncomfortably pleads with Nonto’s uncles to lower the rusambo (bride price), and another showing the bridal party practising masteps (wedding dance) with a dictatorial choreographer.

On the surface Playing Warriors is a feel good chick flick. But it is also a film that documents the deeper change within Zimbabwe. It is a bold in showing independent free-thinking women who are in full-ownership of their sexuality, and demand more than material fulfilment from their relationships. It is also one of the first feature films about Zimbabwean women that does not characterise them as victims of male-driven tradition. I think the greatest lesson of the film is that it is possible for traditions and cultures to evolve, and change is not always about leaving the values that are important, such as family and community, behind.