Press release

MDC women call on African first ladies, and women of the world to unite against oppression in Zimbabwe

Message to Africa First Ladies: “If you don’t help us, you too will be guilty for the staravation, people dying of HIV/AIDS because health systems have collapsed, people are unemployed, crime is rising – and it will spill to your countries”, Lucia Matibenga, chairperson, MDC Womens Assembly

17 June 2003

The MDC Women’s Assembly has called on the silent partners of Africa’s leaders to be quiet no more and to speak out against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

Lucia Matibenga, chairperson of the Movement for Democratic Change Women’s Assembly, “we call on Africa’s first ladies to speak to their husbands, and ask why are they watching the Zimbabwean crisis?”

She made a call on womens organizations across the world “to give us your moral support. We need your prayers and activism in putting pressure on the Zimbabwean regime to allow the women of Zimbabwe their dignity and their rightful place as custodians of the future. We are the majority of citizens and those who bear the most suffering. If you speak to a woman, you are speaking to a family and a future.”

Noting that significant numbers of Zimbabwe are presently being held incommunicado in Zimbabwe’s police stations and prisons for holding pro-democracy protests, she condemned the continued harassment and detention of women.

“I went with the mother of a National Executive Committee member, Gertrude Mtombeni (33) to Khami maximum prison at the weekend to see her. We could not talk to her, she was allowed to stand at a distance from us and say nothing. She managed to tell us, “I am starving”, before she was told to be quiet.

“Gertrude comes before court tomorrow in Bulawayo with Abraham Mdlongwa, the MDC provincial chairperson, charged with organizing mass action for the 2 June to 6 June countrywide stayaway.”

Gertrude, a diabetic, however, was detained on May 30. She has been allowed medication for her condition.

Matibenga said she was trying to obtain reliable information about how many women were in prisons for political activities, “but it is difficult to know, many are in distant rural areas. It is a birthright for people to show their discontent by holding demonstrations, or having certain views that challenge those of the status quo.

“It seems the system is targeting women because womens activism has brought pressure to bear. But it is women who are suffering the most in Zimbabwe today, it is we who queue for food, we who care for the sick at home because hospital care has collapsed, it is we who care for those dying of HIV/AIDS complications because they can obtain no medicines, it is we who hear our children cry because they are hungry.

“Women bear the brunt of the crisis in Zimbabwe and we need other women across the world to help remove this burden.”

For further information contact:

· Lucia Matibenga, chairperson, MDC Womens Assembly, (09)263-11.862441 or (09)263-91.925007

· For messages of solidarity or support from women’s organizations across the world fax: (09)263-4-781040; mark it clearly for the attention of Lucia Matibenga

· To contact Mrs Mtombeni, mother of Gertrude Mtombeni (09)263-91.909513