The many women who are violated in our country have duties in society. They have things they have to do and ways in which they contribute to the Zimbabwe being what is on a daily basis. Whether she is a teacher, street vendor, nurse, secretary or indeed a housewife, she is making a consistent contribution to society, regardless of whether she is paid or not.

When workers get injured either at work, or while off duty, he/she is either compensated and/or given time off to recuperate. Either way, the individual’s productivity is affected by these injuries. Why then do we not see that injuries sustained by a woman who is affected by gender based violence (GBV) affect both her physical well being as well as her ability to perform her designated duties, therefore impacting negatively on the economy?

Who does the work … while she nurses her wounds, while the police give her the run-around, while she pursues her case against a perpetrator in the courts, or when the monster has finally killed her? Who will do the work while women continue to be violated?

Society’s apathy towards the apparent increase of GBV frightens me. Maybe if we look at this issue from a purely selfish point of view, that of wanting to ensure that the economy flourishes and that business continues as usual, we might finally grasp the seriousness of the impact of GBV. Read the following article from the Herald for a more in-depth look at how GBV impacts Zimbabwe economically:

They are the mothers, teachers, cleaners, caregivers, cooks, nurses, entrepreneurs, vendors and cross-border traders. The list of women’s contribution to society and the country’s economy is endless yet in most cases unrecognised or even ignored. Worse still, their loved ones barter them.

While gender-based violence is perpetrated by both men and women, UNFPA reports that 95 percent of victims are women while 99 percent perpetrators are male. Indeed, Zimbabwe’s financial economy is dependent on women’s reproductive and care-giving work for the fitness, well-being and the very existence of the paid workforce. The economy also relies a great deal on women to pick up the pieces ignored by the paid economy. These include nursing elderly people, tutoring and childcare. The value of unpaid work is as much a part of the monetary economy as paid work. Yet precisely because it is unpaid, the work has long been overlooked and undermined in the economic equations. Sometimes women themselves ignore the fact that unpaid work is actually work.

Some of the women who are not formally employed and stay at home will say they are not employed and overlook the cleaning jobs at home. These are unpaid duties expected of them by society, nothing more.

This is due to the many years of socialisation women underwent from childhood when they would be given dolls and pots to play with while boys where given cars, toy guns and bicycles to ride.

Interestingly, when the same woman gets an office job and they hire a domestic worker, they are expected to pay the domestic worker.

Some women have dedicated their time and energy towards volunteer care work yet it is also another vital unpaid contribution women make to their communities as well as to the economy.

Volunteer work is varied and extensive and takes a lot of energy out of women who also have to go to their homes and take care of their families.

But despite all these contributions to the country’s economy, most women are subjected to all forms of gender-based violence. The Multiple Indicator Monitoring Survey of 2009 indicated that in Mashonaland Central Province some women are beaten up for simple things like burning a pot of sadza, failing to look after children, refusing to have sex, going out without telling their husbands and arguing with husbands.

Many women have lost their lives leaving behind children some as young as two months old. Some cases have gone unreported with the victims suffering in silence. Placard-holding women have marched on the streets denouncing this monster that has “feasted” on the flesh of many women.

Some members of our society have simply watched the increasing cases of GBV with apathy.

Unscrupulous people would rather report the matter in their neighbourhood to “H-Metro” as part of their entertainment, while some law enforcement agents are reportedly dismissing GBV reports by women as trivia.

Most dangerously, some people have accepted GBV, especially between married couples as a “normal” phenomenon.

This year’s commemoration of the16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence stretching from November 25 to December 10 should be a time of introspection for perpetrators of GBV, families, society, government and everyone who cares.

Perpetrators of GBV should carefully study their balance sheets and income flows and establish the economic impacts of their heinous deeds.

They should publish full statements showing how much they fork out to pay for the medical bills incurred by their maimed wives, litigation, transport on trips to hospital, airtime to seek counselling from relatives and friends.

And there is absence from the woman’s care work while she nurses wounds if not funeral costs.

The Government and the police should consider the amount of taxpayers’ money that is lost through the court processes, calculate how much money is spent to convene a full court session, paperwork, and prosecutor and judge to preside over GBV matters. What about the pressure of work added to the already overwhelmed hospital staff and equipment?

The police should realise GBV is a burden to the national fiscus and that has a direct impact on their salaries too.

Police attended to 1 940 cases in 2008, increasing to 3 193 in 2009, then skyrocketing to 7 628 in 2010. Between January and March this year, 2 536 cases have already been reported to police, a high number compared to that of last year during the same period.

The majority of the reported cases are those of physical violence but sadly most of the cases are withdrawn before going to court or in court. Any right thinking police force should be concerned about these records. So should everyone else.

Its is apparent that 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is not long enough to address GBV. However, the annual campaign serves to mobilise support for zero tolerance to GBV for the many generations to come.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991.

Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasise that such violence is a violation of human rights.

This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including November 29, International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, December 1, World Aids Day, and December 6, which marks the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.

The 16 Days Campaign has been used as an organising strategy by individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women.

If zero tolerance against GBV means zero tolerance against economic distress, then Zimbabwe should use its budget, its police force, its politics and all means necessary to stop violence against women.

Source

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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

In the past few months there seems to have been a drastic increase in media reports on gender-based violence with all manner of atrocities coming to light. We have heard reports of women being stabbed with kitchen knives, burnt with irons, and hacked with machetes.  It would seem that media coverage on GBV is on the rise. However, the media is not giving a comprehensive and gender-sensitive picture of GBV, but a sensationalized one. Pat Made of Genderlinks observed that most reporting on the issue is featured in the ‘Courts and Crime’ section of newspapers and that the issue of GBV is coming to the news agendas as events “and not as an issue that’s having a negative impact on the economic, social, and political fabric of our society.” She proceeded to say that the media “is not reporting it as a national issue, nor is it going further to put it into the context of the policy framework, and what needs to be done, in terms of the rights of women and girls. We don’t get that kind of coverage of reporting, which is more informed and helps us as citizens to be able to get a different kind of perception and conceptual way of dealing with the issue.”

Last year, Genderlinks, conducted a Gender and Media Progress Study for Zimbabwe to monitor how the different media in the country reported on and handled issues of gender. The study also included a detailed analysis of media coverage of gender-based violence in 2010, revealing that the proportion of stories on GBV were only 3% of total stories in the media in Zimbabwe, while the figures for the SADC region were not much better, at 4%. It will be interesting to see what the findings for this year’s study will reveal.

‘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