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16 Days of Activism; Urban poverty and women in Zimbabwe
Girl Child Network Trust
November 27, 2006

The last time I met with Mai Dhizari was two weeks before my trip to the Netherlands and Canada on 12 October 2006. On several occasions she had visited my small office in Chitungwiza requesting for 1200 rands in order to have her visa to South Africa processed. Her husband, six daughters and two sons had died .Her life depended solely on cross border trading. She has 14 grandchildren half of whom are 7 years and below and still in primary school. All of them share a two roomed house .

Ten times she had requested for the start up capital for her to resume her project as an informal cross border trader. Each time she looked at me with a pleading face , I just looked back at her hopelessly. Her request made me a victim.

One day she came to report to Girl Child Network an organisation that I am director, that all her grandchildren had been expelled from school for non-payment of school fees. I immediately suggested that the girls be put on Girl Child Network girls` scholarship. She wholeheartedly thanked me for this. Later I saw her full of tears.

"For how long am I going to knock at your door, Muzvare? If you lend me 1200 rands I will go to South Africa, hoard soap and cooking oil for resell here in Zimbabwe. I used to do that and then none of my grandchildren got expelled from school. I never used to beg", she once more pleaded with me.

Like always her request was genuine and very sincere. Unlike many women activists like myself, she did not want 1200rands as perdium to buy luxuries after a conference or workshop. She wanted it desperately as a basic neeed. She did not want it for cosmetics, elitist fashion dresses or shoes but for girls’ school fees. She wanted young girls she was looking after to attain education. She did not want the money for herself but for her orphaned grandchildren.

After some reflection, I felt she had shaken my guilty conscience. I thought about donor funding I had in various bank accounts and no money targeted women informal traders with a network of girls in the home. I got haunted by the many donor agreements I had signed as Director of Girl Child Network as this stage I could not support the basic needs of girls and their granny. I was a directionless director because in my fundraising efforts I was just too selfish and never thought I could fundraise for such informal networks and coalitions of women and girls. I cursed myself as if I could change things and bring money to this old granny. It was even worse that even as the Chair of Women’s Coalition I could not refer her to any women’s ngos for there was none on the formal registered list as national networks that give soft loans as start up capital to women like Mai Dhizari. There was none I could think of and none I could influence within a month to do this. I picked my phone to call several women’s and children’s groups but they had the same answer like mine, their focus was on law reform, empowerment and advocacy. I abandoned any further search fearing I would be more depressed. 

How can we not focus on women and girls’ economic empowerment now that the hyperinflationary environment in Zimbabwe is more and more negatively impacting on them? In Chitungwiza many girls and women have finally succumbed to commercial sex where anything that guarantees a day’s life is what they will take. This greatly reverses initiatives around prevention of further spread of HIV to women through unprotected sex as women who come to my office would rather have unprotected sex and paid anything than to starve their families. They would rather die of HIV and AIDS later but in the meantime their families survive hunger. Painful reality! I thought to myself.

Daily at least 20 women like Mai Dhizari come to my office to ask for food, school fees, and soft loans, a clear indicator that there is a humanitarian crisis. At least 38 girls visit GCN Chitungwiza offices daily to appeal for humanitarian assistance that include cotton wool ,uniforms, shelter and food. Young girls who get raped daily come to seek for safe shelter and on 17 October 2006 at least 14 girls reported rape from poverty stricken families.

It is apparent that if as women and girls organisations we continue with business as usual and the many workshops on gender, human rights, empowerment and the everyday development rhetoric without deep listening to the real needs of women we may be marginalizing poor women the more. I thought about the various levels of empowerment I should consider when it comes to myself and those women booted out of the informal trading through difficulties in getting start up capital and visas. There is a time in the early and late 1980s when Mozambican , Malawian and Zambian women used to come to Zimbabwe when their economies were going through turbulences. As it is now many women from Zimbabwe who cross the border illegally have been raped and since this is pitted against themselves they cannot come out in the open and also they are trying very hard to get visas so as to get a safe passage into neighbouring countries.

Then I came back from Canada on 18 November 2006. Mai Dhizari showed up in my office again.

"Now you have a visa to enable you to go to South Africa," I was the first to start the conversation.

"It never worked. First day when I went to the South African Embassy I woke up at 3am in order to be at the embassy by 5am. It took me two hours to get a kombi, which dropped me in the city centre. I walked to the embassy for more than10 kilometres in the dark. I got to the embassy at 5am. I was number 38,"she said.

At the embassy Mai Dhizari and other women waited till 8:00am and by then numbers were allocated to them. Every woman had with her a heap of supporting documents that included faxed invitation letter and certified ID number from the host in South Africa as well travellers cheques. From 5am until 1pm they were never attended to and none of them ate anything. There was growing anxiety among women whether the supporting documents would be accepted .The 37 women in front of Mai Dhizari shook their heads as the authorities at the embassy had another visa requirement set for women – Z$108 000 cash upfront. The women’s anger was obvious.

"How come each time we are here there is a new condition? Why can’t they tell us what exactly to bring and we will do that?"

Later in the day Mai Dhizari and a group of women knocked at my door with angry faces. They looked depressed and suicidal. The treatment they had received from the South African Embassy was inhuman – frowning, unkind and harsh words. The women had brought all documents and the $108 000 was not part of the conditions initially requested. The authorities at the embassy had announced this after women had spent half the day standing in the queue waiting for their visas to be finally processed.

"If they don’t want us to visit South Africa they should tell us. Why the psychological torture, why are we being treated like less human? The last time they introduced $300 000 as security we did pay. They promised that the money would be refunded upon one returning to Zimbabwe of which we did but the money was never refunded," said one of the women.

The stories by some women denied visas to South Africa to continue as informal border traders, visit friends and relatives were heartbreaking. The women finally resolved that they would risk being eaten by crocodiles in the Limpopo River as they cross illegally into South Africa.

The women handed over their petition on a page torn from an old exercise book which read as follows;

Shona

Kuna Muzvare Betty Makoni

Munofara here isu tinofara chose. Dzakadini mhuri dzenyu dzedu dziri nani chose asi taita chichemo chekuti taita chichemo chekuti tatambudzwa nenyaya yekuda mavisa. Vatinyima vati vari kuda mari inoita $108 000 tinoiwanepi isu tichitambura kudayi munyika medu muno tinokumbirawo kubatsirwa nemi amai . Muzvare tibatsireiwo amai tatambura hatizive kuti mari dzavari kutora vachatidzorera here kan kwete. Wenyu mwana anoda rubatsiro

14 Zizi Zengeza 5
Chitungwiza

English Translation

Dear Ms Betty Makoni

How are you and how is the family? We are facing problems in accessing visas and the reason for being denied visas is that they claim cash amounting to Z$108 000. Where can we get the money when we are as poor as we are in this country? We are appealing to you to help us Ms Makoni. Ms Makoni please help us we are suffering. We do not know whether they will give us back the money they are taking from us.

Yours in dire need of help

14 Zizi Zengeza 5
Chitungwiza

I just thought about the many petitions that have gone rounds in our email lists as formal women coalitions and networks and then this one which if I feel deserved greater circulation .I just thought about the many things especially connections locally and globally at my disposal which often I let myself or others I work with abuse when such groups could equally benefit. I thought about my demands for luxury compared to these women`s desperate call for basics. I counted myself very privileged and yet very ungrateful!!!

I am just a community-based defender of girls’ and women’s rights working in a high-density suburb of Chitungwiza with over 1 million people with 80% unemployment. Currently over 3000 girls are not in school in Chitungwiza due to poverty and HIV and AIDS. There are no advocacy women and girls organisations that are community based and rooted in most rural and high-density suburbs and so it will be very difficult for me to start one network for these women or ensure they join the more formal women`s networks in Harare. 80% of women’s ngos are in Harare and many women and girls in rural areas and high density suburbs need at least 900 to 1000 Zimbabwean dollars to commute at least back and forth to have their issues prioritised for advocacy in the formal networks and ngos.

Although in Zimbabwe during the 16 Days of Activism the theme is on Domestic Violence and its related use the law phrases , for poor and marginalised women, economic deprivation they are working tirelessly to address through cross border trading can expose them to domestic violence. There is no visible women’s community based network to speak out on such issues yet these are the real issues affecting women in the homes and communities where they live. 16 Days of Activism will run from 25 November – 10 December and as usual marginalized women will be bussed to Harare to give some testimonies on domestic violence. They are not taken through processes to understand the root causes of domestic violence as economic deprivation also. However, after the testimonies they have to face the SA authorities for visas. They have to plead with a male chauvinist school head to allow girls who did not pay school fees back in class In a visa lies their hope for economic empowerment that consequently address one of the root causes of domestic violence.

Recently ,22- 23 November ,I had an informal chat with women activists in South Africa. I briefed them outside the formal conference at the University of Witwatresrand whose theme was "Putting Feminism on the Agenda" on the situation of Zimbabwean informal women traders and the hardships they are facing in getting South African visas and the many unreported rape cases at the borders and lack of condemnation of these issues by feminists in the SADC region. For privileged women activists like myself, I do have the visa but my situation is not as bad as women informal traders who petitioned me to help.

Of course the petition above is not directed to Betty Makoni only but to all women activists in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the whole SADC region. I grew up as an informal trader myself in Chitungwiza. At age 6 my mother and I were sure to have a meal after vending that took more than half a day and covered over 30 kilometres.

I would like to table the issue of Zimbabwean women informal traders before women activists, formal networks and coalitions during the 16 days so that as we address domestic violence we also address some of the root causes-economic deprevation. In their pursuit to fend for their families women informal traders suffer physically, sexually and psychologically. They are the strongest and oldest women’s informal movement that has contributed immensely to economic and social development of many families and subsequently countries.

Sisters like in the case of Zimbabwe and South Africa should be there for each other. I send this urgent article in the hope that strategic action rather plan will be sought to alleviate the suffering among women informal cross border traders. 16 days of activism should be 16 days to restore women’s dignity in the informal trading between countries.

Many Zimbabwean women who are denied visas to South Africa and then cross the border illegally are being raped and infected by HIV and AIDS.A lot more are galloped by crocodiles . It is unfortunate that all the funding we have in our bank accounts as women and girls organisations cannot support marginalized women to form a strong formidable network or coalition so that in the event that their base especially the economic one, is shaken there are mechanisms for their continued activism and advocacy. Many of us today have big names because of informal trading by our mothers since time immemorial.

Women in the SADC region unite against poverty and gender based violence!!

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