From Women in Law in Southern Africa … here’s a copy of an order from the High Court of Zimbabwe in a case that challenged the authority of the Registrar General to compel married women to change their surnames into those of their husbands.

The order was issued by consent but it was a declaratory order so it protects all women in similar circumstances.  Hats off to Saru Njerere of Honey and Blackenberg who represented the applicants.

In the continued fight against HIVAIDS, Zimbabwe, through the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare and Population Services International (PSI) have set a goal of circumcising 1.2 million men by 2015. Since the launch of PSI’s, GetSmart or Pinda Musmart male circumcision campaign in 2010, about 40,000 men have gone under the knife. Other countries are following Zimbabwe’s example and getting behind the male circumcision, in fighting HIV. Rwanda is another country that has most recently jumped on the male-circumcision bandwagon, and they have done so in a most innovative manner.

Rwanda is introducing a painless, non-surgical circumcision that causes no bleeding!

Read more below:

Circumcision has been shown to lower the risk of HIV transmission and infection in Africa. Now, a new device known as the PrePex enables circumcision to be performed without surgery or any blood loss, by nurses, who don’t need extensive training to use the apparatus.

The Rwandan Government has completed its third trial of PrePex with nearly 600 volunteers and has concluded the device is a safe and efficient way of performing circumcisions. It now aims to reduce new HIV infections by fifty percent, in part through a campaign to circumcise two million adult men over the next two years.

The results were presented at the 16th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) in Africa (ICASA).

Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS said:

“Innovation is key to achieving our target of 20 million voluntary adult male circumcisions by 2015 and saving millions of lives. Devices such as PrePex have the potential to facilitate safe and rapid scale up of male circumcision for HIV prevention, an urgent need in Sub Saharan Africa.

We commend the government of Rwanda for progressing the science of HIV prevention for the benefit of the region.”

An evaluation from the World Health Organization said the study of the PrePex device provides further clinical evidence that circumcision performed by nurses when using the PrePex device is fast, safe and effective, enabling a bloodless procedure that requires no injected anesthesia, no sutures and no sterile settings.

Agnes Binagwaho, MD, M(Ped) PhD hc, The Minister of Health of Rwanda said:

“We are unwilling to allow our health system resource challenges to dissuade us from our mission: to create a healthier, HIV-free Rwanda. We are committed to finding innovative, safe and effective solutions to make this happen …

This study shows that with the non-surgical PrePex device we can safely task-shift circumcision from surgeons and family physicians to nurses, which if nationally scaled up, would make a significant contribution to our public health system.”

Controversy regarding circumcision and HIV risk
There has been some controversy regarding the effectiveness of circumcision to prevent the spead of the HIV virus. Circumcision rates are far higher in the United States than in Western Europe, yet HIV cases remain stubbornly higher in the US and W. Europe, contrary to what might be expected if circumcision is so effective.

While many doctors are in agreement as to its effectiveness in Africa, the topic has its detractors that range from those demanding more research and scientific proof, some who point to contradictory findings from several studies, to wild conspiracy theories.

How does the device work?
The device basically works by stopping the flow of blood to the foreskin. It remains in situ for a week, after which time it is removed along with the foreskin that has died due to lack of circulation.

The average time for installation of the device is less than three minutes, with the advantage that it doesn’t involve surgery or cause blood loss, and thus can be performed by nurses.

The device and procedure, which can be performed in a regular doctor’s consulting room has an AE rate of 0.34% (2 out of 590), and the total study adverse event (AE) rate when performed by nurses was 0.83%. All resolved with minimal intervention, and the AE rate was lower than previously reported AE rates for surgical male circumcision when performed by surgeons (4.8%).

In Rwanda there are only 300 trained physicians for around 10 million people, and nearly 90 percent of the population live in rural areas that lack sterile facilities.

Analysis shows that scaling up circumcision via surgical procedures would drain resources from surgeons who work in vital life saving areas, not to mention the likely resistance from the local population.

The study was approved by the Rwanda National Ethics Committee and was conducted in Kanombe Hospital, Kigali Rwanda, between July 2011 and October 2011.

Source

Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe director Andy Moyse was released yesterday after questioning. But according to the latest update from MMPZ, its staffers, arrested Monday, in Gwanda in connection with a public meeting, are likely to remain in custody at least until Friday.

In a further update on the case, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights reports:

MMPZ employees condemed to prison

TWO Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) employees, Fadzai December and Molly Chimhanda and MMPZ member, Gilbert Mabusa will spend the next two nights in prison after Gwanda Magistrate Douglas Zvenyika on Wednesday 7 December 2011 postponed to Friday 9 December 2011, a ruling on a bail application filed by their lawyer, Kossam Ncube.

Magistrate Zvenyika postponed his ruling to Friday morning in order to consider submissions filed by Ncube, of Kossam Ncube and Partners Legal Practitioners and a board member of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights in support of bail and the opposition by the State prosecutor, Blessing Gundani.

In opposing bail Gundani argued that December, Chimhanda and Mabusa were likely to interfere with State witnesses because they have links to some of them.

The prosecutor claimed that the MMPZ project officers and Mabusa were facing a serious offence with prospects of imprisonment which they are likely to flee from because they are young with no links to the country.

Gundani claimed that releasing December, Chimhanda and Mabusa would be inappropriate as the police were still conducting investigations and that there are some more compact discs of a similar nature that they want to recover from Harare.

The prosecutor also indicated that the police want to recover the equipment used to produce the compact discs and verify the residential addresses that were given by December, Chimhanda and Mabusa. Gundani claimed that the compact discs contain material that is insulting to some “particular individuals” and are “very sensitive to the extent that the matter had ruffled a lot of feathers.”

December, Chimhanda and Mabusa were arrested on Monday 5 December 2011 after they attended at Gwanda Police Station. Their attendance to the police station followed requests by Gwanda police officers that they should visit Gwanda Police station for questioning relating to a workshop conducted in the area in November.

December, Chimhanda and Mabusa were charged with contravening section 25(1) (b) of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), for allegedly ‘participating in a gathering without seeking authority from the regulating authority’ and also for allegedly contravening section 37(1) (b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, by ‘distributing material that is likely to provoke a breach of peace’.

On Tuesday 6 December 2011 police in Harare raided and picked up MMPZ Project Coordinator, Andrew Moyse for allegedly possessing some materials on Gukurahundi and confiscated some Digital Video Disc (DVD)’s from the organisation’s offices. They later released him after going through an interrogation session which lasted several hours.

This morning MMPZ staffers were brought before Gwanda magistrate Mr Douglas Zvenyika. Mr Kossam Ncube appeared on behalf of accused persons whilst the prosecution was represented by Blessing Gundani. After hearing arguments by both counsel judgment was reserved until Friday morning when the magistrate will deliver his ruling on the bail application. The state opposed bail on the grounds that:

• Accused persons were likely to interfere with witnesses;
• Fadzai and Moly are still of a young and impressionable age and therefore likely to flee given the publicity the matter has generated in and outside Zimbabwe and the gravity of the offense they are facing;
• The case is of a sensitive nature;
• Investigations are still ongoing and Gwanda police is yet to collect DVD exhibits and the equipment used in the production of the DVDs

In a further update on the case, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) reports:

MMPZ employees condemed to prison

Two Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) employees, Fadzai December and Molly Chimhanda and MMPZ member, Gilbert Mabusa will spend the next two nights in prison after Gwanda Magistrate Douglas Zvenyika on Wednesday 7 December 2011 postponed to Friday 9 December 2011, a ruling on a bail application filed by their lawyer, Kossam Ncube.

Magistrate Zvenyika postponed his ruling to Friday morning in order to consider submissions filed by Ncube, of Kossam Ncube and Partners Legal Practitioners and a board member of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights in support of bail and the opposition by the State prosecutor, Blessing Gundani.

In opposing bail Gundani argued that December, Chimhanda and Mabusa were likely to interfere with State witnesses because they have links to some of them.

The prosecutor claimed that the MMPZ project officers and Mabusa were facing a serious offence with prospects of imprisonment which they are likely to flee from because they are young with no links to the country.

Gundani claimed that releasing December, Chimhanda and Mabusa would be inappropriate as the police were still conducting investigations and that there are some more compact discs of a similar nature that they want to recover from Harare.

The prosecutor also indicated that the police want to recover the equipment used to produce the compact discs and verify the residential addresses that were given by December, Chimhanda and Mabusa. Gundani claimed that the compact discs contain material that is insulting to some “particular individuals” and are “very sensitive to the extent that the matter had ruffled a lot of feathers.”

December, Chimhanda and Mabusa were arrested on Monday 5 December 2011 after they attended at Gwanda Police Station. Their attendance to the police station followed requests by Gwanda police officers that they should visit Gwanda Police station for questioning relating to a workshop conducted in the area in November.

December, Chimhanda and Mabusa were charged with contravening section 25(1) (b) of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), for allegedly ‘participating in a gathering without seeking authority from the regulating authority’ and also for allegedly contravening section 37(1) (b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, by ‘distributing material that is likely to provoke a breach of peace’.

On Tuesday 6 December 2011 police in Harare raided and picked up MMPZ Project Coordinator, Andrew Moyse for allegedly possessing some materials on Gukurahundi and confiscated some Digital Video Disc (DVD)’s from the organisation’s offices. They later released him after going through an interrogation session which lasted several hours.

Recently health related NGOs all over the world condemned the decision by the Global Fund to cancel Round 11 Funding and place restriction on Grant renewals.  The implications of this action are far reaching, with Jeffery Sachs, PhD – the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special advisor to Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, going so far as to say “it’s game over for the Millennium development Goals’.

Adding his voice to the condemnation of the decision was Stephen Lewis, Co-Director of AIDS Free World. His remarks at the 2011 International Conference on Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, December 6, 2011 did not pull any punches:

… if you sense a certain impatience in me, you’re right. We don’t have another day to lose. Peter Piot did the arithmetic yesterday 1,350,000 put on treatment in 2010; 2,700,000 new infections, exactly double the number in treatment in the same year. It works out to 7,397 new infections every day. And it’s 2011, for God’s sake.

But right at the moment when we know, irrefutably, that we can defeat this pandemic, we’re sucker-punched at the Global Fund.

What’s a sucker punch? It’s when a boxer in the ring gets a punch below the belt that he doesn’t see coming. No one expected a complete cancellation of Round Eleven, with new money unavailable for implementation until 2014.

It’s just the latest blow in a long list of betrayals on the part of the donor countries; in this instance the Europeans in particular. I’ve heard from several people that the politics of the Global Fund meeting in Accra two weeks ago, when the decision was made, were not just complicated, but amounted to miserable internecine warfare. Certain governments on the Board of the Global Fund simply discredited themselves. They give a soiled name to the principle of international solidarity [].

The decision on the part of the donor countries is unforgiveable. In a speech a few days ago, I addressed the Global Fund predicament by talking of the moral implications of a decision that you know will result in death on the African continent.

I asked: “Do they regard Africa as a territorial piece of geographic obsolescence? Do they regard Africans themselves as casually expendable? Is it because the women and children of Africa are not comparable in the eyes of western governments to the women and children of Europe and North America? Is it because Africans are black and unacknowledged racism is at play? Is it because a fighter jet is worth so much more than human lives? Is it because defense budgets are more worthy of protection in an economic downturn than millions of human beings?”

Read the full statement here

From the Parliamentary Roundup Bulletin No. 41 – 2011 published by the Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust:

Dissolution of the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) Board

Hon. Settlement Chikwinya gave notice to introduce a motion in the House of Assembly calling for the dissolution of the BAZ Board and the cancellation of the radio licences that it recently awarded to Zimpapers talk Radio and AB Communications. He said the BAZ Board was improperly constituted and ultra vires the Broadcasting Services Amendment Act (2007) which provides for the appointment of BAZ Board by the President in consultation with the parliamentary Standing Rules and Orders Committee (SROC). However, the current BAZ Board was unilaterally appointed by the Minster of Media, Information and Publicity, Hon. Webster Shamu.

Okay. So everyone knows that buying day-old chicks, feeding them up, and selling them once they’re big puts money in your pocket. So clearly, that’s not the kind of chick the “Truly Zimbabwean” company Lunar Chickens is talking about here.

Rather, my inference from this recent newspaper advert is that “chicks” (read women, wives, small houses, girl friends, etc) take money from your pocket, unlike these day-old chicks.  I contacted Lunar Chickens on Monday asking them to clarify, but I have yet to hear back from them.

Okay, so I’m sensitive. And sure, I can see the humour they’re going for. But Zimbabwe has enough problems with sexism. This really isn’t the kind of advert we need doing the rounds – during 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, or any other time.

I expect better from Lunar Chickens, and from Barkers Ogilvy, the agency behind this advert.