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Celebrating Women's Day with Green Bombers
Everjoice Win
March 14, 2004

Everjoice J. Win is a Zimbabwean feminist activist.

International Women's Day, March 8, has been and gone. Since 1980 we have celebrated this wonderful day in so many exciting and different ways; theatre, music, street marches, poetry, speeches, etc.

A marked feature of these celebrations has always been the involvement of the State. This year was no different. But this year, and the last few have been some of the worst in the lives of women in Zimbabwe. The day passed almost unmarked, were it not for the air time given to the launch of the national gender policy.

While a national gender policy is a welcome milestone, it comes a decade late, and quite frankly, billions of dollars short. It will be interesting to see how this policy will be translated into practice and what resources will be allocated for it.

What has to be called the biggest farce, if not tragedy of the decade is having a Ministry of Youth Development, Gender and Employment Creation, and whatever else it does - which is also the same ministry that trains the dreaded Green Bombers! How worse can it get? I can not bring myself to actually take this supposed ministry of my rights seriously given its other longer and better funded mandate.

Since around 1990, what was once a well funded, well structured and focused Ministry of Women's Affairs was whittled down to, first a department, at some point just a desk, and at some other time, a one person corner. After the 2000 elections the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation was established or rather re-baptised.

The addition of the youth component has been the most worrisome.

It is through this arm that the so-called National Youth Service training was set up. The government has stridently denied that the youth militia is a terror machine. The simple question to be asked is so who has been raping the young women while dressed in the green uniform? British agents?

Young women from many parts of the country have testified hundreds of times about the rape and abuse they have endured at the hands of the Green Bombers. The women have seen the boys, they can identify some of them by name. All the women want is accountability from the State that has trained and "clothed" these boys.

This is the farce, or tragedy, that Zimbabwe has become. We have a government that claims to be concerned about the rights of its citizens, and at the same time it actively promotes lawlessness and violence. Our government and ruling party have the gumption to stand up and launch a gender policy in this specific environment? Is there an assumption that women are so malleable that they will take any little crumb that comes their way? In the 1980s Zanu PF could organise us under the guise of International Women's Day. Many of us believed them because we saw the seriousness with which issues were addressed.

Who can forget the slew of positive legislation of the 1980s; maintenance, equal pay for equal work, Legal Age of Majority etc? Even some of our newly democratic neighbours can't hold a torch to the strides women of this country made in education, health, economic empowerment, community development, etc, in our first decade of independence.

In those days we assumed we were together with our government and we happily acquiesced to their organisation of International Women's Day activities. But all of that soon changed. In typical Zanu PF fashion the genuine struggle of women was hegemonised and subverted to suit State interests. The State tried to ensure that women's rights organisations sang from its hymn sheet. And the song was development. The refrain was, "we do it under the guidance and leadership of the ruling party". Anything outside of this was seen as anti-government.

We woke up to the shortcomings of State sponsored development, when the President fired his big salvo. In 1994 in his famous meet the people speech on women's access to land, "Kana vakadzi vachida minda mumazita avo ngavarege kuroorwa", he declared scornfully at the Sheraton.

The crowd of hangers on tittered its assent. In 1997, they attempted to effect a constitutional amendment effectively making it impossible for Zimbabwean women to bring in their foreign spouses. "Muri vakadzi vedu ka imi? How can you marry foreigners and bring them into our home?" one minister asked in horror. There were also attempts to get the Legal Age of Majority scrapped under the guise that it made children (and women), wild! It did not succeed, fortunately.

Most recently, State patriarchs have found a new way of controlling women.

The Registrar General insists on married women changing their last names. Those who have resisted merely find it impossible to get new passports. This is regardless of the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers' success in challenging this practice in court.

Access and control over land remains the most elusive right for black women in Zimbabwe. We are yet to see the sex disaggregated figures of who got the newly repossessed land? Reality on the ground shows that when it comes violation of rights and violence, poor black women have borne the brunt of the current political and economic crisis.

But celebrate with Brigadier Ambrose Mutinhiri and Mai Shuvai Mahofa we were called to do.

It is as if gender issues are some sort of abstract, lived outside of this reality.

Leaders of this regime must be challenged to account for the violations of women's rights that are taking place under their watch. They must be asked the hard questions about the roles they have played overtly and covertly in both public and private spheres. I quite like the private aspect because it is here that many of us who pontificate in public about "gender is a priority of government - blah blah", must be challenged;

How many of you beat your wives last week?

Yes, you my friend, the senior government official raise your hand please! Who among you has ever sexually harassed a woman - including the ones you promised land and never gave them? (Oh, and marrying the product of your harassment later doesn't excuse the fact please note). Who has used Green Bombers to campaign for them? Can you account for their activities? Can you honestly say you have never sexually abused a minor girl? Of course comrade senior army and police officer, we know how you treat "suspects" don't we?

I am still waiting for a reason to celebrate women's day. May it come soon.

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