WOZA has just announced the release of the four members detained over Independence weekend, following their demonstration and attempt to hand over a petition to ZESA.

According to their statement, whist in detention, these veteran activists witnessed the worst conditions they have ever found in Zimbabwe’s jails:

The four WOZA members arrested on Thursday outside ZESA headquarters, Jenni Williams, Magodonga Mahlangu, Clara Manjengwa and Celina Madukani, have finally been released from police custody after spending five nights in cells. The Attorney General’s office refused to press charges against the four women due to lack of sufficient evidence. The women did not appear in court as defence lawyer, Harrison Nkomo, spoke directly with the Attorney General’s office. Officers from the Law and Order Department at Harare Central had tried to force the women to pay ‘admission of guilt’ fines on Saturday to ‘buy’ their freedom. WOZA will now being suing the Zimbabwe Republic Police for wrongful arrest and detention.

The four women endured hellish conditions in the cells – the worst that these veteran activists who have been detained on numerous occasions have ever seen. All women require medical treatment for a rash all over their bodies and diahorrea due to the filthy conditions and flu symptoms from the cold conditions. Their bodies also ache from being forced to sit and sleep on cold concrete for six days.

The corridors and floor of the female cells were covered in urine and human faeces due to blocked toilets and only sporadic water supply. The women were also initially subjected to verbal abuse from police officers until the nonviolent activists refused to accept the abuse. By the end of their detention however, many officers were supportive. What is clear is that police officers also have to work in these inhuman and degrading conditions.

The human rights defenders can also testify to the large-scale corruption being practiced in the cells. Bribery is rife; with bribes being paid by prisoners to secure their speedy release from the horrific conditions. The sale of mbanje (marijuana) is also commonplace.

WOZA is relieved that the four women have finally been released and would like to thank all friends and supporters that phoned the police station or communicated their support. Jenni, Magodonga, Clara and Celina appreciate the solidarity. Nonetheless, WOZA would also like to express outrage at their detention for six days in horrendous conditions when police officers knew that there was insufficient evidence. This malicious harassment of human rights defenders is continued evidence that very little has changed in Zimbabwe despite the formation of a unity government over a year ago and the conciliatory words of the President a few days ago. The insistence of ZESA employees that the peaceful activists be arrested will also be remembered. It appears that the electricity provider would rather have its paying customers arrested than dialogue with them about their concerns. This arrogant behavior is further confirmation that ZESA is not interested in providing a service to Zimbabweans but is only interested in taking advantage of their need for a basic requirement.

A few weeks ago I got a rare opportunity to go on a field trip with an international humanitarian assistance organization working in Buhera, Murambinda. This is one place that has hit the headlines because of a measles outbreak wreaking havoc in that area. A few kilometers off the main road, health centres are accessible only by travelling along uneven dust paths that field vehicles have, over time, carved out. Travelling like this in the back of a 4X4 Landcruiser is a lot like being in an army squad-car; an experience so jarringly bumpy that by the time you reach your destination, your insides feel like they have haphazardly re-arranged themselves along your internal torso. But this is nothing compared to the kilometers that women and children in Buhera have to walk barefoot in the parched plains under the baking sun to reach the nearest health facility.

The fields are pitifully without any maize; a few sorghum stalks litter most of the space.

Day two on an active measles case finding mission, we took to the dust road on our way to Muzokomba  – one of the villages where several outbreaks had been reported. We passed an extraordinary figure of an old woman who at a distance looked like a scarecrow perched precariously on a tree. As we drew closer, I noticed that the old woman was dressed mostly in rags. She had made a makeshift shaded seat – something akin to a hammock, only not as comfortable. The makeshift shelter is called rindiro or watchtower. Her thin frame was sitting alertly upright, and cross-legged, her eyes blankly staring into the distance. Pathetic pieces of crockery lay underneath her seat, and a small pot was cooking something foul smelling a few meters away. She was watching over her meager sorghum crop, protecting it from baboons. You could literally count the number of stalks littering her small field. The field workers explained that this was common practice; villagers just have to do this or else starve.

And I thought I had problems.

Apart from watermelons, sorghum is about the only crop that thrives in the harsh Buhera climate. As we drove further, two small boys sat in their own rindiro, at a time when they should be in school. I wondered if they stood a real chance of intimidating an adult baboon…

At the end of this tour I came to the conclusion that if for any reason organizations like MSF, Goal and Red Cross offering various forms of humanitarian assistance in Buhera decided to cease operations in Murambinda today, they would be responsible for thousands of deaths in that area. I also found the devotion and hardwork of the field personnel touchingly dedicated. Active case findings mean following the grapevine for leads on where the disease is resident. It is about coaxing the largely indifferent women at the clinics for more information and leads. It is about driving for many kilometers following the leads supplied and when you find sick children, you seek permission from their guardians after which if granted, means bundling mothers and children in the back of the truck and taking them back to the nearest measles clinic.

Certain sects of the Vapostori religion are the most uncooperative. As soon as they spotted the measles medical team vehicles approaching their homesteads, women literally scurried for the hills to hide their children therein. Field workers have recently been forced to carry out physical inspections of huts and under beds as religious parents go out of their way to avoid ‘sinning’.  They have to use a variety of tactics ranging from coercion and intimidation to begging in order to obtain the cooperation of guardians to get sick children treated for measles. The team I travelled with had a directive they moved around with – which had been written by one of the chiefs, demanding that all villagers get their children immunized and treated for measles and that those refusing to do so will be committing a crime prosecutable under the law as a criminal offence. The directive also highlighted that any parent who denies a child treatment, resulting in that child’s death would be charged for murder and incarcerated.

On average, seeking permission to treat measles patients takes anything between 30minutes to an hour per household – of first making small talk, coaxing and sometimes begging. This is the kind of work that is the preserve for really patient fieldworkers. I kept thinking to myself, damn stupid people – this disease is claiming the lives of their children in droves, and yet someone has to drive all the way just make that realization apparent to them and convince them to seek treatment for their children. The dynamics of religious hegemony are something we will never understand. At one homestead, the head was adamant that no child of his would be immunized or receive ‘Western’ medical treatment. In such cases, field workers have no choice but to leave medication behind and hope against hope that the parents would administer it to their sick children. A lot of the times, teams have returned days later to check on the children and found funerals in progress. That is just the way it has been.

I managed to speak informally to some of the mothers detained at a clinic in Muzokomba, and they intimated that sometimes, they really want to seek treatment for their kids but their husbands just won’t have it. One or two were clearly not happy to be at the clinic because it went against the grain and spirit of their religion, which believes strongly that if God created people, only he should then be responsible for treating the sick among humankind. Moreover, the insurmountable distances villagers have to travel on foot to reach the nearest clinic greatly contributes to the disinclination to seek medical attention.

When the year began, two women suffered miscarriages after they were beaten up by police in the border town of Beitbridge.

They were suspected of being prostitutes, apprehended and then they were assaulted to the extent of losing the pregnancies they were carrying.

Perhaps they were prostitutes, perhaps they were not but one thing is certain – when we live in a society that insists on pushing some of its members to the margins by discriminating and stigmatizing them – it is inevitable that we increase the vulnerability of such individuals.

Their exclusion and ostracism serves no purpose other than making them easy prey for those in position of power and who would not hesitate to abuse that power.

Yet for the greater part, there is a tacit approval of these violent acts because they affirm the prejudices of our society, they are premised on the moral judgments people make about women who prostitute themselves either through overt means by selling their bodies in return for money or those who covertly prostitute themselves by acquiescing to be the mistresses of married men for economic gain.

Addressing at a two-day regional conference hosted by SAfAIDS on a series “changing the river’s flow examining the HIV/Culture confluence”, Jason Wessenaar the Project Director of Siyazi Counselling and Testing Project made the very astute observation that while culture helps us to make sense of the world around us by giving people a sense of identity and belonging, it also governs human behaviour.

So our intolerances, our prejudices and our bigotry are a reflection of our cultural beliefs and our interpretation of what is appropriate and what is unacceptable conduct.

Remarking on the limitations of culture, he pointed out that, “culture is a tool that can be used to empower or exclude, exploit and control” members of a society.

What we cannot tolerate reflects what our deep-rooted convictions and beliefs are, yet using Wessener’s observation that culture is a lens we use to view the world, as a premise, how do we then know that what we perceive as reality is in fact so and not just a consequence of the lens we are using to view it?

We push women to the margins, increase their vulnerability, ostracize them and give them an “otherness” such that they have no choice but to engage in more risky behaviour – pushed to the limits, their desperation will drive them to the extremes.

Whilst we bemoan the prevalence of small houses, of women engaging in long term relationships with married men, of men having multiple concurrent sexual relations – we need to find out why and how women avail themselves to these relationships.

One lady remarked in response to my column, “No girl grows up dreaming of one day becoming a small house, not one. But I know there are many boys who grow up dreaming of one day having a small house.” So when one would seek to interrogate what happened to that girl, who never dreamed of becoming a small house? How did she get here? What are the circumstances and situations that led her down this path?

The thing with culture is that it makes us not think about our behaviour or attitudes, it makes us not examine our beliefs, we take them for granted, we take for granted that what we think, assume of life and our perceptions of reality is accurate, altruistic and infallible.

“Culture is a lens we use to understand other people we interact with, and this often leads to us judging, imposing, discriminating and labeling,” noted Wessener.

I submit that the girl who never to be a small house, an appendage like the rose on a man’s laurel – grew up and found that she couldn’t clothe her own back, couldn’t fill her stomach, couldn’t afford a roof on her head and had no prospects whatsoever.

So she decided to pawn herself off to any man who so much as asked, married or not – where did society fail her or did she fail herself?

Did all these small houses and prostitutes fail themselves?

I think not.

I think women who are empowered make choices that are not harmful to them or that impinge on their sense of dignity.

I identify lack, as the key reason why small houses exist, why prostituting oneself becomes an option for most women. Something other than payment of lip service needs to be done to empower women, to elevate their status and to work towards addressing the gender imbalances inherent in our culture.

Whatever else society may label these women – the truth is that we as a society are all diminished by their continued humiliation or coercion along sexual lines.

As we continue to push them to the margins, we increase their vulnerability, we increase their desperation and ultimately we push them to the limits and possible over the edge.

I am sure at some point, just like me, you have been wondering if there is a women’s movement in Zimbabwe. Don’t you worry. I went to this discussion and there was a lot said about the women’s movement. Yes it does exist and it is fully functional. There is going to be a DVD that shows how the women’s movement began before independence and how it continued after independence and the issues it looked at. For example, after independence women fought against Operation Chinyavada. In 1983 women were not meant to be out doors after a certain time or they would be arrested and picked up as prostitutes. If they did not have their IDs they were just arrested. So women came together and said they wanted equal freedom to roam just as men. After that about 25 women organizations were formed addressing issues on gender, gender violence and many other issues pertinent to women. At first there was confusion between children’s issues and woman’s issues, women were placed together with children and were viewed as minors. Again women came together and said “No” we are not children. The women’s movement usually arises in response to serious dissatisfaction on the current course of public policies. If women are not happy about a certain issue they can come together and rally for that particular issue. They could be five women or more on the streets rallying and they constitute a women’s movement. In most cases if these women’s movements challenge and address issues in the government, then the movement is likely to face resistance, as it challenges the status quo. So if you have question on whether the women’s movement is effective, or what the future of the women’s movement in Zimbabwe is, you must look out for the video that is currently in the making. Hopefully all these questions will be answered and more women will be encouraged to take part in the movement and get their views heard.

There are not so many women besides Mbuya Nhenda and a few women mentioned in our history. Allow me to introduce you toVenia Magaya. This woman should not only   be put in history books but she should be given hero status in the community and the country at large. She led to the reformation of our inheritance laws that stipulated that only a male heir is entitled to his fathers property even if there is an eldest child who is a girl.

Based on our culture, the section 23 of the inheritance law says a girl child cannot inherit her father’s estate because she is a woman. Only in the absence of a male child can she be an heiress. However this section was amended after Venia lost a case against her younger brother who later sold the house thereby leaving her destitute.

Venia’s father died in 1999 and was a polygamous man with two wives of whom Venia was the eldest from the first wife and her brother the eldest from the second wife. Venia was recognized as the heiress in the community court by virtue of being the first child but the provisional court refused her the right to have her father’s estate. Yes that’s right it became a human rights issue because it was her right to be the heir.

And as such I would encourage people yet again to make sure during the constitution making process that we get to make sure that there is a clause that will say that no customary law is above a person’s human rights. This heroine died penniless and homeless. Had it not been for her to push the matter forward to the Supreme Court such loopholes in our governance structure could not have been realized and thus the inheritance law was amended from saying that only the male child is allowed to inherit.

This however is not the end of the road because section 23 still exits and is still in play today. For us to make sure it is not put into practice and better still, it does not exist, we need to make sure to include that in the constitution. What made Venia lose the case before the Supreme Court is that it looked at what the supreme law of the land says about her situation? The constitution being the supreme law did not back her up at that time because it did not have a clause that says nothing takes precedence over any human rights.

Thank you Venia for at least being instrumental to some change in women’s lives. It is up to the living woman, man and every father to make sure their daughters are not discriminated against upon their death. And I urge all to seriously consider writing up wills to ensure the future of their children.

To Venia, I salute.

Allow me to share with you a statement from one of my favourite authors, Anne Bronte, one of the first feminist writers. It reads “Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways”. Ironically the statement was scribbled in her prayer book and one would wonder how such a statement got into a prayer book.  This shows that even in those early times there were strong women who saw that there were many mistakes being made by society that needed to be changed.

Anne wrote her works in the 1840s, a period known as the Victorian era when women were so disempowered. In her novel “The Tenant Wildfell Hall”, Anne questions the societal values and beliefs that gave men so much power over women. The novel portrays Helen’s eloquent struggle for independence at a time when the law and society defined a married woman as her husband’s property. Women were married off at very tender ages to “rich” men. During this period, wealth was highly regarded and women would scramble to get married to rich men. Parents also played a major role in arranging suitors for their children. This probably is what made Anne “Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways”. Anne never married. She died at 29, already labelled a spinster. She also wrote her works under a pseudonym “Action Bell” because women were not allowed to work and her books were published after her death.

As I read through the novel. I could not help reflecting on the life we are leading these days. Is history repeating itself? Will we ever get to the stage where we can totally empower the girl child? These are some of the questions that ran through my mind.  At least we’ve passed the stage where women were not allowed to work, where women were confined to the home; a stage where women were numbered amongst men’s property. I salute women’s rights activist organizations that are working tirelessly in empowering women.

My fear though is that history might be repeating itself in another form. I get very worried with the age at which girl children are getting married. I read an article in The Herald where parents gave away a fourteen year old virgin as compensation for her older sister who gave birth just before her marriage. The suitor intended to marry the elder sister but upon discovering that she was already pregnant by another man, parents offered the younger sister as compensation. Parents have also adopted a carefree attitude towards marriage. They are accepting lobola as a “bribe”if their daughter is impregnated while she is below 16 so that they will not report the matter to the police even though the law says that having sex with a girl under the age of 16 is a crime.

Also, the topical issue these days are about some religious sects that are forcing young girls into marriage under the guise of the Holy Spirit. Are we going back to Anne’s era where girls and women are numbered among men’s property? Have we become so obsessed with marriage to the extent that we accept any suitor as long as that person is able to pay whatever bride price we ask for? Or has religion become a marriage ground where elders can just decide to offer girls to any man of their choice.