What are main issues for the new Constitution? Who determines what is petty and trivial at this point in Zimbabwe? Which issue is supposed to take more weight than the other in forming our new Constitution? I have just read a blog from someone saying that homosexual and gender issues are trivial and should not be magnified as they do not have anything to do with the governance of this country.

I am not for homosexuality but I am a Christian who has been instructed to love the next person as I love myself. I do not hate homosexuals, I just do not agree with what they do and what they believe in. But I am a woman, and gender issues involve me whether I like it or not. The blogger continues to say that Constitutional campaigns have magnified these issues. My question is what campaigns are these? If you have a burning issue and you want it put under the microscope I suggest you have your own campaigns just as those people campaigning for gender are having theirs.

I will talk about what affects me here. It is very important that we deal with gender issues once and for all. Why should I keep quiet when I know that if this issue is left behind, my daughter will face the same challenges that I am facing as a woman? This is an opportunity to make a difference and I am going to grab it by the horns.

To educate you a bit my fellow blogger, gender refers to widely held beliefs, expectations, customs and practices within a society that define masculine and feminine attributes, behavior, roles and responsibilities. Now if anyone is going to be of a governing body which is going to be governing a society, don’t you think they need to have their own individual beliefs and expectations in check?

My point is this; good governance is not going to come about when people in governing spaces do not know their social standing, be they male or female. In fact good governance has got to do with gender issues for a government to work. Every person needs to know who they are, what their roles are and what they are entitled to as human beings. So I say viva to anyone who wants to magnify any issue that they feel is important to them and these issues should be dealt with, and included in the Constitution. If people want to lobby for homosexuality and gender issues let them go ahead. Better yet if there are others who want to have anti homosexual and anti gender campaigns they should also go ahead. What better way to exercise our hoped for democracy and freedom to choose who we are and what we want to be?

In Zimbabwe I recently traveled in the back of pick-up truck with several other people.  At one point the truck stopped to pick up a man along the route to town.  In his attempt to get onto the truck, he held onto a woman who was seated next to me. She protested; she did not fancy any man besides her husband holding her shoulder.

There was an angry retort from the man, who felt that the situation called for a suspension of what he termed ‘stupid and immature’ moral stands. There was a chorus of condemnation of the woman; with some saying it was the likes of her who pretended to be saintly in public, but were in reality, ‘snakes’. As much as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to rape a woman.

I was not happy with the way the helpless woman’s rights were being violated and I said as much.  It was well within the woman’s rights to choose who held her shoulder and who did not; the circumstances did not matter. She did not want her shoulder held by another man, end of story.

Why should anyone ever say, what could I have done? The doctor asked me to strip me naked, what could I have done? You could have said you are not comfortable and you will not do it. I have heard people say it is backward for a woman to demand that a female nurse examine her. Well, it is within her rights to demand that a male nurse not touch her and that a male doctor not ask her to undress. It is well within her rights to be ‘backward’.

Malaysia recently introduced women only train coaches.  Those women who are not comfortable with harassment from men can travel in peace. Those who are okay with their bottoms being slapped and obscenities shouted at them are free to travel on the regular coaches. That is what I call upholding human rights!

Why should we see abuse of human rights only in the political sense; the burning of buttocks, burning of homes and so on. If someone is made uncomfortable in any way then a human right has been violated, it does not matter how many believe otherwise. Human rights, especially women’s rights, have been trampled upon so much that rape is now considered a small infringement that should be ignored. Young girls cannot move in peace as ‘suitors’ lay ambushes for them. I know of a number of young girls who refuse to be sent to the shops. They would rather face the wrath of their parents than face the vagabonds on the way.

As long as we do not see the violation of human rights as making someone or group of people uncomfortable regardless of their numbers or how trivial we think their case is, then we are a long way off.  No one should ever say, ‘what could have done?’

‘The teacher asked me to come to the storeroom and fondled my breasts, what could I have done?’

‘The doctor inserted his fingers into my vagina, even though I did not understand that my vagina had anything to do with my headache. What could I have done?’

‘The taxi driver asked us to pile into the taxi, women on top of men, what could I have done? The situation demanded it.’

‘The police officers whipped us, despite the fact that it is taboo for a man to lay hands on a woman without her consent. What could I done, he is a police officer.’

‘The human resources manager asked me to hold the desk. What could I have done, I wanted the job desperately?’

No one should ever say, what could I have done? Because there is always a choice, always a decent and dignified way out.  I remember a case when I was growing up of a man who used his wife to pay off his gambling debt. He instructed the guy he owed money to, to go to his place and ‘have’ his wife. The wife ‘consented’. After years of abuse, she could not think of going against her husband’s wishes, but she could have. In narrating her ordeal, the refrain was, ‘What could I have done?’  She could have said no, because she was not comfortable with the whole nonsensical setup. But she did not take the dignified way out.

In our fight for human rights, we should make sure that no one ever says, ‘What could I have done?’ What could I have done is not the dignified way out.

‘Religion is the opium of the masses’ so the saying goes and it would seem for many Zimbabwean women, Christianity is not just a religion – it is also an escape route.

Attending church, following the routine and keeping religious observances have become a form of escapism for many women in the age of HIV as they try to apply biblical teachings to their marriages, relationships and lives at a time when hypocrisy has become a prevalent trend in most churches.

Considering that a great proportion of women are Christians, most of them adhering to Christian doctrines, it follows that the impact of HIV on our society must be interrogated within the confines of religious teachings and what church leaders are feeding their flock.

A year ago, the Roman Catholic Church’s Pope Benedict XVI provoked much outrage for re-affirming the papacy’s position on condom use – a position that has been widely accepted by other Christian groupings who all teach that fidelity within heterosexual marriage and abstinence are the best ways to stop AIDS.

Dismissed at the time as being ‘unrealistic and irrelevant’ the Pope’s position however reflects the dominant thinking within the Christian community in Zimbabwe and the response to HIV has been lukewarm, uninspired and in most instances impracticable, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, for married women the church prescribes fidelity and yet most married women have non-believing husbands who do not subscribe to the teachings of the church regarding fidelity and moral uprightness. This leaves the Christian women in the lurch as they cannot effectively apply Christian teachings to their personal lives without the cooperation, consent and sanction of their spouses.

Moreover, the Christian woman is not encouraged to assert any rights over her body because Christian teaching insists that she has no autonomy over her body, if it does not belong to the Lord then it belongs to her husband so using condoms is out of the question.

Needless to say, Christian women are not expected to negotiate for safer sex even in instances when they know their spouses have been unfaithful being advised by the well-meaning church leadership and counselors to ‘pray for their errant husband, fast and trust in the Lord’.

Whilst it is admirable for one to demonstrate their faith by praying for divine intervention to ensure that one does not contract HIV from an unfaithful partner with whom they go on to engage in unsafe sex with; how many Christian women find their way to an early grave as a result?

In many instances, pulpit sermons fail to address the specific needs, fears and concerns of congregants, of which women form the majority.

Women are not encouraged to actively take responsibility for protecting themselves from contracting HIV nor are they expected to demonstrate any inclination towards understanding and exercising their sexual reproductive rights.

In some instances, women who are married to dodgy religious leaders are often worse off than their congregants as they have to keep up appearances and often find no support system within the church.

The general assumption is that church leaders are beyond reproach, well they should be, but at times they too, succumb to the pesky desires of the flesh.

For most women, being cheated on is humiliating but for Christian women, the experience also casts aspersions on them as believers because people question where their God was when the hubby was romping around in the arms of another woman.

They blame themselves for not clocking in enough hours in the ‘prayer closet’ or for letting the devil in to their marriage by not fasting enough or some such nonsense failing to realize that they are victims and not the villains.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that Christian teachings often have a fall guy handy every time things go awry – quite simply, the devil takes all the blame and people just don’t take responsibility for their actions.

As a compromise, one may concede that they were ‘tempted’ and then ‘led astray’ none of which conveys any real conscience intent on the part of the individual to do wrong or make unwise and risky sexual choices.

By giving the sexual infraction, known as fornication or adultery in Christian discourses, a spiritual premise, i.e it’s the devil that caused it – the reasonable response for the average Christian woman is a spiritual one, that is, prayer and fasting to counter this spirit of adultery.

The very real threat posed by HIV is not addressed in all this spiritual abstractness.

It is possible that AIDS is one disease that has exposed the limitations of the church in so far as empowering and equipping women is concerned.

Some of the solutions women come up with are not only absurd they are really religious rhetoric emanating from reckless and overzealous pulpit outbursts.

Addressing delegates at a SAFAIDS workshop held to commemorate 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence in 2009, an exasperated Edinah Masiyiwa, the Executive Director of the Women’s Action Group (WAG), stated that some Christian doctrines were harming efforts to combat gender violence and curb the spread of HIV.

“We run all these awareness campaigns and yet it appears that things get worse instead of better. You talk of condomizing and then to your surprise you find grown women uttering silly statements like ‘ini handishandise condom nemurume wangu ndinongonamata kuti Mwari ngaave condom rangu’ (I don’t need to wear a condom because I just pray for God’s protection),” charged Miss Masiyiwa.

So while women ‘in the world’ may perceive themselves as being at risk of contracting HIV and take measures to protect themselves, the women in the church are exhorted to pray, fast and “confess the blood of Jesus” over themselves.

Based as much on patriarchal thinking as African culture, what real chance does Christianity have of offering women a refuge other than making them easier and willing victims of abuse as well as other forms of injustice while reminding them how ‘blessed” it is to be “meek”.

According to Arkmore Kori, a Kubatana subscriber, our Constitution making awareness programme is focusing on unimportant issues. He suggests that issues such as homosexuality and gender are clouding more major concerns relating to governance and leadership. Here’s his article:

Zimbabwe is being administered by an undemocratically elected government largely because of some constitutional challenges that have made elections worthless. Of course, we already know the election ‘winner’ if elections are held under the present constitution. Thus the current constitutional making process was mainly conceived to allow for free and fair elections so Zimbabweans would be governed by leaders of their choice.

Despite a lot of resources being channelled towards new constitution making, it is unfortunate that two relatively trivial issues – homosexuality and gender – which can’t retrieve us from our leadership and governance crisis, have dominated the constitutional awareness campaigns.

Although most claim homosexuality is alien to Africa, there is evidence it was practiced in Buganda (now Uganda) in the 19th century particularly by Kabaka Mwanga who assumed kingship (or Kabakaship) at the age of eighteen in 1884. This is no justification for legalising homosexuality in the new constitution because who should care what people do behind closed doors? By and large, homosexuality is a bedroom issue, which does not influence the leadership and governance in this country.

Similar concerns can also be raised on gender, which is repossessing the fame it had soon after its invention, although gender sensitive legislation such as the Domestic Violence Act have been passed. Perhaps gender activists are justified to complain about gender legislative implementation and of course, more and more women opportunities, regardless of competence. But constitutional advocacy for women’s rights have been used to shroud discussions on the main issues as if the new constitution is largely intended to address gender imbalances.

Among others, the current constitution gives the Executive too much power. This has stifled democracy, good governance and the rule of law. The President’s power to appoint the Attorney General and the Chief Justice, for example, has compromised the judiciary’s independence and consequently, election processes and outcomes.

The release of the March 2008 election results, for instance, were unlawfully and deliberately delayed. Court appeals by the opposition were ignored.  Political activists have been incarcerated and arbitrarily arrested whilst some have been tortured or murdered by known people who have never been prosecuted because the judiciary has not yet been given the instruction by its proprietor.

Similarly, one would expect discussions on the Access to Information and Privacy Act (AIPPA) to top the constitutional discussion agenda ahead of gender or homosexuality. The electronic media has been a monopoly of the ruling party, and has enabled it to spread its election propaganda at the expense of other political parties. Its polarization and the extent to which its owners dislike a new constitution have been shown by the absence of constitutional awareness information on both radio and television. If ‘station identification songs’ were composed for Fast Track Land Reform Programme and bearer cheques awareness raising, why can’t the same be done for the new constitution?

This prejudice is augmented by the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which has seen major election meetings of the opposition being indefinitely postponed or called off. Historically, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been fearless to take up such ‘sensitive’ issues. Unfortunately they are receiving binding instructions from the state controlled community entry points. Permission into communities for constitutional discussions is given on condition NGOs and communities do not talk about anything concerning the Executive’s dictatorial powers, President’s term of office; the Kariba Draft, AIPPA, and POSA. Possibly, this is why some have turned to ‘soft’ issues such as gender and homosexuality.

When I was a little girl of just four, I remember the family maid calling me to the spare bedroom to play a game with her. The game, she explained, would entail her lying down on the spring base single bed  and me jumping over her stomach.

Initially, I had concerns that such a game would cause her pain. But, in the way that only four-year olds can be convinced, she reassured me that the game would not hurt her at all and that it would instead be a good workout for her belly.

Somewhere in my mind, I can still hear the sound of those springs squealing as I jumped away to my heart’s content.

Recounting the new game to my mother that evening however,  put an end to it immediately.  It also put an abrupt end to Sisi Anna’s job.

A few months later, we heard that Anna had given birth to a healthy baby girl, thereby bringing unspeakable shame to her family who had already cast her off as a moral felon.

Her crime?

Anna was unmarried and the father of her child, who was apparently the married gardener from a few houses away, was refusing to take responsibility.

I am still filled with abhorrence at the thought of the role that Anna had wished me to play as her abortionist.

But with the passage of the years, I have grown to appreciate what levels of  desperation and despair must have led her to approach a clueless little child to assist her in finding a way out of her predicament.

Make no mistake; I don’t condone the measures that she took, especially since they involved an innocent party, myself. Rather, I am more open to understanding why she took such recourse.

Abortion is a topic that leaves a sour taste on many people’s tongues.

Walk the streets of Harare in Zimbabwe and you will come across many metallic placards featuring messages against the act, even citing biblical scripture about the detestability of murder in God’s eyes.

But just as we moralise and rationalise on end about whether or not sex work represents deviant behaviour, and whether or not it should be decriminalised, we go down the same torturous path when it comes to the abortion debate.

And the simple truth – as with sex work – is that regardless of the discourse and debates that take place, abortions continue to happen, whether sanctioned by the state, or deemed illegal.

Every day, young women all over Africa are having abortions.

According to research released by the Guttmacher Insitute last year, 5.6 million abortions were carried out in Africa in 2003. Only 100 000 of these were performed under safe conditions – that is, by individuals with the necessary skills, and in an environment that conformed to minimum medical standards.

And with only three African countries (Cape Verde, South Africa and Tunisia) giving unrestricted legal access to abortion to women, it would be safe to assume gross underreporting when it comes to figures pertaining to rates of abortion on the continent.

I’ll give a practical example of why I believe this is so.

Some years ago, when I was in university and living in a hostel, one of my hostel mates had an unsafe abortion. She told no one about it until she was forced to. Having  bled continuously for three weeks and in the process having exhausted her supply of sanitary ware at a time when this was a scarce commodity in Zimbabwe, she was forced to confide in a few of us that she needed help.

It’s not that we couldn’t tell that she was unwell. She had stopped interacting with anyone and when she surfaced in the communal bathrooms she looked wan and weak.

But finally, she decided to break her silence and share that she’d visited an old woman who’d given her a tablet to take for her ‘condition’. This tablet, my hostel mate, confided, made her uterus burn with acid pain and soon, she began to bleed.

She bled for all of a month and prohibited us from telling the matrons or even seeking medical assistance for her. All we could do was supply her with iron tablets, cotton wool and pads and eventually even mutton cloth to help her cope with the bleeding.

And that abortion, as well as many others, was not ever officially registered.

Why, you might ask, would women go to such desperate lengths to have an abortion?

For many young women, the cultural stigma of being an unwed mother is so strong that they feel they have to go to any length to avoid bringing shame and disgrace to their families in this way. A few years ago, a family friend committed suicide because her boyfriend had disowned the five-month-old foetus burgeoning within her womb. In her note to her parents she stated that it would be better that she died than bring humiliation to their Christian name.

Inherent in this cultural stigma is often the desertion of the partner or male responsible for the pregnancy, thus relegating the woman to position of a single mother.

And let’s not also forget that sometimes, a pregnancy is unexpected and unwanted and that the woman decides that she is simply not prepared for motherhood.

I doubt that this is ever an easy decision, but it is surely made more difficult not only by the lack of access to services such as hygienic abortions and counselling, but also by patriarchal hegemony that still prescribes the roles of women in society (ie. if you are unmarried you have no right to know anything about sex, let alone have a child).

Also, I am sure that the social perception of contraceptives, particularly condoms( which research has shown diminish in levels of usage as a relationship grows) plays a large role in the frequency of unprotected sexual acts, thereby putting women at risk of unplanned pregnancy as well as a host of other sexual infections.

Culture is the cohesive glue that binds communities together, but for many women, it is the hangman’s noose on which their freedoms are choked.

As I write, I wonder whatever became of Anna and her daughter; whether she grew to accept the child that separated her from her family; or whether her family ever took her back into their fold.

It is indeed a tragedy that so many women have to sacrifice one thing or the other for the sake of saving face in society.

For us, freedom and parity are still but utopian concepts.

A few years ago Kubatana started our series of Inside/Out interviews. The interviews are short and sharp and are based on a set of random questions, some flippant, like what’s in your pockets right now, to more serious stuff like, who inspires you?

Quite often people tell us that they Love these interviews because they allow for a different perspective on people; that they both amuse and give pause for reflection.

A few people that we’ve approached for an Inside/Out interview have point blank refused. Is it a case of over sized NGO egos refusing to slip their suits for awhile I’ve wondered?

In any case, our information assistant Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa recently had the pleasure of interviewing the completely fabulous and amazing Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002). Mary and six international women leaders are visiting Zimbabwe to support and strengthen women’s role in governance and in the constitutional review process.

Apparently when Mary was asked to have some fun with our Inside/Out questions she was more than willing! Here’s what Upenyu had to say about her experience of interviewing Mary:

I had heard of Mary Robinson spoken of in lofty intellectual tones, as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland and an intellectual. While conducting research in preparation for my interview, the image I had formed of a stern staid woman who took herself seriously was cemented in my mind. With her considerable academic and political achievements, I thought, how could she not be? The Mary Robinson I interviewed was none of these things. She was earnest and forthright in her answers, taking time to think carefully about what I asked her before she answered.  I found her to be warm, and a person who truly believed in what she was doing, and in the women with whom she is working. The Inside/Out interview reminded me that she was just as human as I was, sharing the same fears, like the loss of family members, as many of my other interviewees.

Kubatana will be publishing a full interview with Mary soon but in the meantime here we go Inside/Out with her.

Inside/Out with Mary Robinson
28 April 2010

Describe yourself in five words?
I am an activist.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I’ve received a lot of good advice – I didn’t always take it. I think it’s to develop my whole potential.

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done?
I once went to a party of an American friend, disguised in a wig and a big bosom. I got away with it for the whole evening.

What is your most treasured possession?
This ring that my husband gave me on our fifteenth wedding anniversary and we are now in our fortieth year. It is very old and its a flower. If you are free you have it the other way around. It dates from 1770; we were married in 1970. He’s a very sentimental man, my husband, I’m glad to say.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
I think the invisibility of people who are suffering terribly, whether they are suffering because of poverty or they are torture victims.

Do you have any strange hobbies?
I like walking; when I’m in Ireland I walk a lot in the woods around my family home.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
My hair. I don’t have good African hair; I have to keep putting curlers in it.

What is your greatest extravagance?
I’m not a great shopper, so my greatest extravagance is books. Right now I’m reading a novel about the Spanish civil war.

What have you got in your fridge?
That’s my weakness. You see it’s my husband who knows more about what’s in the fridge.

What is your greatest fear?
That something terrible could happen to an immediate member of my family. I’m a grandmother and I have four grandchildren. Family is very precious.

What have you got in your pockets right now?
Tissues.

What is your favourite journey?
Going home. Crossing Ireland to County Mayo, my mood instantly lifts. I’ve been outside Ireland now for five years in Geneva, working for the United Nations, and seven years in New York. At the end of this year I go home. I’m looking forward to that. I have very strong local agricultural reference points, and that’s very important when you’re trying to understand land issues. Being Irish I have a particular understanding of land issues because we had to fight the colonial power, which was Britain, and assert our Land Rights.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Like many people its Nelson Mandela. Being one of his Elders I’m part of a group that he brought together. He’s an extraordinary man. Archbishop Tutu is another favourite of mine. Also a lot of women that I’m encountering, including Nyaradzai, I’ve learnt so much from her.

When and where were you happiest?
I am happiest in my own home with my family.

What’s your biggest vice?
I would say the preoccupation with self. If somebody is in political life, they have an ego.

What were you like at school?
I was a tomboy with my brothers. I was very active in school; I wanted to be involved in things.

What are you doing next?
I am going back to Ireland and I will be creating a foundation on Climate Justice.