The basis of this policy-paper is a combination of qualitative analysis of interviews with stakeholders in 2004-2005 completed with a critical review and analysis of available literature on human trafficking, especially of women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is intended to serve as a tool for advocacy and awareness-raising to fight human trafficking in Mozambique, with concrete recommendations to be implemented by a wide range of actors working to fight human trafficking in Mozambique (including the government, international and local organizations).

Many of us who work in the field of women's rights, when asked what we do for a living will often say we work in human rights. Firstly because women's rights are human rights, and secondly to avoid the inevitable quip which we get in certain settings of 'but what about men's rights?' What about men's rights? My reaction to this question is often inwardly visceral and along the following lines.

When the UK’s carbon emissions include imports from China, the average UK citizen’s carbon footprint increases by 10% according to new research released by the World Development Movement. A World Development Movement report, released in Bali, rejects the ‘blame China for climate change’ culture and reveals a new and more accurate picture of the UK’s responsibility for climate change by accounting for the carbon emissions caused by our massive consumption of products from overseas.

The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO)is to embark on a project for African rural inclusion known as 'Commonwealth African Rural Connectivity Initiative'(COMARCI). The chief executive of the CTO, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah said the project has been structured to promote faster telephone and internet connectivity for rural communities in the 18 Commonwealth African countries.

The disarmament deal signed by the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda on 9 November 2007 is a landmark step in the peace process between both countries. But to finally cool tensions in Africa's turbulent Great Lakes region, all parties are going to have to now tackle the collapsing eastern Congolese province of North Kivu, writes David Mugnier.

In little more than a week South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), will elect new leaders - a choice likely to decide who becomes the country's next president. After provincial nominations earlier this week, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma - acquitted in a controversial rape trial last year - is well ahead of his rival, President Thabo Mbeki. Zuma also won the support of the ANC Women's League (ANCWL) - a decision that has staggered most gender activists.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Thursday said it had commenced demarcating voting constituencies for next year’s House of Assembly election, with Harare, Bulawayo and the two Matabeleland provinces that back the opposition set to get 67 constituencies.

Uganda now has more than 100 suspected cases of the lethal Ebola virus and 350 more people are being closely monitored because they were in contact with those infected, the Health Ministry said on Friday. There were no new deaths from the virulent haemorrhagic fever, which usually causes victims to die of bleeding through various orifices, Health Ministry spokesperson Paul Kabwa said.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki fell further behind his main challenger, Raila Odinga, in opinion polls on Friday, just three weeks before elections that are expected to be the East African country's closest. The latest Steadman poll gave opposition leader Odinga 46% to Kibaki's 42%. Its last poll two weeks ago had the 76-year-old incumbent running neck-and-neck with Odinga, with both on 43,3%.

We as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and inter-sexed people (LGBTI), activists in the human and legal rights sector, feminists, trade unions, activists in the women and HIV/AIDS sectors as well as individuals from diverse backgrounds, constituting the South African civil society;

A call for research proposals related to environmental change tendered to the african global change research community. The objectives of this call are: 1) to contribute directly to global change science in Africa 2) to enhance the understanding of the impacts and consequences of global changes in Africa, 3) to create long-term, collaborative research partnerships between African scientists and those in developed countries, 4) to foster the integration of African researchers into the international global change research programmes and 5) to contribute to regionally integrated efforts on GEC projects. Priority will be assigned to proposals that focus on the following three themes: Climate Variability & Climate Change; Impacts/Adaptations/Vulnerability to Climate Change; Land Use Change/ Ecosystems/Biogeochemical Change/Biodiversity.

For a year that began with great promise for diva power, the diminishing presence of women in the run-up to this year’s elections is a disturbing reminder of the uphill task women face in making their presence felt on Kenya's political scene. Earlier in the year, women candidates coalesced around Charity Ngilu and other bigwigs to root for their increased representation at the civic and parliamentary levels.

This year’s 16 days of Activism Against gender based violence will go down in the Kenyan history as the year where women aspirants have suffered violence without any concrete action being taken either by the law enforcement officers or the various political party’s in Kenya. Narrating her ordeal, Alice Wahome, an aspirant said, "I was attacked by ten men in broad daylight, my attackers kicked and railed blows on me and it is an experience I have never been through before. They even pulled my breasts and I could feel them pinching my buttocks."

ARTICLE 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, with the Kenya Section of the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Kenya Correspondents
Association (KCA) has launched a Guidebook on Election Coverage for Media
Correspondents in Kenya.

Abiodun Titi, several months pregnant, flashes her best stage smile as she explains how to use a female condom here in the headquarters of Living Hope Care, a non-governmental organization that works with HIV-positive people in southern Nigeria. Abiodun is HIV-positive but her husband is HIV-negative. The child they are having together—their second—was made possible without exposing her husband to infection. How? It is thanks to the female condoms she received here and whose use she is now demonstrating.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned as “intolerable and vindictive” the sentence handed down to Tunisian journalist Slim Boukhdir on charges stemming from a search by police on the group taxi he was riding in. It is the latest targeted attack on Boukhdir who has been frequently harassed by Tunisian authorities says the IFJ.

The ongoing fighting in eastern Chad is preventing humanitarian workers from reaching more than 400,000 refugees and displaced persons, setting the stage for a situation that could worsen rapidly and lead to significant loss of life, the United Nations has warned. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), armed conflict is hampering the ability of aid workers to move freely and safely in most parts of eastern Chad, cutting off vulnerable groups from vital humanitarian assistance.

Nearly one dozen African nations have joined forces to participate in a United Nations-backed programme to bolster education and training in rural areas. At the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), representatives from 11 countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania – last week agreed to identify areas of cooperation.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the 1994 Rwandan genocide has sentenced a former witness to nine months in prison for giving false testimony during the trial of the country’s former higher education minister. The witness, identified only by the code name GAA, pleaded guilty to one count of contempt of court at a hearing this morning of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania.

Liberia has cleared all overdue debt service payments to the World Bank, marking the beginning of a new era for the country as it normalizes its relations with the international community. Clearance of arrears to the Bank and other multilateral agencies will make Liberia eligible for full debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) programs, thereby contributing to the country’s ability to achieve growth and recovery in the coming years.

Robert Mugabe on Tuesday courted controversy by announcing that only friendly nations would be invited to observe the polls. The presence of foreign observers at the elections is one of the conditions the MDC is insisting on at the talks. Mugabe’s statement Tuesday revealed that he has not given in on this issue.

A Zanu PF businessman severely assaulted an MDC activist in Marondera last week after an MDC rally. Regina Silas had attended a rally by the opposition party at Dhirihori Shopping Center near Marondera town, when Isiah Mpazviriho beat her up, accusing her of bringing agents of “western imperialists” near his business. Mpazviriho is understood to own a general store at the shopping centre and is an influential family member of the clan that heads the village.

South Africa will not include maize in the initial stages of the country's biofuels policy in order to keep a lid on high food prices, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Thursday. The decision followed the South African cabinet's approval of a long-awaited biofuels plan, which officials hope will revive the ailing agriculture industry. Maize farmers, who have in the past struggled to stay profitable as bumper harvests pushed maize prices to multi-year lows, have also pinned their hopes on biofuels. But critics fear using maize as a source of alternative energy could drive up prices of the staple food.

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said Angolan soldiers have raped, beaten and tortured illegal Congolese migrant workers before deporting them across the border. The French humanitarian group said the rights abuses were occurring in the diamond-rich northern Angolan province Luanda Norte, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo. It described the rapes as "pervasive and systematic".

Single dose nevirapine given to the mother and infant are an essential part of HIV prevention in many poorer countries, including South Africa, but research has shown that a high percentage of women develop HIV resistance to the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor class of drugs, a component of first-line antiretroviral regimens throughout the world.

Nigeria has revoked its last contract with Siemens and suspended dealings with the industrial group pending a probe into allegations it gave 10 million euros ($14.6 million) in bribes, the government said. A German court fined Siemens 201 million euros on 4 October for bribes paid to Nigerian, Russian and Libyan officials by a former manager of one of the group's telecoms equipment units.

A draft bill to regulate Algeria's journalism industry is being finalised and has been opened up to a closed-door debate. During a November 21st meeting on the 2008 budget, Communications Minister Rachid Boukerzaza said the bill had been submitted to over one hundred media professionals for review.

The UN refugee agency has temporarily suspended its repatriation programme to South Sudan's Jonglei state after tribal rows sparked by cattle thefts turned deadly. The clashes between Murle and Dinka tribesmen have degenerated into widespread revenge attacks in the past fortnight that have left at least 34 people dead and close to 100 injured.

13 December marks the first anniversary of the Kalahari Bushmen’s landmark victory in Botswana’s High Court. But the Botswana government has failed to uphold the court’s ruling, and most of the Bushmen remain stranded in resettlement camps. The court ruled that the Botswana government’s eviction of the Bushmen was ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’, and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and hunt and gather there.

African states should address the needs of local markets and of their regions before looking at what can be exported globally, and not the other way round as is currently the case. This proposal was made by a participant at a meeting of the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from November 27-29.

Pan Africa ILGA, which is the International Lesbian and Gay Association’s (ILGA) African branch, reprimanded police for brutality during Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Uganda. According to a letter written to Commonwealth secretariat by Pan Africa ILGA representatives, Danilo da Silva and Linda Bauman, the Ugandan and Kenyan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) speakers were curbed from talking on behalf of the LGBTI people last month.

From 21st to 26th April 2008, an important event would be held on the African continent - the organization of the 1st International Conference on African Culture and Development (ICACD 2008) in Kumasi, Ghana. This conference is designed to draw attention to the missing link in the futile attempts to develop the African continent - culture. This is clearly illustrated in the 1995 report of the World Commission on Culture and Development: "Development divorced from its human or
cultural context is growth without a soul. Economic development in its full Flowering is a part of a people's culture".

The film submission period for Lola Kenya Screen—eastern Africa’s first and only audiovisual media festival, production workshop and market exclusively designed for children and youth—opened on December 1, 2007. Lola Kenya Screen, therefore, is calling for film entries in all genres, lengths, and formats from all over the world for the 3rd Lola Kenya Screen that runs August 4-9, 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya.

When Bob Dylan was singing about the times changing, I doubt he had in mind a Maasai Moran or a Turkana pastoralist in full traditional regalia negotiating the price of cattle on the international market with a mobile phone in some distant arid landscape.

While mobile phones are undoubtedly the greatest technological revolution in Africa, the next wave of communication technology is grounding itself well beyond urban centers. Like mobile phones which have empowered marginalized communities across Africa, the internet is quickly beginning to bridge that huge gap between those that have access to information and those that don’t. Ironically, the further we get away from traditional social necessities, the more we strive to recreate them in a virtual world. Simple human needs like shopping, dating, chatting and now “blogging”. . Blogs, or interactive online diaries, may certainly be new but the practice is as old as keeping a journal. They are actually one and the same thing – the only difference is that it’s public!

Today, there are over 72 million blog sites, making the practice of sharing your daily life and thoughts with the rest of the world one of the fasted growing areas on the internet. Interestingly, the impact of blogs on our world stretches beyond our immediate needs to be heard and is being used more and more to effect change. For example, the first blog-driven political controversy led to the eventual downfall of a U.S. Senate Leader exposed for his white supremacist sympathies.

And it’s not just humans that stand to benefit from access to virtual communication. Dr. Richard Leakey, a household name to anyone with an interest in conservation, has focused his efforts on the power of the medium to address one of the biggest problems in wildlife conservation: “After spending many years struggling to improve wildlife conservation in Kenya, I decided to start WildlifeDirect to solve a very real problem in Africa, the lack of adequate funds to protect our wildlife heritage. Persuading individual donors to give support was not easy because most people are unaware of what is going on in conservation until there is a crisis. I needed to find another way to raise awareness and funds on a continuous basis.” Hence, WildlifeDirect was born. The first of its kind, the organization was conceived as a way of facilitating exchanges between the front lines of conservation and the rest of the world. It brought two worlds together: a global community of sympathisers with good African conservationists.

Take the case of Atama-to Madrandele, a park warden who, in 2005, started working at the Ishango, sub-station of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He carried out his work in almost complete physical and financial isolation. In February 2007, Atamato began to blog on WildlifeDirect about his work. Through this blog he was able to raise some funds to help pay for patrol rations and equipment, as well as salary supplements for his five underpaid rangers (the official pay for a Congolese ranger is about three US dollars per month). From August this year, Ishango has become a fully functional park station, thanks to the donations received through his blog. His men are now fed and have enough fuel to be able to carry out regular patrols.

The previous issue of Swara featured the gorilla crisis in Congo. This was one of several stories written about this critically endangered species in the international television, print and radio media. The daily blogging on WildlifeDirect from rangers working on the ground stimulated a global drive to cover the story. Global awareness about the gorillas in the Virungas has never been so strong. The blog also provided an immediate avenue for desperately needed funding for the rangers who have virtually no support from the national authorities. After the slaughter of the Rugendo gorilla family, the donations reached reached $66,000/ in in the month of August -. The gorilla blog currently earns $18,000/- monthly in direct donations. WildlifeDirect has also managed to bridge the pitfalls of bureaucracy and crippling bank procedures to allow people to donate no matter how small the sum is and to allow the recipient to receive almost instantly. Moreover, for those who work in conservation and development, we all know how hard it is to raise funds for day to day items, salaries and other overheads. The bottom line is people need to eat and we tend to forget this. WildlifeDirect provides a platform for conservationists to raise funds for whatever they need, be it a pair of boots or medical supplies for rangers.

The early success of whose operations began in the fall last year, has led to a 10 fold increase in blogs over the last few months with over 40 conservationists from all over Africa and beyond using the blogs to communicate their work and needs. Everyone around the world can play an interactive role in conserving the planet’s endangered wildlife. As Dr. Leakey states, “Not only have we enabled a number of interesting and courageous conservationists to write blogs from the frontline, but I am encouraged that the world is reading, listening, and taking action.”

This year ActionAid launches a new campaign focusing on women's rights and HIV & AIDS, starting with a new report that shows that persistent and systematic violations of women’s rights are leaving women and girls disproportionately vulnerable to HIV and AIDS. The report calls on donors and national governments to fund programmes that reduce women and girl’s vulnerability to Aids as a matter of urgency.Globally the percentage of women and girls living with HIV and AIDS has risen from 41% in 1997, to almost 50% today, while in sub-Saharan Africa, 75% of 15 to 24-year-olds living with HIV and AIDS are female.

Firoze Manji looks behind the mask of remittances and suggests that there are grounds for questioning the overall value of remittances as a vehicle for development or social progress.

How often do we hear the phrase “remittances to Africa are a key source of development funding”? The volume of funds being remitted to Africa are certainly impressive. In 2005, we are told, “they totalled $188 billion—twice the amount of official assistance developing countries received. Moreover, there is evidence that such flows are underreported. Indeed, remittances through informal channels could add at least 50 percent to global recorded flows. Most of the reported flows go to regions other than sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but SSA has still been part of the overall rising global trend. Between 2000 and 2005, remittances to the region increased by more than 55 percent, to nearly $7 billion, whereas they increased for developing countries as a group by 81 percent.” (Gupta et al 2007).

Can such remittances be equated with ‘development funding’? What is the evidence that this contributes significantly to the elimination of poverty? And if remittances of funds from workers in the North to their families in the South be considered as part of the infrastructure of ‘development’, then should not remittances of funds from the South to the North be also be considered as part of the equation?

The overwhelming majority of studies demonstrate that remittances are primarily used by households and families to help them survive the inadequate incomes that they already have. In times of crises, such supplementary income is used to “smooth household consumption and welfare”. For the most part, these funds are used for consumption and payments for education, healthcare needs and food for subsistence. In other words, remittances are primarily used to supplement income because wages or income from agricultural production, petty-commodity production or ‘jua kali’ trade, or whatever activity people are engaged in to ‘make a living’ is inadequate. Remittances are not primarily used to create employment or develop new initiatives.

The reality is that the majority of rural families in Africa have long been dependent on the ability of members of their families who have jobs in urban centres to be able to remit a portion of their wages to help their families cope with impoverishment. This lies at the very heart of the system of underdevelopment that is characteristic of neo-colonial / post-apartheid economies as it was in the colonial and apartheid economies.

There is a close association between remittances and the maintenance of prevalence of low wages in Africa. One of the crucial determinants of low wages is the social cost of the reproduction of labour: from the employers point of view, the less it costs to enable the wage earner to survive and reproduce, the lower the wage needs to be. And the more people there are that are unemployed – the larger the ‘reserve army of labour’ – the harder it is for the worker to demand better wages, especially if they are unable to organise to put pressure on employers. If the families of workers are eking out an existence on marginalised land, a few pennies in the form of remittances from the employed worker makes all the difference.

When migrant workers (either transiently away from home or with more permanent residency in countries where wages are better) are able to supplement the cost of maintaining their families through remittances, then what they are doing is not only helping their families survive: they are also ensuring the maintenance of their families at no additional cost to their employer or the state. For the recipient, of course, these remittances are a lifeline since they have no other means of surviving – especially in the lean times.

But is this development? Surely not. Surely it is subsistence, barely enabling people keeping their head above the water. It is ‘development’ only if we were to consider that development is not about social progress but about providing charitable support to the poor. Remittances are essentially an individualised social support mechanism without which there would be even greater misery.

Now supposing the same funds were used, instead, to support people to organise for better living wages, for better social services, for better housing and healthcare. Such a use of remittances would certainly contribute to social progress, to real development. So long as remittances play only the role of providing charitable support, they perform the role of shoring up an existing unjust system that keeps people poor. Worse still, there is a potential for disabling Africa's people from becoming organised actors who can determine their own future.

As Paulo Freire (1970) put it: “… charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the ‘rejects of life’, to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so these hands – whether of individuals or entire people – need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world." Do remittances really help human hands transform the world?

But even if we were to accept that remittances may be legitimately considered as ‘development funding’ or as part of the infrastructure of development, then surely movements of funds in the opposite direction – from South to the North – should also be taken into account. It is surprising this aspect is systematically ignored by those obsessed with promoting the apparent benefits of remittances. When Africans send funds from the North to the South, this is called remittances. When multinationals remit profits to the North, or when countries in the South are made to remit a part of their gross domestic product to the banks in the North, somehow this is not considered as (negative) remittances. If movements of funds in one direction are to be taken into account in the process of development, then surely movements in the opposite direction also need to be taken into account.

Surely, what is sauce for the goose is good for the gander?

Third World repayments of $340 billion each year flow northwards to service a $2.2 trillion debt, more than five times the G8's development aid budget (Dembele 2006). At more than $10 billion/year since the early 1970s, collectively, the citizens of Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, the DRC, Angola and Zambia have been especially vulnerable to the overseas drain of their national wealth. As Brussels-based debt campaigner Eric Toussaint concludes, 'Since 1980, over 50 Marshall Plans worth over $4.6 trillion have been sent by the peoples of the Periphery to their creditors in the Centre' (quoted by Patrick Bond 2005).

Research by the Tax Justice Network estimates that a staggering $11.5 trillion has been siphoned 'offshore' by wealthy individuals, held in tax havens where they are shielded from contributing to government revenues. “Around 30% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP is moved offshore”, writes John Christensen (2006) of TJN, “As several studies have suggested, this rate of capital flight means that Africa - a continent we are continually told is irrevocably indebted - may actually be a net creditor to the rest of the world.”

In comparison, then, to the the wealth that is sucked out of Africa - which far exceeds the total amount of aid that comes from the North into Africa - the net value of 'remittances' (movements in both direction) is negative.

There are grounds, therefore, for questioning the overall value of remittances in development. That is not to say that sending money home doesn't help our families survive. Remittances remain essential for enabling the impoverished to cope with an unjust world that keeps them poor. But as a vehicle for social development and progress? I have my doubts.

* Firoze Manji is co-editor of Pambazuka News and executive director of Fahamu.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References

Patrick Bond (2005): Dispossessing Africa's Wealth. Pambazuka News
Demba Moussa Dembele (2005), Aid dependence and the MDGs, Pambazuka News http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2007/06/gupta.htm

“Freedom, my friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labour for it.” Feminist Ernestine Rose, 1860.

Former Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith has just died, but his patriarchal legacy, of dictatorship, violence and sexist oppression lives on.

The use of violence in contemporary Zimbabwean politics, is part of the machismo political culture inherited from settler colonialists, which successive political systems are failing to dismantle.

I therefore, wish here to link, gender based violence within the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to the question of political power and women’s emancipation, based on our experience as a women’s political leadership. My position being that patriarchy as a system of oppression is not going to willingly dismantle itself, it has to be fought.

Historically, Zimbabwe’s violence politics, has been grounded in the quest for political power and positioning, with women often being at the receiving end of it. Thus today, MDC women are still subjected to all forms, of violence, by both the party and the State, as both systems grapple for political power.

Just as during the liberation struggle when women combatants, were told national liberation first, their emancipation later, today, women who have gone into front-line politics are being sold this ‘two stage’ approach model. This approach implies that the struggle is gender neutral, and that we suffer the impact of State repression the same way, and that when freedom is attained we(men and women) will have the same political will, to reverse gender disparities or to dismantle patriarchy.

Events on the ground in the MDC, however, speak differently.

Days before the annual, International 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign celebrations, MDC women, were once again subjected to another public humiliating bout of violence, this time, by their male counterparts.

Women protestors, against the unfair sacking and treatment of the Women’s Assembly chair-person, Lucia Matibenga, were beaten up in front of the party’s head-quarters Harvest House, on Sunday the 18th of November. The known assailants used fists, kicked, threw stones, to subdue and stop the female demonstrators, from proceeding with the protest in which they were demanding audience with their MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, over the unresolved women’s chair matter.

Strangely, though it seems that it was beyond Tsvangira’s political comprehension that the women were practising their democratic right to demonstrate and seek audience with him, as their leader, instead he shunned them. The message they got was violence. This is not accidental, but a political message.

The irony that played itself out in this scene, is that the MDC male leadership is forcing a new chair-person for women on the women, as part of their “empowerment” or “building efficiency” within the Women’s Assembly, yet the beneficiaries of this male largess are denied the right to freely express themselves, as part and parcel of that political commitment to their liberation cause.

Apart from the violence and total exclusion, we have witnessed in this matter, the men will also not allow a democratic mechanism by which a proper process is carried out, of finding out who the most popular women’s leader is, and conferring the women’s chair on that person. Again, not accidental, thus the basis of my thesis, on political and gender relations within the MDC being rooted in patriarchal tendencies and practices.

The violence both physical and psychological meted out, against Matibenga herself and her supporters, is characteristic of the misogynistic nature of Zimbabwean society, inherited from Smith, which Mugabe has used against opponents real or false, replicated by men in the opposition. Sexist oppression has thus been validated as normal political practice in opposition politics.

And so it seems, each time male power in the MDC seems to be under threat, violence erupts in all its forms - physical and psychological, we have seen this in the party, prior to the October 12 split, when senior female leaders were targets of this violence.

The assault on MDC MP Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, twice at party events, in one attack she was with feminist Janah Ncube. The psychological or emotional abuse, of Sekai Holland when the men, callously removed her as secretary for International Affairs. Like Matibenga she was told, it was because she had been “inefficient” as secretary. I will not try to delve into an analysis of efficiency and male leadership, otherwise Zimbabwe would have been a better society.

Or the emotional trauma and stress I suffered when without warning funding was cut to me as MDC Representative to Europe. In fact I was slowly marginalised and excluded from all party activities, until I made my own way home. I was an emotional wreck, as I failed to survive, to date this gross treatment has never been explained to me, by either of the male leadership in the two MDC factions.

Last year, MDC MP Trudy Stevenson, suffered, severe physical attacks in an MDC constituency, which left her bruised with a broken arm and deeply traumatised. These are examples of women who have come out, I respect those who remain silent, there are more cases, of physical and emotional abuse. Including instances of sexual harassment of female staff members that have been suppressed.

All the abuse we have suffered has been condemned internationally, as being retrogressive to the women’s emancipation agenda.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, (CEDAW) or the International Women’s Bill of Rights, defines discrimination as "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."

Matibenga’s abuse has also led me to revisit the notion of sacrifice within the framework of gender power relations, in the party where others are “sacrificers” or “sacrificed” and others hold positions of power and privilege that insulate them from those “sacrifices.” It is an open secret that in her tenure of office Matibenga never had a vehicle allocated to her, in spite of all the dangers she was exposed to, such her brutal torture in September, 2006.

For a long time we have suffered silent persecution, like the horror stories of the rape of female comrades during the liberation struggle, by their fellow male comrades, that have never been really openly talked about or the perpetrators brought to book. The negative reaction to the screening of the “controversial” movie Flame, which sought to highlight these crimes against women during the liberation struggle was met with such a strong backlash by those in the Zanu PF leadership.

We seem to be ingrained with this, culture of silence around the forms of violence or abuse, we suffer as women in politics. We have been socialised into a political culture of only talking about State sponsored violence.

Matibenga’s battle helps us to further interrogate and demystify these primitive notions, of our silent persecution vis-à-vis our role and placing as women in politics and the respect we deserve from our male comrades.

Two weeks ago, Matibenga was locked out of Harvest House by rowdy youths and told to go away and form her own party. She was seeking an audience with the party leadership which was about to hold a National Executive meeting. There was no condemnation of this treatment of the widow Matibenga, in fact in typical Zanu PF fashion, all rights are suspended when one is seen to be at variance with the powers that be. Yet another example of the terrible abuse, she is enduring.

A social liberation party that articulates so well, violence against itself in the quest for political power, but fails to understand the same kind of violence against its own leaders and members, presents us with bigger questions about the Zimbabwe we are fighting for, as women.

This is because, the women’s emancipation project has been subordinated to the political whims of those in power, who are not willing to let go of patriarchal privilege, thus the different political systems in Zimbabwe have failed in the endeavour of women’s liberation.. Each historical juncture, has seen women lose earlier gains, as they are forced to renegotiate with patriarchy for their survival, be it in the home or in politics. Male bigotry, in both the ruling party and the opposition, has resulted in the further narrowing down of spaces women had carved out for themselves as a movement.

When I first wrote on Matibenga’s unjust sacking I was attacked by men in both the ruling party and the opposition, and so my thesis is based on my personal experience and of other women in politics, and the backlash we suffer when we raise our heads. Most women in politics, are subjects of political violence, both emotional and physical, but are socialised not to talk about it. The way violence in the domestic sphere has been treated as a “private affair” and men getting away with increased cases of femicide, rape and other forms of violence.

Looked at within a historical context, what women at the front-line of Zimbabwe’s struggle for social liberation and democracy are going through is no different to what their sisters in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle were up and against. It is always a double struggle internal and external.

Writes feminist Patricia Chogugudza on women liberation fighters, “Zimbabwean women, like their counterparts in Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau, joined the armed struggle. Their hope was that with the revolution, gender equality would be certain. Women who could not conform to tradition saw the revolution as an opportunity to escape difficult situations. Yet feminist critics argue that at the end of the struggle, women’s status actually fell as nationalist leaders and nationalist-oriented societies, in the quest of preserving tradition, expected women to be guardians of culture and respectability, or mistresses of the emerging ruling elites, or wives and mothers, recruiters for political parties, and labourers for the new market economy, while men were engaged in competition for political power in the state and the accumulation of wealth.”

Thus today women who have delved out of the socially constructed roles of wife, mother or mistress into the public arena of politics have had to deal with much back-lash.

Feminist critique has shown us that power and democracy are historically exclusionary notions, as they remain class based and androcentric. The MDC example is important in this analysis, as the dust settles on the utopian vision and idealism many of us viewed the party with, as a fulfiller, of liberation goals, and ultimately our emancipation, that the nationalists failed to deliver on. It is in this context that I will further locate the analysis on the cycle of violence in Zimbabwean politics, from the State, to the opposition, and how it impacts on women’s participation, in politics.

In this vein it is also important to take the analysis further to the rise and consolidation of power by Tsvangirai’s “kitchen-cabinet”, and the brutal expression of sexist oppression, that has accompanied it.

The rise of this elite core group of male and female financiers is important to the feminist discourse within the MDC because our political engagement has changed totally, from the values upon which the party was founded to a new finance driven, elitist political culture, that lacks popular support and legitimacy.

It is now power politics, in total and not a pro poor, people centred social liberation struggle, that is just, recognises history and honours sacrifice including women’s role in that struggle. Thus the suspension of these values, explains the crude injustice against us as we are further marginalised and excluded from political processes. Violence in the party becomes self perpetuating as this group seeks legitimacy, outside the organisations formal or official structures and boundaries.

Feminist Patricia Macfadden, writes “And even when such systems aspired to be inclusive and socially expansive, they remained essentially exclusionary and patronizing of those who had been constructed as Other in relation to power as the most critical resource in that society. Across our world we struggled for what appeared to be collective visions of freedom and justice, and while it is critical to acknowledge the opportunities that nationalist liberation struggles and anti-colonial resistance provided to those groups in our societies which had been up till then excluded from the public, for example women, we must also critically evaluate the implications of nationalism as an ideology which is fundamentally sexist and exclusionary of women, particularly during the neo-colonial period.”

To further my thesis on how power relations between Zimbabwean women and men have not evolved with time, from nationalist notions and understanding of our roles in society with the use of violence being a common denominator between the systems, I will now look at Zanu PF’s system of violence.

Mugabe responded to the formation of the MDC and the threat to his continued hold on power through violence. On the character of the post-colonial state and the way it has responded to demands for reform, by the broader pro-democracy movement, in Zimbabwe academic Brian Raftopoulos, writes, “Confronted with a strong former liberation movement, led by a leader with enormous prestige on the continent, civic and opposition forces have had to face the combined obstacles of an authoritarian nationalist state constructed through the legitimacy of the liberation struggle, in a rapidly shrinking economy that has comprehensively undermined the structural basis for the reproduction of broad social forces in the country. Moreover, in the short term, this scenario has not engendered a spirit of reform in the ruling party. Instead observers have witnessed the intensification of repressive rule and the continued marginalisation of opposition forces, with the military taking on an increasingly prominent role in all spheres of the state.”

I celebrate sheroes of the struggle, like young Talent Mabika who lost her life to the regime, others have been raped, tortured, arrested and have suffered different forms of victimisation in the hands of the ruling Zanu PF party.

The Women of Zimbabwe Arise, (WOZA), has just released a report on the violence suffered by its members, in the hands of state agents, reads part of the report, “WOZA has conducted over 100 protests on various issues of civil rights and social justice in its five-year existence and up to 3,000 women have spent time in police custody. Many have been detained more than once, most for 48 hours or more and 112 members once spent five days in police cells. These women, front-line human rights defenders, are willing to suffer beatings and unbearable conditions in custody to exercise their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms. They continue to suffer torture and other forms of cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Given the above analysis and the way it now mirrors the unhealthy situation pertaining in the opposition, of increased authoritarianism, lack of accountability and violence, I will further link this situation to yet another process and the danger it poses for Zimbabwe’s future political dispensation, in relation to popular participation, democracy and our emancipation as women.

As part of the deal under South-Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, SADC sponsored mediation, the two MDC formations agreed to endorse Constitutional Amendment number 18, against public opinion on the political recklessness of such a move. I will not go into the details of the amendment and how in many respects it contradicts the very struggle the pro-democracy movement has been waging, over the past years, and how the manner in which it was adopted short changes our quest for participatory democracy.

However, it is important to use this example to further illustrate, and magnify my point on the connection between ‘elite-deal’ making and politics of exclusion to increased violence and marginalisation of women, in the MDC. Civil society organisations, and the women’s movement got a rude awakening last September, at the voting for CA 18, when the Secretary General of the Arthur Mutambara led faction, Professor Welshman Ncube, literary told them that, their work was to lobby and advocate, they must leave power to politicians.

Defending their voting for CA 18, in Parliament Ncube said,“At that time I was the spokesperson of the NCA and President Tsvangirai was the chairperson. The NCA agreed that we needed a new constitution for Zimbabwe which would be crafted or written in an open, transparent and participatory manner. In that regard, we as members of the NCA were there to oppose two things. One: the piecemeal amendments to the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Two: the unilateral manner of setting such piecemeal amendments. Mr. Speaker, it is important to understand those two principles. Let me say that these two principles were conceptualised, conceived and adopted, not to be verses in a bible. They were strategic and tactical principles which were intended to forge the making of a people-driven constitution. I despair today when I read and hear the attempt to transform these principles into some fundamentalist decrees which, we are told, are to be regarded as completely sacrosanct. As far as we understood them, they were supposed to be means to an end.” And the end political.

Consequently, again by going this route the MDC has agreed to play junior partner to Zanu PF and so now they are on a reactive rather than proactive agenda, on many electoral issues, such as constituency boundaries, access to media, political violence and so on.

Zanu PF however feels re-legitimated as it sees a mirror image of itself in an MDC, that does not respect women, public opinion and is violent.

The men will broker a power sharing deal that will not transform our society, by reconstructing the gender, class and power relations, as they exist, today, but rather endorses the status quo.

And so the notion of liberation through this avenue, has to be viewed within a perspective, of it really being a reconfiguration and consolidation of patriarchy, in our politics, just as we witnessed at the Lancaster House Conference, without any popular participation or support.

Meaning that our experience as women, in politics should really be an eye opener to the struggle ahead beyond Zanu PF’s demise. This abandoning of values we have believed to be sacrosanct, by the men, should be an eye opener to the longevity of our struggle for emancipation.

Activist and journalist Charlene Smith writes, “Governments are by their nature hypocrites. The structure of modern political systems encourages this. Globally politicians are more concerned about getting the right sound-byte on television than in going into communities to hear what people have to say. Politics and perhaps even the way you and I live our lives, have become divorced from values. Values drive societies, they are the essence that sustains humanity. Without them societies decay.”

Given this sad scenario, as a political activist who has put in her all in the fight for a just and democratic society, I can only urge other sisters in the struggle to find new spaces, to continue with our struggle for emancipation, and for those who remain in the patriarchal systems, I can only give them my support.

In conclusion I say Smiths ghost will haunt Zimbabwean politics for some time to come.

*Grace Kwinjeh is a visiting scholar with the Centre for Civil Society and writes in her personal capacity

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

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