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Sexual violence against women, justice, and the right to protection
Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU)
December 02, 2010

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Foreword

Considerable documentation is available on the Zimbabwean crisis, written by both local and international organizations, but there is very little written about the women's experiences, or the crisis from women's perspective. Women have different experiences on the crisis from men and therefore they will have different views on how it should be resolved.

In 2009, the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) began a campaign to end politically motivated violence against women, which was kick started by a video Hear Us: Women Affected by Political Violence in Zimbabwe Speak Out. This was launched in Harare but has had a global outreach. Subsequently a petition, signed by over 1500 people, was submitted to the International Relations Department of the South African government to investigate violence against women in keeping with the articles of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development; South Africa was the then Chair of The Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well as the SADC Facilitator on the Zimbabwean crisis.

As part of this campaign, RAU has partnered with IDASA (An African Democracy Institute), the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ). The first initiative of this collaboration was to conduct a survey to find out women's views on elections, violence, peace, the inclusive government, transitional justice, and law enforcement. Two reports have been issued to date detailing the findings of the survey: Women, Politics and the Zimbabwe Crisis and Preying on the Weaker Sex: Political Violence against Women in Zimbabwe. A third report, When the Going gets Tough, the Men get Going, was also issued, detailing the qualitative responses of women to the survey findings, and deriving from 10 focus group discussions involving 150 women who were not part of the original survey.

The campaign to end political violence against women will feed into the more general action by human rights and civic groups for transitional justice, and the long-term goal is that these rights will be enforced, with victims and survivors receiving the redress they deserve. The campaign, in its contribution to the transitional justice demands, will also make a contribution to the restoration of the rule of law through the challenge to impunity, and the exposure and possible prosecution of the most serious offenders.

This collection of opinion pieces looks at issues relating to political violence from women's perspectives, with an emphasis on sexual violence and what should happen when the violence is over. There are special challenges that women face with regard to reporting rape and other forms of sexual assault, including the stigma of being labelled a rape victim, fears of spousal abandonment, and the attitudes of the police towards them.

Truth telling after periods of conflict it is critical before any form of healing can take place. The fact that events that occurred in our history were never made public, particularly the liberation war and the Matebeleland massacres of the 1980s, is one of the reasons Zimbabweans find themselves in this predicament today. There is resentment, fear, and mistrust, and the only way to address these is to bring out the truth and let victims come to terms with what happened to them and their loved ones, without being forced to forgive and forget without full knowledge of the what, why, where, and how.

This collection also looks at the role of consent during sexual abuse, which has been used as a defence by perpetrators. Where there is coercion, or a coercive environment, particularly where the coercion is violence or threats of violence, the issue of consent falls away. The issue of justice always comes up after periods of conflict, and, looking at this from the point of view of a rural woman who has lost her possessions consisting primarily of household utensils, what would be her preferred form of justice; restorative and retributive justice? The pros and cons of both are looked at. From as far back as Independence, Zimbabwe has created a culture of impunity based on the idea of reconciliation rather than confronting the truth of what has happened; it is evident that without resolving our past our future is bleak. The collection concludes with the notion prevention in the responsibility to protect, a new international initiative to provide grounds for where the international community must intervene where a government fails in its responsibility to protect its people. Prevention of violence has not been one of the Zimbabwe government's strongest suits as even law enforcement and state agent have been implicated in violence.

The purpose of this monograph is to contribute to efforts by civil society to widen and encourage the discussions on transitional justice by raising issues relating to women, and beginning the discussions on how any transitional justice process in Zimbabwe should take women's points of view into consideration.

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