The constitution making process is underway and it is up to you and me to make sure it addresses issues that are going to benefit generations to come. So when the COPAC people come your way be sure to express your views without fear and tell it like it is.

To all the women in this country I have a few tips I got from the Deputy Minister of Justice herself. And by the way men can also take part in asking for these things because all of us are part of the solution. She says if women asked for these 12 things to be included in the constitution then we are sure to make a difference in the Zimbabwe.

So listen up and get ideas on how to change things around in this country.

1. We must ask for a constitution that has an equality clause
2. We want equal citizenship to men
3. The constitution should make sure that women have the right to the security of her person. That sexually based violence should not be tolerated. We must have zero tolerance for any type of violence
4. In the new constitution women must not be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or the colour of their skin or anything else for that matter. No discrimination of any sort
5. We must have a constitution that subjugates customary law to human rights
6. Women should have economical, social, cultural and environmental rights
7. The constitution must have a clause that addresses a gender sensitive electoral judiciary system and a quarter of the decision-making bodies
8. Rights of children because children directly affect women and children are directly affected by women
9. There should be a gender and equal opportunities commission
10. Whatever treaties and human rights protocols that we have signed up to should be applied straight into law
11. Public finance provision must include gender budgeting

So there you have it. You know what the elders say “Okulumi ‘ndlebe ngowakho-akuruma nzeve ndewako” (forewarned is forearmed).

My aunt’s 12 year-old daughter was recently cornered in a secluded little room by the caretaker of their block of flats where they stay in Avondale. He tried to rape her. Thankfully she managed to escape unscathed, but she is still reeling from the effects of the trauma associated with that experience.

My family has gone through a frustrating episode over this and probably writing about it is my way of dealing with it. Attempted rape in my book and the book of our law is a criminal offence that is (or should be) punishable by long imprisonment. The mother reported the case to the police who at the time swiftly acted and condemned the caretaker to the cells. Less than 48 hours later, the man was back in the yard, going about his business and acting like all was normal. This was quite baffling and it soon became apparent that a few palms had probably been greased.

Realizing the danger of having this man lurking around his victim and the other children, the residents committee unanimously decided to relieve him of his duties as caretaker. But at the moment, the man is not only carrying on as if nothing has changed, he has also harassed the chairperson of the residents committee and slashed her maize crop after she served him with a letter of dismissal. He has also threatened my aunt with unspecified action. In short, the man is a dangerously loose canon and I shudder to think of what he is capable of doing. My aunt has tried going back to the police who have informed her that the assailant paid an admission of guilt fine and could not be detained outside certain ‘specific’ charges. I know it must be devastatingly traumatic for her because the man who fondled and groped her child is still around perhaps promising more, and nobody seems interested in doing anything about it, especially the police.

In a desperate move, my aunt has approached numerous local child protection organizations; a lot of whom have not been able to do anything much for her either because they claim to be overwhelmed.  While I appreciate that obtaining justice for an abused child is not an automatic process in Zimbabwe, it is still quite disheartening that none of these organizations have taken a real interest in dealing with this particular case. My relatives have literally been tossed from one organization to the other and the kid has probably suffered even more trauma from having her case rejected from all sides. Meanwhile she lives in real fear of the moron that tried to rape her.

A few weeks ago, a dejected father whose daughter was raped by a school’s grounds man attended one of our monthly thematic discussions, which focused on abuse in schools. His story was also very sad because the grounds man was being permitted to continue working as normal, lurking around all the small children as the case was still being deliberated on. The father could not obtain justice for his child too, thanks to a lot of red tape and the perennial bureaucratic processes one has to go through to get closure in such cases. His daughter was also denied a place at a nearby school in Marimba because the headmistress said she did not want any ‘problems’. I have heard of several more cases like these – where the perpetrator gets off scot free. It is sad to note that a lot of the organizations representing children’s rights in Zimbabwe are toothless bulldogs who really aren’t doing much on the ground except justifying their existence sufficiently enough to extract rent from the next donor. I know that sounds really accusatory, but people like my aunt and the man whose child was molested by a grounds man and the children themselves, are meant to be amongst the intended beneficiaries justifying the existence of such organizations and their programming.

So if organizations that purportedly work to represent children’s rights are constantly too busy and keep referring cases to each other to no avail, then I guess they are not doing enough. And I don’t know what’s even sadder – that they are too overwhelmed (which says a lot about the levels of child abuse in the country) to pay attention to some cases or that for most of them, they feel that their hands are tied and they cannot actually do much outside what our callous police dictate.

It is my hope that one day, our social services, child protection civic society and the court system may actually work and function to protection our most valuable asset as a country – the children. Probably there is a need for a coordinated response that achieves real impact among these organizations so that the constituents they serve are clear of where to go when in need. In other countries, when a child tells an adult that he or she has been sexually abused, it is taken seriously and a lot is done to protect that child from even seeing the person while the case is being investigated.

I look forward to the day when no matter how complex a case is, or how busy they are, no abused child will ever be turned away from a child protection organization.

Rural women in Zimbabwe contribute immensely to the economic development of the country through agrarian development both at subsistence and commercial levels.  Women make up the largest proportion of farm laborers and their role in utilizing land through crop production, livestock care for the sustenance of families can not be undervalued.

The recently held National Constitutional Conference on Women’s Access and Control of Land and other Natural resources was a crucial event as the majority of rural women in Zimbabwe (86%) depend on land for their livelihoods. Women from different parts of the country converged in Harare to review the current status and challenges faced by women in land ownership, access and control in Zimbabwe. The Conference agreed that Section 23 of the current Constitution needs to be repealed as it permits discriminatory customary laws that limit women’s ownership, access to and control of land.  It was also agreed that The Rural Land Act and the Agricultural Land Settlement Act must be amended to provide clear, non-discriminatory criteria for the allocation of resettlement land.

It is disappointing to note that women continue to have limited access to and control over land, a key productive resource for women’s empowerment. Despite their contribution to food security for the nation, women own fewer productive assets than their male counterparts.  As noted by the Ministry of Lands and Rural Resettlement during the conference, the majority of women with access to land do so through marriage. In communal areas, women do not own land in their own right but through their husbands. As a result of this limited ownership of land, women derive fewer benefits from proceeds of their labor and have no decision-making power in the household. In most instances, cheques for farm produce sales that are in the name of male landholders have been spent without the spouse’s involvement.

Patriarchy plays a huge role in undermining women’s rights to land and other natural resources. Men dominate land redistribution structures like land commission and committees and tend to allocate land to fellow men during land distribution exercises. There is need to revisit the key procedures in land allocation to ensure non discrimination of women.

If Zimbabwe is to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular, Goal 1, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, women’s rights to land should be prioritized. As an agro based economy, there is need to ensure equity between women and men in the allocation of productive resources. Government’s commitment should go beyond simply putting policies but monitoring how women’s ownership and control of land and other natural resources is taking place on the ground.

The women’s movement has over the years given rise to new phrases, new vocabulary and a whole gamut of realities as the goal of realizing gender parity becomes a pressing global concern – of note is the tendency to discuss and isolate what have been termed “women’s issues”.

As is the norm with words used broadly and constantly – it is assumed that women’s issues are obvious, that the phrase is self-explanatory and that anyone can deduce what is meant by “women’s issues”.

I fear in the labelling and branding of feminist concerns that there has been an unfortunate tendency to try and address issues in a vacuum i.e taking the problems women face out of their social context and classifying them outside the broader context of the world they live in.

What I am at pains to say is that what we have termed “women’s issues” are in fact ‘human’ issues – that there is no way of separating the concerns of women from the broader universal challenges faced by the societies they live in.

I am gratified by the sentiments once expressed former UN Secretary-General and 2001 Nobel Prize winner, Kofi Annan who stated that, “more countries have understood that women’s equality is the prerequisite to development.”

As Zimbabwe grapples with the many obstacles that have hindered the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals; one cannot help but wonder if perhaps the gross inequality deeply entrenched in our systems of governance and the broader social spectrum is not the root cause of this.

As a premise for my argument; the first MDG concerns the eradication of hunger and extreme poverty and if that is not a woman’s issue – I don’t know what is.

One of the phrases that have been bandied around in development circles has been the ‘feminization of poverty’ and there is little doubt that women, especially in Zimbabwe bore the brunt of the economic meltdown, hardship and hunger barely succeeding in fending for families through informal trading.

So one wonders how development issues can be separated from women’s issues, in fact come to think of it, what issues can be separated from women.

The exclusion and marginality of women in developmental issues can be traced back to the basic definition of what development is and borrowing from WikiAnswers, development means ”improvement in a country’s economic and social conditions”.

More specifically, it refers to improvements in ways of managing an area’s natural and human resources in order to create wealth and improve people’s lives. This definition is based on the more obvious distinctions in living standards between developed and less developed countries.

Therein lies the crux of the matter, in patriarchal Africa, natural resources and the creation of wealth are the preserve of men and therefore development has largely been about men and women have been dependant on men to provide solutions to the pressing problems relating to poverty, hunger and all other challenges they face.

If poverty is the deprivation of resources, capabilities or freedoms which are commonly called the dimensions or spaces of poverty; then development which relates to its eradication has a lot to do with those who are arguably most vulnerable – women.

In fact development has everything to do with women and the wide gaps in gender parity in this country are symptoms of a deeper malady and I would confidently make a wager that Zimbabwe, like many other African countries will not realize the MDGs unless they prioritize gender equity.

To emphasize my point I borrow from the World Bank report of 2003 titled, Gender Inequality and the Millennium Development Goals  which stated, “Gender inequality, which remains pervasive worldwide, tends to lower the productivity of labour and the efficiency of labour allocation in households and the economy, intensifying the unequal distribution of resources. It also contributes to the non-monetary aspects of poverty – lack of security, opportunity and empowerment – that lower the quality of life for both men and women. While women and girls bear the largest and most direct costs of these inequalities, the costs cut broadly across society, ultimately hindering development and poverty reduction.”

I have always held the conviction that gender equity will be the inevitable consequence of women’s empowerment that women’s empowerment will be the inevitable consequence of attaining education and the second Millennium Development Goal that seeks to achieve Universal Primary Education resonates with this.

Disappointingly, access to higher levels of education by girls and young women is negligible with indications showing that while 50% of young women fail to proceed with education due to financial constraints – 16% of the female student population fails to continue with their studies because they fall pregnant or get married early.

The vicious cycle of poverty thrives when the 50% of women who have no financial resources to pursue education are forced into prostitution, intergenerational sexual relationships, providing cheap labour doing menial tasks or opting to get married hoping their husbands will provide for them.

Inevitably, the 16% who fall pregnant or marry early face challenges as they often have no room to negotiate matters relating to sex, reproductive health and unwittingly, they relinquish autonomy over their bodies to their partners.

These factors make the third Millennium Development Goal all the more harder to achieve because promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women cannot be done without a holistic approach that takes cognizance of the societal, cultural and economical status quos that militate against them.

Despite the myriad treaties that Zimbabwe has signed and ratified, Zimbabwe’s Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is so low the percentages are not only laughable, they are dismally indicative of a nation gripped by the stranglehold tentacles of patriarchy.

Recently, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe challenged policymakers to recognise women’s role in economic development and move away from the patriarchal habit of looking at them as mere housewives.

Speaking at the end of the two-day National Constitutional Conference on Women and Land in Harare, DPM Khupe made the shocking revelation that women only owned 1 percent of assets in Africa despite their economic contributions.

Suffice to say, come 2015 – the Millennium Development Goals will remain an elusive pursuit as the deeply entrenched gender imbalances widen the chasm between theories on gender equity and policy implementation on gender parity.

So development is just another tagline on the long list of “women’s issues”.

The constant hoopla around Zuma’s polygamy really is getting exhausting; with journos shifting attention to what he is up to each time they are suffering the diary draught. It has become nothing short of selling tabloid headlines. Can’t they get it through their thick heads? The man said it loud and clear – much to the indignation of feminists and gender activists – it is his (Zulu) culture, and the problem with most of us is indeed “thinking that our cultures are far more superior to those of others”. What Zuma is doing is to be expected, those are some of the hazards of having a clown for a president.

My bone of contention is; are the women involved in all this being oppressed? Have any of them been forced into marriage by this lunatic? Are not the majority of them young, pretty and educated but found jostling amongst themselves to be the next best lady? Do they not make public appearances next to the imposing Zulu President all smiley and beaming with self-importance and contentment?  Why are they being made to look like the victims? I mean so what if he has just fathered his 20th child and married his umpteenth wife? Though old-fashioned, the man can afford it for Pete’s sake and it is clearly not illegal in his country? In any case, those children are lucky at all to be born of the President of the most powerful country in Sub Saharan Africa.

I agree the man has a strangely colossal libido, is possibly a paraphiliac, a fool and whatever else the media choose to label him, but I think the fascination with Zuma’s polygamy deserves nothing more than the attention of National Geographic to ‘Africa’s Strangest’. The media are having a field day and the feminists have developed a serious bone to chew, yet the Swazi King Mswati leaves the most polygamous green with envy and for him, marrying is an annual exploit. His father before him had 70 wives by the time of his death too.

If anything, the only sad thing I find about Zuma’s actions is the fact that he claims he loves all his women equally. I feel a certain amount of pity for his first wife, the rotund (read solid) MaKhumalo – who clearly looked unhappy alongside her husband during his inauguration as President of South Africa. It is common knowledge that this woman rarely appears in public, let alone at the arm of her husband. One could almost guess what was going through her mind – probably that her being taken along for this auspicious occasion was just for show: Zuma, the family man who respects his first wife. God only knows he would have preferred to make that grand appearance with one of the younger ‘trophies’ as the young men here would say it.

This – my colleagues is the battle of the ” Desperate First Wives”, and they are all vying for the title of first lady. From the South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to the youngest (and currently prettiest) wife Nompumelelo Ntuli, I can tell you, none of then went kicking and screaming to their Umshado wesiZulu (Zulu wedding). New word on the street has it that Zuma has impreganted another youngling, and she is none other than businessman Irvin Khoza’s daughter! I daresay the media spotlight must beam on these women; they are the bigger fools for embarrassing themselves and allowing themselves to be treated in this way. Who are they, what makes them tick, what made powerful people like themselves fall for this man? Just what was it for each one of them – wealth, fame? Trust me; that would make interesting reading and ‘news’ for a change.

The way Investigative Zim sees it is that; either South Africa is reinventing the concept of political morality and public responsibility among its leaders, or something is seriously wrong with the presidency and the nation just hasn’t woken up to it yet. I shant say more.

Occasional Kubatana blogger Fungai Machirori recently posted a very interesting comment on a health listserv in response to an online conversation about who should take responsibility for HIV prevention. I kind of thought it was a no-brainer. Individuals should of course. But then again there are men involved and condoms and men in general go together like Mugabe and Democracy.

Here’s Fungai for you:

Ensuring power to every “i” Fungai Machirori

Last year, South Africa developed a remarkable graphic to accompany its World AIDS Day campaign message: a graphic consisting entirely of a myriad letter “i”s that together made up the shape of South Africa’s map.

The tagline that accompanied the graphic read “I am responsible. We are responsible. South Africa is taking responsibility.”

What each of those little “i”s stood for was a South African; an individual taking responsibility for adopting health-promoting behaviours that would ultimately yield the collective national responsibility needed for an effective response to the urgency of HIV and AIDS.

I give this example because I feel it is particularly relevant to the topic at hand – whose responsibility it is to prevent HIV.

I believe that only once every individual is able to identify himself or herself as that “i” with the highest levels of self-efficacy, or confidence in one’s own ability to take responsible action, can we realise a significant change to the emergency that is the HIV and AIDS pandemic.

Building that self-efficacy encompasses creating a range of competences, from the basic ability to understand what HIV and AIDS are, to comprehending the implications of HIV infection or re-infection, as well as the benefits of preventing such infection, all the way to being able to overcome the many barriers that may exist as impediments to positive behaviour change.

Make no mistake, this is no easy process. Because we are all individuals of differing backgrounds and circumstances, our competencies, and the rates at which these can be developed will differ.

What levels of self-efficacy will a 16-year-old girl given to her sister’s widow as a replacement wife (knowing well that her sister died of a long and mysterious illness) have to demand an HIV test even if she knows about the virus and its effects, but is bound, by family tradition, to become this man’s wife without questioning?

What self-efficacy can a baby, still in his mother’s womb, speak of if his mother never receives antenatal services and does not discover her own positive HIV status until after her baby is born and already infected?

How then do we ensure power to every “i”?

A blanket approach to HIV and AIDS programming is definitely not the right way. Insensitive messaging that fails to take into consideration that we are all at different levels of literacy, understanding and openness about the collective and individual impact of the pandemic is more detrimental than helpful as it only achieves the churning out of impersonal, and therefore, inaccessible content.

Some people still just need to hear the basics – what HIV is, how it brings on AIDS, how it is transmitted and how it is prevented.

And messages and programmes for these individuals need to be tailored in an attractive, interactive fashion that eliminates pedagogy by welcoming debate, discussion and personal negotiation.

Also, we need to stop thinking only in conventional formats because quite honestly, far too many of the information-rich booklets and CD-ROMs dished out generously by well-meaning organisations are NOT being read or utilised.

I remember looking on in horror as a neighbour used the pages of an HIV prevention book I had given him to get a fire going in his backyard.

Noticing my anguish, he apologised but told me that there was no other practical use for the book beyond the one he had found.

“Thankfully, I have toilet paper,” he joked.

I went away wondering how many other people might feel this way about Information and Education Communication (IEC) materials that they feel have no resonance with them.

We need to be doing things differently, dynamically and determinedly all the time within an environment that is constantly changing, but at the same time staying very much the same.

Also, we need to think creatively about how to overcome the many socio-cultural and economic barriers to information dissemination and knowledge assimilation; how to jump over those internal walls that cement ideas within people’s minds that saying “not yet” or demanding a condom during sex is taboo and unforgivable; how to ensure that we are catering to communities and societies and individuals at their points of need, and not at the points that we estimate on their behalf; how to be relevant.

In short, how do we ensure that when an individual makes a decision that can have an impact on the state of their health, he or she is fully equipped with the artillery of internalised practical and practicable information?

At the same time as we seek to answer this question, we must focus attention on the dire need to strengthen our HIV service delivery systems to the point where people can access the different prevention, treatment, care and support packages that they require in an efficient, effective and professional(in terms of the health service providers) manner.

Our role as programmers, advocates, researchers and role models is two-fold: firstly, we must take personal responsibility for our own behaviours ensuring that they are positive and health-promoting.

Too many jokes abound about how any workshop that involves HIV programmers and advocates degenerates, after hours, into a ‘sex shop’.

This is the unfortunate badge of embarrassment that many associate our sector with, particularly as it identifies us as obvious hypocrites who subscribe to the mantra, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Only once we are right in our own ways can we strike a cord with our audiences so that we may pass the mantle of responsibility on to them, to capacitate them to answer emphatically, whenever asked whose responsibility it is to prevent HIV, that indeed it is “i”.

Imagine if we could draw out a map, not just of South Africa, but of every nation in our region from the pledge made by every “i”, every person putting their hand up to say, “I am responsible to prevent HIV”.

This map would certainly mark the beginnings of a new Africa.