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 Home Campaigns Human Rights in Zimbabwe News
Zimbabwean Women Fighting for their Rights12 April 2006Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Still, the situation of women in the south African country is depressing. In fact, women are no better off than they were at the height of colonial oppression in the late 1970s. The society is still one in which a male chauvinist feels very much at ease.
According to Sekai Holland, a veteran leader of the independence struggle and chair of the Association of Women's Clubs: "Being Zimbabwean women and understanding the very harsh and primitive type of patriarchy we live under, we must work out how we will - as women - work to liberate ourselves and, in this process, Zimbabwean men, since patriarchy is a sickness that must be cured." In the constitution, women have equal rights with men, however according to a ruling of the Supreme Court, traditional laws supersede this principle. As a consequence, whenever customary issues are concerned, women are relegated to positions equal to the status of the junior male within the family. This has significant implications in issues such as sexual and reproductive rights, as well as matters of property, inheritance and child custody. That can even mean that a woman who has married under customary law is deprived of her power to decide how many children she wants to have or which contraceptive to use. The weak socio-cultural status of women predisposes them to being more vulnerable. According to UNICEF, gender based violence is frighteningly common in Zimbabwe. There has been a steep rise in violence against women recently, linked with the political and social crisis. As traditional practices and principles envisage the subjugation of women, it is culturally permissible for a man to physically 'discipline' his wife. Furthermore, due to the severe economic downturn in Zimbabwe, which is currently experiencing a record high unemployment rate of 80%, women are more and more becoming the breadwinners (through the informal market) while men have been forced to remain at home. This reversal of roles leads to some men venting their frustrations on women. Besides, Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world. The misguided but widespread belief in many countries that men are cured of HIV by sleeping with a virgin leads to numerous rapes of young girls or women. Most of these cases of gender-based violence are not reported and prosecuted. If the official institutions happen to know of them, they are often not taken seriously. Police still speak of them as a 'civil matter' or a 'domestic dispute'. The judgments of family courts often just end with the recommendation to the woman to 'stick it out'. Some of these women end up committing suicide as the only way out. The police force is given no extra resources to tackle this problem, so there is no specially trained gender police. There is no special legislation to protect women against violence either. Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, promised a Domestic Violence Bill last year. Zimbabwean women are still waiting for him to put this promise into action. All that is proof that the government is only paying lip service to the protection and empowerment of women. The existent gender inequality is aggravated by the spread of HIV. Women remain the most infected and affected. Take education. Before the pandemic, girls were - as in every developing country in the world - already less likely than boys to get schooling. Due to HIV, children now are being pulled out of school to care for their AIDS-stricken families. According to an UNICEF report, in Zimbabwe 70 % of these caregivers are girls. Once out of school, a young girl's vulnerability is compounded. She is cut off from the life saving information and skills, and doesn't learn to fend for herself, economically or socially. Moreover, due to the lack of sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls, they are more vulnerable to infection, within or outside the marriage. According to the Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN) women are dying prematurely of AIDS. Due to Zimbabwe's economic crisis, which leads to hyper inflation and chronic shortages of foreign currency, the prices of Anti-retrovirals - drugs to slow down the growth of the virus - have reached astronomical levels. In a country where the vast majority of women live under the poverty line, AIDS medication has thus become an unaffordable luxury. Women are not exempted from the rampant politically driven violence in Zimbabwe. Not only in their roles as politically active woman, but also as the wives or daughters of political activists, they are targeted and intimidated. There have been numerous cases of women who have been raped, beaten and assaulted. An example is WOZA. WOZA, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, is a group of human rights defenders from the women's movement. Since February 2003 WOZA activists have repeatedly been arrested by the police for taking part in peaceful demonstrations to protest against the worsening social, economic and human rights situation in the country. They have even been arrested while attending private meetings and for engaging in public prayer. WOZA activists have been verbally and physically abused in police custody and denied access to lawyers, food and water. Even babies and young children have been detained with their mothers, sometimes overnight in police cells. In February 2006 over 400 activists, some with their babies, were arrested for taking part in a peaceful protest march. They were charged under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), an internationally condemned legislation with the sole purpose of preventing gatherings critical of the government. Many of the detainees spent more than three days in custody. During detention, their lives were turned into living hell. Some of the women were forced to remove all of their underwear and threatened with rape; they were denied food and water, assaulted by booted officers, made to sleep on sewerage and human waste The economic crisis prevents Zimbabwean women satisfying their most basic needs and maintaining their dignity. Even sanitary products have become a luxury. A packet of sanitary pads costs US $10 - beyond the reach of the majority of women in a country where the average wage ranges between US $50 to 100 a month, with an unemployment rate of 80%. Therefore, women have to use unhygienic materials like old rags and even newspapers, which can have long-term effects on their reproductive health. As the country is also experiencing water shortages and problems in treating water supplies, women have difficulties cleaning the cloth and even disposing of it, particularly when at work. For women, this situation is inhuman and an affront to their dignity. The problem became so blatant, that in October 2005 the ZCTU, the Zimbabwe Trade Union Congress, launched the sanitary towel appeal in the UK and South Africa. The response to this campaign was overwhelming - from big business as well as ordinary South Africans. The government on the other hand is not only reluctant to tackle this problem, it even sabotages the attempts of aid by others. It maintains that the problem is being blown out of proportion and that the ZCTU is creating a crisis that does not exist just to seek attention. More than that, contrary to a previous promise to waive duty charges, Mugabe and his corrupt allies now even demands the sanitary towels to be quality tested before any duty exemption will be considered. Thus, the corrupt Mugabe government is trying to make gains out of donated goods, and attempting to sabotage international solidarity between women.Contact Details Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA Ph: (02) 9264 9343 Fax: (02) 9261 1118 office@apheda.org.au Human Rights in Zimbabwe News
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