I have never been too fond of radical feminism or any form of extremism for that matter; finding it to be an aggressive, usually narrow and unhelpful approach to conflict resolution.

Radicalism is often reactionary, manifesting as a reaction to some undesired reality and is usually the preserve of those who feel they have something to defend against all costs and something to fight for against whatever odds.

As an activist, I have found that radicalism has its place, its use and its benefits in pursuing the elusive goal of attaining social justice for womankind.

Some weeks back, I read with glee, that Emilia Muchawa and a group of women had broken into song and dance protesting the negligible female representation in the constitution-making process’s committees and even had the gumption to threaten to derail the process altogether.

Now I reckon there are those who found such conduct distasteful, extreme and even uncalled for – but every once in a while, it is necessary for discontent to erupt into something more than passive resistance.

I do not know whether these women intended to make such a vocal display of their displeasure but I would like to think it was neither premeditated nor meant as a gesture of disrespect for the process – I’d like to think it was a spontaneous and extreme reaction to long suppressed frustrations that women have felt at having to be side-lined time and again in critical decision-making processes.

And I daresay, no one can argue that women’s grievances are legitimate and their frustration a natural consequence of ineffectual words never put to practice as our country has a great gender policy on paper and absolutely nothing to back it up on the ground.

The transition from theoretical gender policy frameworks to the implementation and practice of the same has yet to manifest; and while one can appreciate that it is not easy to reverse the thinking of years and that gender equity will be a process – one expects to see a degree of commitment towards living up to the words enshrined in the treaties, legislative instruments and laws which Zimbabwe has signed, ratified and enacted.

From the CEDAW to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, and other treaties focusing on the need for gender parity, Zimbabwe has made a commitment on paper that is yet to manifest in actuality; so with the imminent crafting of a new Constitution, women have every right to insist – no – to demand equal representation.

Article VI of the Global Political Agreement having stated without equivocation that the parties are, “Mindful of the need to ensure that the new Constitution deepens our democratic values and principles and the protection of the equality of all citizens, particularly the enhancement of full citizenship and equality of women,” it is only natural that a deviation from these noble goals be met with resistance, and if need be, outright mutiny.

However, cognisance must be taken of the fact that men folk have deeply internalised cultural values and have often related to women on a paternalistic level – an unfortunate consequence of being born and raised in a patriarchal society.

Having said this, I found the gesture made by Emilia Muchawa and the other women present at that gathering to be a definitive act of kicking paternalism to the curb.

Emphatically, Zimbabwean women are making a statement they have no use for paternalistic gestures; men do not ever need to make decisions (regardless of how well-meaning the intention) on behalf of women.

We can and we will speak for ourselves.

In this context, my view is that paternalism is premised on two considerations; the first being that men adopt a benevolent and ‘fatherly’ attitude towards women and by assuming this attitude they (men) then make decisions ostensibly meant to benefit women without the inclusion, consent or will of the women themselves.

So perhaps, it was with good intent that these men gathered, figuring that they would ‘know what was best for women’ and go ahead with the business of crafting the constitution without the permission, participation or involvement of women.

Inexorably, the women’s movement in this country has over the years consistently challenged and resisted patriarchal and paternalistic attitudes – suffice to say, the constitution-making process presents the most volatile battlefront yet.

I would like to make a few comments that connect to two excellent recent Kubatana blogs­the first by Amanda Atwood concerning Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill and the second by Catherine Makoni concerning the troublesome PSI research/adverts.

Both blogs effectively highlight worrying ideological agendas and human rights violating desires for control over peaceful citizens.  Moreover, both blogs increase our awareness of the negative consequences when political leaders, research projects, and TV ad executives allow fear of difference to direct the way they think and how they develop policies, design research, and disseminate information.  It is with pain in my heart that in the last few days I have been inundated with people spewing ideas predicated on fear of difference.  Just the other day I read a fear of difference article by William Lungisani Chigidi entitled Shona Taboos: The Language of Manufacturing Fears for Sustainable Development.

It is of course important to discuss taboos or what are also called avoidance rules so as to better understand some of what shapes the complex cultural, economic, health, political, judicial, and social issues and circumstances in Zimbabwe, and world over.  What shocked me and made my stomach turn is that Chigidi overtly advocates that Zimbabwean society ought to instill more fear and formally adopt more avoidance rules to ensure that citizens “appropriately” conform to a morally upright socializing process.  Chigidi writes:

For example, the avoidance rules can be employed to tackle the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  For instance, why can’t it be said that ‘If you have sex while you are still young you will suffer from chicken pox’;  ‘If you become intimate with an animal your private parts will disappear one day’; ‘If you kiss a boy/girl you will lose all your hair’; ‘If you hug a boy/girl you will be raped by a vagabond’; ‘If you become intimate with a relative you will die in your sleep’; ‘If you become intimate with another man/woman (homosexuality/lesbianism) you will be struck by lightning.’  Avoidance rules such as these, and expressed in descent Shona language of course, will invoke in the minds of the young frightening images that will scare them from improper behavior.  That could save lives.

I’m not sure I want to write a blog per se.  More I think I want to rant.  This article is one of the most unsettling things I have ever read.  How in the world can someone so overtly advocate instilling fear, in children no less?  Why in the world does someone think it makes sense to tell children flat out lies?  What would be wrong with thoughtfully engaging children, adolescents, and adults in dialogue to better understand and appreciate human diversity, while also unpacking what drives inequities and injustices in the world?  At least Chigidi’s aim is to save lives.  But, it is not fear nor fear of difference that are going to save lives.  Discussion and productively celebrating difference is what saves lives.

And finally, one last quibble about the article.  Simply to say that writing homosexuality/lesbianism is unnecessarily repetitive.  Albeit a pejorative term, homosexuality describes a sexual relationship between individuals of the same sex.  A homosexual relationship could be between men or between women.  Why use both homosexuality and lesbianism to reference the same thing?  The answer, in part, lies in the analysis that Catherine’s blog presents concerning troublesome representations of women.  In the case of unnecessarily using lesbianism when already having used homosexuality, we are looking at the opposite end of troublesome representations of women and their sexuality’s.  If women are not problematically cast, as Catherine writes, as highly sexed, morally depraved individuals, the other common casting follows the patriarchal worldview depicting women as sexually passive and meant only to serve men’s needs.  With this ill-conceived line of thinking then, the term homosexuality is perceived as unable to incorporate a female same-sex sexual relationship given that, in a patriarchal worldview, women (straight, lesbian, or bisexual) don’t choose to have sex.

Aids Free World has released their report Electing to rape: Sexual terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Based on interviews with 72 survivors and witnesses, and documentation of 380 rapes, the report describes the deliberate, systematic use of rape as a campaign tactic by Zanu PF.

According to their press release:

The testimony demonstrates that the rape campaign waged by ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe was both widespread and systematic, with recurring patterns throughout that cannot be coincidental. For example, the striking similarity of rhetoric about MDC political activity made before and during the violence; the uniform physical and emotional brutality of the rapes; the specific types of beatings and weapons on common parts of the body; the modes of detention and locations of the rapes; the circumstances and concurrent crimes as part of the broader attacks; and the consistent refusal of police to investigate and refer these cases for prosecution, taken together, demonstrate a systematic, organized campaign.

Read more here

I have been listening to, watching and reading the series of adverts by NAC, DFID, and PSI and endorsed by the Ministry of Health with concern. I am referring to the adverts dealing with the issue of small houses. At a meeting some time last year at which Wellington Mushayi from PSI presented his findings on the issue of concurrent multiple relationships, l problematised a number of their findings. I also problematised the way he presented his data. In particular l found offensive his use of the word hure in the title of their research report titled “Small House, Hure, Sugar Daddies, and Garden Boys: A Qualitative Study of Heterosexual Concurrent Partnerships Among Men and Women in Zimbabwe, 2007″.

My contention then and now is that the acceptability of the use of hure in this research was not an accident. Nor was it just a case of the researchers being objective. It reflected the patriarchal world view of the research team. I remember him justifying the use of this word on the grounds that it was merely meant to reflect what was coming out in the findings. But that does not wash. The research was done mainly in local languages. They translated the responses and they maintained the word hure even after this translation. What did they want to communicate?

Read more

Someone once asked whether I thought women could ‘ever’ be equal to men. I told them that I did not think women could ever be equal to men because as far as I was concerned women have ‘always’ been equal to men – they were just conned into thinking otherwise.

The very fact that the matter could be subject to debate, dispute and indeed controversy points to how a people can be so indoctrinated as to miss the truth that is staring right in front of them. Can there be anything more ludicrous than relegating one group of people to subservience just because they don’t happen to possess the right anatomy?

How then have we managed from one generation to the next to perpetuate, authenticate and reproduce the same patriarchal attitudes and values that disempower women and privilege men?

Even in the most glaring inequalities and the most ghastly social injustices, we are led to believe that a woman’s inferiority is a natural consequence of having been born female – that it is ordained by some deity or divinity.

So to challenge the status quo, we are forced to commit the great unforgivable sacrilege of pointing out the fact that women folk are oppressed by a system that rests solely on the idea of male supremacy. Those of us who have the temerity to point out what is so obviously wrong with the status quo are treated with hostility by the very women we would hope to liberate for even a captive starts to believe that their captivity is the will of God and having made peace with it – they become reluctant to believe anything to the contrary.

Years and years of internalizing patriarchal values have created in us a deeply ingrained belief in our own ‘inferiority’ and the spaces we have been given to occupy suddenly seem appropriate and natural to us – we feel we have no right to aspire for more.

And who is more enslaved than the person whose chains bind the mind and whose shackles tie the soul?

For the things we imbibed in our childhood become so much a part of us that to conceive of breaking them seems unnatural – yet we can never be free until we start to question, to query, to prod, to interrogate, to inquire and if need be – to challenge, to reject and even to rebel against those beliefs that would keep us caged by our anatomy.

We have believed a lie, we have lived a lie and we have fallen victim to the greatest con of all time – we have believed that our womanhood obscures our humanity. I would rather be a human being than a woman any day – because womanhood is a social construct – a figment of some man’s imagination, a prescription derived from the sexist ideology that places people’s biological make up above their humanity.

Before I toe the line – I demand to know who drew it. Before I measure myself against any yardstick – I demand to know who carved it.

Before I stop myself at any boundary – I demand to know who set it. Before I confine myself to any space – I demand to know who created it.

For if we are to be free we must know the answers to the questions and we must be the answers; for too long we have not cared to know the answers for we have not even been allowed to ask the questions.

So now we, those of us who have been told we suffer from the ailment of too much schooling, constipated and ruined by ‘excessive’ education – we who are not afraid to desecrate the shrines of silence our mothers erected – we question the status quo.

And the sound of our voices is like a thing of shame – that we should have the audacity to ask questions and the nerve to demand an answer – we are a generation hell-bent on calling culture’s bluff.

The pigeonholes of stereotype can no longer contain us; in our minds we carry the resolve that we will not be our mothers’ daughters.

For our mothers bestowed upon us so narrow a path, so limited a scope of choice and so silent a voice that we could not speak up and be heard.

We believed the myth of male superiority, bowing before the tyranny of patriarchy and accepting miseries and misfortunes with the stoicism of cows standing in the rain.

So we chose to be feminists because feminism is the radical notion that women are people too and that patriarchy is nothing more than male supremacy posturing as ‘culture’.

And in the years that have gone by we have gradually come to realize that we suffered needlessly from internalizing the doctrine of one group of people seeking to protect the privileged status quo that was their due merely by having been born male. Simply by being taught two different sets of catch phrases – we grew up marginalized, relegated and subjugated.

The oppression of women rested firmly on the greatest con there ever was – it rested on the fallacious belief that women were ‘natural’ subordinates of man and lesser beings.

We’re in the midst of the yearly 16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women. The annual event has prompted public events, film screenings and discussions across Zimbabwe, as elsewhere. Last week, 600 men marched against violence against women in an event organised by Padare, the Men’s Forum on Gender. Journalists like Charlene Smith in South Africa have used the period to highlight their own experiences and that of others. Initiatives like Take Back the Tech create an international advocacy, support and campaign forum.

All of these initiatives are useful and important. But the basic fact is that beyond the events, features and media attention that the 16 Days generates each year, violence against women remains endemic – and we remain pitifully unable to prevent it, much less to offer the support that women need after they have been through this violence.

We got this email from a subscriber today:

i am a man aged 23 and i have a passion for helping young people going though tough times. i have six people in need or urgent help. but of most importance is a girl (19) raped and destitute, very bright in school and she dropped out of school because she has no one to pay for her fees.

Every day, a single clinic in Harare treats an average of 20 children who have been abused. And yet the counselling, medical, and other support services available to help people through abuse – much less to help them get out of an abusive situation and rebuild their lives afterwards – are pitifully inadequate. If we can’t do enough to help those most in need even during the 16 Days of Activism, what about the other 349 days of the year? And how many more years of 16 Days do we need before stories like this 19-year-old’s become the exception, not the rule.