As the international community commemorate the twentieth anniversary of World AIDS Day, there is a country which today is left dwindling behind watching every day as it comes and only hoping against every hope that food and possibly a cure will be found. What is more traumatising is the fact that even if this cure is available chances of having the medication in their hands is very slim if not zero.

The theme of this year’s World Aids Day is ‘Lead – Empower – Deliver’. This is theme is quite far from being realised by Zimbabwe. The never ending political circus of the country only serves to unleash what history might describe as mass genocide on ordinary Zimbabweans. The country stands with no distinguished leader thereby diminishing any hope of the fulfilling the commitment of the theme, that is, access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010.
It is quite saddening to note that this year the event is being marked by the significant rise in the number of AIDs related deaths. Medical institutions like hospitals and clinics have been closed down thereby erasing any hopes of saving more lives. Worse, the calamity faced by HIV positive patients is the critical shortage of ARVs as a result of the government’s abuse of the donations it has received from the US government.

In 2006 Rudo* a friend who is HIV positive and currently in Zimbabwe was on the brink of death before her life was revived by the successful taking of ARVs. Today her life is once again being placed in jeopardy by the non availability of these precious tablets. Talking to her on the phone she pleadingly asked me if I could by any chance send her some ARVs. Goodness me I only wish I could send them to her, and not only her but a million other people who are in her predicament. A predicament that they are facing, of not being able to celebrate life – but to face imminent death. Her position is worsened by the lack of basic human needs like having clean water in your house. Sewage water from the toilets flowing down her door step. Another positive friend has just died and everyone says it is cholera but Rudo tells me otherwise. Her friend did not have ARVs. The last time she had them was four months ago and ever since then her condition has deteriorated. She dares not to speak about it publicly, she was even cautious as to the choice of words she used in our phone conversation.

What I discerned in her voice was a pleading tone, pleading for someone to intervene lest she losses her life. Knowing that somewhere out there in the world other lives are being given a chance to life, being treated of the same ailment. As we end our conversation I only can pray for her to hold on - hope is her only option.

In this years campaign I implore the whole world to look at the crisis in my country Zimbabwe. I would appeal to the international governments such as the UK to grant asylum to Zimbabweans in their countries. I appeal to the government of United Kingdom to seek ways of alleviating this situation in Zimbabwe by allowing the vast number of asylum seekers to work so they may support their loved ones at home . The leadership of Zimbabwe has failed the people of Zimbabwe but still the international community can help by supporting Zimbabweans abroad rather than dumping them in rooms with no work or deporting them back to South Africa or Zimbabwe.

Links : Word Aids Day 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004

Tags:
Zimbabwe + HIV/AIDS
Asylum Seekers + UK

Sexual violence in Zimbabwe dates back to the liberation war in the 1980s when women were used as sex objects serving Zimbabwean soldiers. There has been a silence around the rapes and other acts of sexual abuse which took place at that time. Now following more systematic sexual violence by the state - rape and other forms of torture against women during and following this years elections, Betty Makoni, Founder & Director of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe, recently launched the Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association (ZRPS)

The violence that characterized the presidential run off elections left a trail of disaster in Zimbabwe. The state sponsored post election violence from May 15 to 29 July 2008 left hundreds of women and girls traumatized because of rape which was used and continue to be used as a weapon of war. Many women not only lost their homes they had worked so hard for the past two decades to own but also hands, fingers, legs and their genital organs. Right now there seems to be somewhat every sign of political leadership transition in Zimbabwe and the women are angry and disappointed that there is no pointer that there would be transitional justice for the rape survivors and moreover many of them are still terrified ,displaced and are constantly mocked by their perpetrators and many men left their wives as a result of the public shame brought by the rape. It is feared more than 2000 women and girls in Zimbabwe were raped and due to intimidation and fear have not come out. The Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association is a loose network of women who survived rape perpetrated by the youth militia under the command of Zanu PF and they will not this time let this case slip off like those before this one. Already the women have partnered with AIDS Free World for collection and preservation of evidence and on 11 September 2008 the idea to come up with the Zimbabwe Women Rape Survivors Association was conceived in Gaborone in Botswana with a vision to create a new culture of transforming rape victims into fearless leaders so that many more women who have not opened do so and have their evidence preserved and survival strategies and security put in place now that the political situation has not stabilized and nowhere in the political deal is stated that there will be justice for victims

Tags:
16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women
Rape + Zimbabwe

***Disturbing but not so surprising news from South Africa’s “Social Attitudes Survey” shows that 80% of the population are against same-sex marriage. The very real possibility of ANC President, Jacob Zuma, who embodies some of the worst manifestations of macho nationalism and a man whose disdain for women was evident in the 2006 rape trial for which he was acquitted, becoming the next President of South Africa, will mean women and LGBTI become much more of a social force and develop strategies to counter act his influence in South African politics.

***Burundi moves closer towards criminalising homosexuality.

The Association for the Respect of Homosexuals’ Rights (ARDHO) protested against the new penal law adopted overnight, which abolishes the death penalty but makes homosexuality a criminal offence.

“We at ARDHO are outraged by this decision to criminalise homosexuality. We don’t understand how educated people can adopt such a law because homosexuality is neither a disease nor a deviance,” an ARDHO official told AFP.

***Pray the Devil Back to Hell” documents the story of the courageous Liberian women who organised and came together to bring peace to their country. The reviews are excellent and with Angelique Kidjo on the soundtrack I will be watching out for this. Meanwhile watch some clips and listen to some music.

***Silent Screams from Zimbabwe - Kubtana reports on the elderly woman “bumped by a blue Merc” who sits in shock on the roadside as no one bothers to do anything and someone asks

Why did the foolish woman not cross the road at the traffic lights? She ought to thank her lucky stars a Merc hit her. There was an unspoken consensus that the woman was to blame. Accusatory eyes pierced at her all round.

Natasha likens the silence at the woman’s fate to that of the silence from Africans around the fate of Zimbabwe. An excellent analogy.

***The two Nigerian bloggers, Emeka Asiwe and Jonathan Elendu, have now both been released but are still being prevented from returning to their homes in the US

Tags:
South Africa + Homophobia
Nigeria + Press Freedom
Liberia + Women
Play the Devil Back to Hell
Zimbabwe + Women
Burundi + Homosexuality

3 weeks after being arrested WOZA activists, Jenni Williams and Magodonga have finally been released from Mlondolozi Prison.. They report some horrific conditions such as having to share cells with mental health patients and being subjected to body searches everyday whilst male prison guards are free to wonder around.

The extreme hunger experienced by most prisoners means that even orange peels and the scraps on dirty plates are fought over. There is also no privacy for the female prisoners. Male prison guards are allowed to wander around the female prison and can see into washing facilities. Prisoners in Yard Two are also stripped naked every day for inspection by prison officers as they are locked down. At least three minors (aged 15 and 16) were being kept in the same cell as Williams

Life on the outside of prison is not that great either. Apart from women being invisible in the media and political landscape they are also living to survive a life expectancy of just 34 years. Living to survive physical and sexual violence and 300 million % inflation (don’t even bother to do the maths) forage for food and scrape through the days. Shereen Essof comments on the political infighting and maneuvering over the past 6 months none of which has addressed the needs and priorities of women and therefore the freedoms of everyone.

The polarisation of Zimbabwean politics means that women only have two options (now three in truth, with the split in the MDC producing MDC Tsvangirai (T) and MDC Mutambara (M), along with the ruling ZANU-PF). If you take the time to examine the parties’ constitutions, election manifestos, and programmes, none adequately addresses or expresses a commitment to the priorities and needs as identified by women, thus none provides a really viable alternative for a new dispensation that seeks alternatives that allow for the freedom of all. For this freedom is not something to be decreed and protected by laws or states, it is something that we shape for ourselves and share.

But despite the very real dangers, women are also struggling hard against the daily tyrannies of living. How many have survived these past months and years is incredible as the odds against them are high on every level not just from the tyranny of the state and their truncheon carrying battalions of bullies but also from sexism and local patriarchies and as she writes “being held hostage by three men”!.

The eternal’, according to Spinoza, ‘is now’, and women in Zimbabwe are living history and taking it very personally. The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices. Zimbabwean women’s acceptance of adversity is neither passive nor resigned. It’s an acceptance that peers behind the adversity and discovers there something nameless. Not a promise, for women know that (almost) all promises are broken; rather something like a hiatus, or parentheses, in the otherwise remorseless flow of history. And the sum total of these parentheses is eternity and in that the knowledge that ‘on this earth there is no happiness without justice’

Technorati: Zimbabwe Women Mugabe

On the 16th October members of WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise) held a demonstration declaring the food situation a “national disaster” and demanding immediate food aid. On that day 9 members of WOZA were arrested, 7 were released on the same day but 2, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, remain in custody.

Members of WOZA and other Zimbabwean women have always been at the center of the struggle against repression and state violence in the country. Yet if you follow the mainstream and alternative media sources you would imagine that the women of Zimbabwe, if at all reported, were solely the victims of violence. Otherwise they are largely silent. How many times do you hear women activists, academics or politicians speak to the crisis in the country? In a recent essay in Pambazuka News, Pumpla Dineo Gqola uses her experience in Zimbabwe to highlight the “conspicuous absence” of women in political events and the use of “gender neutral language” of the media.

Where were the women in all the coverage of Zimbabwe, in the negotiations, in the interviews broadcast, among the experts explaining and helping the continent and the world make sense of the crisis? I know from reading, watching and from interactions with feminists from the continent over the years that Zimbabwe has a very strong women’s movement. How is it that I was hearing so little about what women were doing, when they were not being brutalised, inside Zimbabwe?

Pumla goes on to speak of the women she met on her recent trip to Zimbabwe as part of a feminist solidarity group from Southern Africa who were organising “across class and educational status in ways which directly in ways that directly intervene in the crisis”. Evidence of the power of these women can be found in the violent response of the state and men and is further evidence of the direct connection between the “militarization of society” and increased violence against women as seen in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and remains a legacy of Apartheid in South Africa.

Including women in any decision making process is about improving the lives of everyone - women are not at war, women are not killing and destroying life. On the contrary it is women who are the ones calling for peace, growing food, maintaining the homes we grow in, the majority of displaced, of refugees and victims of violence.

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