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Transcript of "Hotseat"- SW Radio Africa talking to Zimbabwean women activists & opposition leaders
Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa
August 29, 2006

Read Part two: Transcript of "Hotseat"

Violet: We welcome Zimbabwean women’s activist and former Chairperson of the National Constitutional Assembly, Thoko Matshe; Deputy Secretary General of the Mutambara MDC Priscilla Misihairambwi Mushonga; Secretary for Policy and Research Sekai Holland from the Tsvangirai MDC and Jenni Williams the Co-ordinator of the pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). We welcome you all on the programme ‘Hot Seat’.

Now, the International Crisis Group released a report stating that, to avoid an explosion in Zimbabwe that could cost thousands of lives and shatter Southern Africa, the opposition may need to launch a risky strategy of nationwide non-violent protests. Now, the Think-Tank said if the political opposition and civil society manage to use the general dissatisfaction in the country effectively, they may become the spark that finally sets Zimbabwe towards the road to change. Now, our discussion today will centre on this issue. So, first I’ll go to Priscilla. It’s been said that the chance for change is in our hands as Zimbabwean people, so change must come from our hands. Now, what’s the state of preparedness or preparations for mass action in Zimbabwe right now?

Priscilla: Well, it’s difficult to indicate whether people are prepared to go into the streets or not. What we know is that people are very angry; we know that things are quite difficult; but whether that translates into getting people in the streets is something else. A lot more work would have to be done; a lot more planning, a lot more co-ordination between the progressive forces would need to be organised for us to launch a successful mass protest.

Violet: Now, Amai Holland, your party has been consulting with the masses since last year. Why is it taking so long to mobilise people and what are the problems that are preventing mass action from taking off?

Sekai: Actually Violet I want to say something about the media in Africa. When you are cooking a pot for a wedding - you are an African woman - and, people keep saying to you ‘You! When is this going to be ready for us? You! You! You!’ Eh, in Zimbabwe, people went to war for sixteen years; independence was won. Why are we suddenly getting this whole thing from the press of when people are going to be ready? People are consulting when people are going to be ready. Consulting has different stages, and during those stages you have set-backs, you have progress that you make. I want to salute the people of Zimbabwe that the process we are on, as far as I can see myself, is on course. Because, as Zimbabweans try to get things right, we have too many intervening variables which actually keep distracting people out of the correct way. So, when you ask me ‘why is it taking so long’, things which have got results that are actually positive in life, those things actually take time, and they take a long time because you have to actually get to everybody. You have to have consensus; consensus building and then you have to find your way together as a people. And, that’s what Zimbabweans are doing, whatever it may look like to other people.

Violet: With all due respect Amai Holland, some may say this is just the usual rhetoric over the issue of mass action. ‘How do you postpone an exam date because you are still preparing’ others would ask. You know, how many lives must be lost?

Sekai: No body has postponed anything at all, nobody has postponed.

Violet: So why is it still taking so long because people have been hearing the issue of mass action since the opposition said the elections were rigged in 2000?

Sekai: I don’t know how old you are but when the Vietnam war was on, when the struggle for Aboriginal rights was on, when the struggle for the removal of apartheid in South Africa was on, when the removal of the minority regime was on in Zimbabwe, people used to call people all sorts of names in those struggles for being slow, and really they were very insulting and very abusive. But, because the people who were involved in those struggles were focused, they knew what they were doing; you’ve got good results there which we all admire. Zimbabwe is no exception.

Violet: Jenni, what can you say about this? You know, just last week when more than 190 WOZA activists, including children, were arrested, you asked "Where the hell is the opposition?" Do you remember asking that question when we interviewed you? Now, do you agree with what Amai Holland is saying in connection with this?

Jenni: Yes I remember you putting me in the spot and demanding me an answer, which is why I gave you the one I gave. I think, for us, the bottom line as WOZA is that we do not believe mass action is a one-day event. It is a process and there we agree very much with all the political people. But, what we believe, and it has been a journey we have seen as the women of WOZA, that, if you are going to say you want to be successful you have to have confidence building activities. And, we don’t have a lot of confidence in the fact that mass action is definitely on the agenda and being planned when we do not see those confidence building measures and also when we do not see a real consultative process at grass roots level because we know, if those processes were being done by the political parties, that we would, ourselves, be recipients of some of that consultation, and we are very surprised that we have never been. So, I think, for us, we are still seeing it as rhetoric and we haven’t seen the confidence building measures, and we haven’t seen the community based mobilisation which is vital if there is going to be any mass action.

Violet: What about your own strategy where you have taken to the streets and you have been promptly arrested? Is it working? Do you see this as working?

Jenni: It’s an incredible thing, yes. But our activists understand and because we go through a lot of training exercises consultations and meetings, they understand that if they are to be successful, they have to put pressure. And, if they are going to put pressure, there is going to be a consequence of that pressure, and the arrests is the consequence of that pressure and the fact that when we find police wanting to just arrest five or six people and they fail miserably to do so because hundreds of people are willing to be arrested, then we know that people have understood the mentality of that pressure. And, more so, our activists have understood that if they are going to pull the pillars of the dictator’s support away from supporting him and holding him in position as a dictator, that they have to be able to go into the police stations, to go into those spheres of his influence and be able to persuade people on to their side, and that is the work that we do when we are in custody.

Violet: And Thoko, what are your thoughts on all this? Do you think there is a need for some change in structure and strategy and what will it take to shake people into action?

Thoko: For me I think there is a need for the average Zimbabwean in the street to be more involved than they are involved, because, there is a tendency of thinking other people will do it for themselves. When the MDC was set up, after a couple of years, there was a lot of ‘what is the MDC doing’ kind of thing. To me that kind of thing is ‘what is the MDC doing, what are you doing as well?’ and I think for Zimbabweans, Zimbabweans as much as we sit over our glasses of beer and cry about the situation, my feeling is that the average person out there is not putting action into what we should be putting action into to change what is there. People are expecting other people to do. There are too few people struggling and on the front line, being hit over and over again. And, until we get out of our comfort zone, because, even if we talk of mass action, in other countries you just need a bold leadership that can call for that and people rally. Whereas here, if that kind of thing is called, people start seeing it as a day off for themselves or going off somewhere. I think the average Zimbabwean realises that it’s not just the MDC. The MDC has got to be peopled and it has got to be other people around who most probably can take. Yes, I do agree, in the sense that the environment as well, and the timing of whatever mass action is important. Our environment is very repressive. There’s subtle and overt actions that make people fearful and we need to go beyond that fear, we need to go beyond our comfort zone.

Violet: What about you, as the leaders? And still, on your point, when you were leader of the NCA, you led successful mass protests you know that led to a successful ‘No’ vote during the referendum, and like all the women on this panel you have technical know-how on how to demonstrate. Now, if you have this, why aren’t you using it especially since you sit on the boards of several women’s organisations and why have you not mobilised the other women to join WOZA for example?

Thoko: Um, I’m not a member of WOZA, Ok? And, in organising, we organise in different ways of organising. And, also what I’m saying in the earlier things that I’m saying is also that we are organising as different pockets, so the coming together and the mass-ness of it is not coming out. Civil Society as civil society, in its different elements as the opposition political parties, the women’s movement, the other movements that are there is not coming together. But, that is also about the nature of the politics here which is about divide and rule in a way, and I think we have also allowed ourselves to be divided and ruled in a way. And, like I always say in the women’s movement, that there are certain things that together, as women, we should organise together, beyond our party affiliations. But, also it goes back to what Jenni said. What is the confidence that people have in us as leaders, Ok? Maybe people do not have confidence in us as leaders in the women’s movement or they just don’t care.

Violet: I don’t know, Amai Holland, what can you say about this? You know, there are others who say that the most visible and the most vocal protest group in Zimbabwe at the present is the WOZA women with their persistent demonstrations. Now, there are people who ask where are the other women’s voices? What can you say about this Amai Holland?

Sekai: My feeling is that in Zimbabwe from the time we came home in 1980, we have never had the opportunity to have the great debate, and that while this forum is denied Zimbabweans, most people don’t know what really happened during the war for us to gain one person one vote which was why the war was there. Vote, get transition from colonialism, semi colonialism into independence and become Zimbabwe. Most people don’t know the strategies that were used to get that. A lot of us, because there is no great debate, still don’t understand why we have deteriorated to where, even at our lowest level now, you get international delegations coming to Zimbabwe and saying ‘why are you complaining, you are not really badly off, because you are better than where we come from.’

The great debate in Zimbabwe must take place for Zimbabweans to bond as a society the point that we are greatly divided is a very correct one. I believe that in different sectors of Zimbabwean life there is a coming together that is taking place. In politics, it might look as if we are fragmenting in the opposition. I don’t agree with that. I think that the process in the opposition is very necessary to happen because there has never been a great debate. People are really wanting to define why they are in one party and not the other. It’s a huge democratic leap forward in Zimbabwe where we have been brainwashed, both by our men and by the colonial period that we all have to think the same. People are now voicing how they want to see Zimbabwe. I think it’s fantastic. It’s very painful but it’s fantastic, it’s part of the great debate which never took place. In the Churches, people might think that they are fragmenting, they are disintegrating. Oh no! There are huge changes taking place in western society within the different Churches; in Africa as well. In the NGO community; the same thing. I think that as we agree more and more to talk with one another, this great process which we never had at independence makes us understand what is a Zimbabwean.

Is it correct that if your father was a farm labourer and you had a father from Malawi you are not a Zimbabwean when your mother was a Zimbabwean? Is it correct that if you are married to a white person urimukadzi wemurungu umfazi wekiwa, you are a white man’s wife; therefore you have no right to be here? The great debate is fantastic, it’s stimulating! And, as we talk more and more you will be very surprised to see the energy that will come out of the women’s movement; to take us to what, Thoko Matshe, you have been talking about for a long time. To do what I came to Zimbabwe, saying in 1980, about women’s rights, and people thought ‘Ahh, if you are doing women’s liberation ndivana Mai Holland. We are really coming together I believe through a great debate that was denied by the people who came into Zimbabwe from the war and lied about what the war was about. So, my feeling, and I know it’s not shared by many, is that the process we’ve been going through since 1980 is one of trying to open up space so we can bring the change which took Zimbabwe to a sixteen year war. And, I believe myself, that while people may think they are doing different things and not getting results; they really are, and, that these results are actually joining people at the grassroots level as they hear and activate themselves from different angles. And, I believe that when mass action comes into Zimbabwe it will be something that is a big, big volcano; a super volcano.

Violet: Priscilla, you said earlier on, when we started this discussion that Zimbabweans are hungry for change, but, you know, what’s most puzzling is that Zimbabweans have reduced themselves to mere spectators and Thoko alluded to this fact earlier on? Now, what then are the chances of mass action and also, where does your party fit in all this?

Thoko: Well, Violet, I think we need to be clear about one thing. When you talk about mass action people tend to think it’s one thing that will happen on one particular day. I think it’s about putting pressure on the regime so that it can begin to open the democratic space in Zimbabwe and that’s where at least my party is coming from. I think there are a number of things that are happening. It would be unfair to try and create a picture that because you have not seen people being arrested in droves there isn’t anything that is going on. I think mass action is about different things that people are doing. When people participate in elections and get beaten up, when people struggle to go and get food and have demonstrations, when people like Jenni do the kind of things that they are doing, when political parties stand up to question things in parliament, in senate, in local government elections, I think all those are activities that people are involved in. I think it is unfortunate to then paint a picture that says there isn’t anything that the people of Zimbabwe are doing, especially given the political context that we are going through. What is important there, and this is what I am getting to hear from all my colleagues, is that we should have more co-ordination…

Sekai: yes

Priscilla: more coming together, so that whatever an individual or a group is doing links up to the other activities that people are doing. It is unfortunate therefore for anybody to begin to paint a picture. When I go to Nkayi, there is a woman who travels, who is 85 years old, who will travel and walk maybe 40, 50, or 60 kilometres to attend a rally knowing full well that their attendance at that rally will mean that they will not get their food ration for that particular time. In my opinion, that is mass action, that is a way of standing up, that is civic disobedience. So, there is something going on. It may not be happening at the scale that we want to see, but it certainly is happening where Zimbabweans are standing up to a regime that is largely repressive.

Sekai: Can I just help you Violet, with two examples, a very quick one.

Violet: Yes, go ahead

Sekai: This change in currency, just the struggles that are going on. In rural Zimbabwe, in the cities yesterday we had to get some things in the shops, and before that, in Harare, and people have no change. People are saying in the queues ‘you are businesses, you agreed to go into this thing without training, without adequate change. Go to Gono and get the change!’ There are a lot of struggles on the queues where people are politically conscious now that they don’t have to accept anything with out their participation and consultation, consensus and consensus building. Second example; when we were going by bus in the last three weekends and the police were stopping people and actually taking their money. I was on a bus where people were going from Harare to Gweru where people were being told that if you have more than $35 million it will be taken away from you. And a very, old, old man at the back who’d been in Harare at a Church and was told that it’s $100 million, above that, if your money is taken you get a receipt etc. There was a struggle in that bus as people were refusing to hand over there money above $35 million and there was nothing the police could do because if they had done anything there was going to be trouble on those roadblocks. So, I’m just saying to you there are lots of struggles within struggles.

However, I want to say to you, Zimbabweans at home, there is not one spectator! One third of the population of Zimbabwe is out of the country. Of that one third who are out of the country, we still don’t know the proportion of who is actually doing well and who is not doing well out there. But, what we know is that the majority of our people there are having a very hard time. We also know that because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we have got 3000 to 4000 deaths per week and that people are left to actually carry on with emigration, with death and with an extremely oppressive regime. Such a big struggle there! So, I’m just saying to you Violet, it’s insulting and it’s abusive for the media to keep saying Zimbabweans are spectators. Every Zimbabwean here in Zimbabwe is struggling to survive and is struggling to struggle for change. Everybody! The Zimbabweans outside are fighting for the same thing that where they are they make their contribution; it is recognised and they fight so that at home things become ok. Those who want to come home, come home! It’s about choices. Those who want to stay overseas, stay there with legitimate papers.

Violet: Now, Amai Holland, the reason why I said it seems people in Zimbabwe have reduced themselves to mere spectators is because of what they actually see on the ground. For example, as I said before, last week we heard that the WOZA women were on the streets. They were giving out flyers and people were actually receiving these handouts - these flyers, but they didn’t actually join in the demonstrations.

Thoko: Can I also come in?

Violet: Yes Thoko, go ahead

Thoko: I really think there’s a level where people are not engaging, seriously, I really don’t think there is. Because, yes people are concerned with issues of survival and they have put there all in survival, and I think they have struggled. The people of Zimbabwe are not lazy, and they are very innovative, but their innovation you can see now that ‘Ah, it’s really been too long innovating and struggling’. But we are more in a survival mode and in a getting to just move on. We are not really in a mode of change for democracy and building that democracy – all of us.

Violet: Be sure not to miss the second segment of this three part series with the women activists and opposition leaders. Next Tuesday, among other issues, we will discuss whether the feminist and intellectual agenda is relevant to the daily existence of people in Zimbabwe at present.

*Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com

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