Cry woman cry, cry beloved Zimbabwe!

‘Another weekend in for my child, is that it??? Cynthia was picked up from her town residence, not in Glen View, and she was never in Glen View, why, why is this happening to my child and why to her little boy?? How do I tell a little boy that he can't see his mother because she was arrested for no crime at all??’ – Anna Manjoro.

The above are the cries posted on the social networking site, Facebook, by Mrs Anna Manjoro, Cynthia Manjoro’s mother. Cynthia is one of 24 Glenview residents accused of killing a police officer, Petros Mutedza. Above is the shrill cry of anguish coming from a mother and grandmother for her daughter, Cynthia, who has left behind a son to whom she has to explain the ‘criminal’ enormity of his mother’s arrest.

Problem is there is no criminal enormity here! Only, perhaps, a coldly calculated ‘political enormity’. An eerie cloud of premeditated spitefulness that hovers ominously over Cynthia and three other women who have been transferred from the female to the male section at Chikurubi Maximum Security prison – a holding centre for the most vile and dangerous criminals.

The psychological impact is unimaginable!

Just to prove where the real deception behind the arrests of the 24 lies is the fact that Cynthia herself, even the police admit, has not committed any offence, but her arrest is meant to ‘lure’ her boyfriend who, as they allege, is also behind the killing of the police officer in Glenview.

Anna’s cries are deep from Zimbabwe’s own belly, mourning for her beloved children.

Arbitrary arrests, torture, hate speech – you name it – characterise a relentless campaign by President Robert Mugabe’s acolytes in the top echelons of the army, police and intelligence to intimidate and instil fear in an otherwise restive population. This unfortunate group, it should be noted, is not the first since Zimbabwe’s independence to endure the brutality of similarly seeming mindless incarceration as a result of trumped up charges.

When political temperatures rise, women and children are the most vulnerable. But who cares?

Scars are still fresh from the violence of the 2008 Presidential election run-off. A woman from Manicaland Province states in ‘No hiding place: Politically motivated rape of Zimbabwean women’, a December 2010 study commissioned by the Research Advocacy Unit (RAU): ‘When I woke up the following morning on the 26th of June 2008, they had put a skirt on me and a ZANU PF t-shirt, I had blood all over my skirt and my thighs were swollen. My vagina was full of semen; I had wounds and cracks from being raped continuously. I could not walk because my legs were swollen.’ The grisly forms of violence, endured by hundreds of women, through out the country during this dark period are well documented.

It may seem as if this is no longer the time to dwell on what some might feel to be petty struggles fought in high density suburbs like Glenview. It may, however, certainly be claimed, in some quarters, that the focus is no longer on the ability of the working class (or struggling women, on a more specific note) to mobilise and liberate themselves, and that now the focus has shifted onto the regional and African elites’ political will to offer leadership that will liberate Zimbabweans from a long time ally and friend of theirs.

It is patently clear that Zimbabweans are in danger of becoming mere pawns in an uninspiring regional dance exhibiting the drearily dispiriting rhythm of one step forward and two steps back. As an illustrative point, the dire political problem has now been removed from the agenda of the SADC organ on security and politics, and is not likely to feature that prominently at the ongoing African Union Summit being held in Equatorial Guinea.

One does not need to go very far in search of where Zimbabwean women have been located in the current political discourse, a quick media scan, or an equally quick perusal of the recently adopted SADC resolutions, exposes the gender-exclusive, political context in which the country’s future is once again being defined.

It is simply problematic that the recent – and much celebrated as being progressive – SADC resolutions do not contain in them any clause that even tacitly mentions the peace and security of Zimbabwe’s women and children, such as Cynthia and her little boy.

Given that election time in Zimbabwe is always a season of an increased tempo – in hate-speech, political violence (you name it) – this is just a serious oversight!

It has been just recently, and our ears are still ringing from the impact, that we have been exposed to the explosive public statements of Brigadier–General Douglas Nyikayaramba against Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, which are a chilly reminder of the prevailing lawlessness – a mouth-drying threat to the security of ordinary Zimbabweans. And dare I remind one and all that women and children have always borne the brunt of such rabid lawlessness. It was the securocrats that coldly planned and executed the diabolic free-for-all abuse of women experienced in 2008.

May it also be noted that Nyikayaramba’s statements also revealed, as never quite in the same manner before, that now power in Zimbabwe is more vested in the securocrats than in State House.

It is therefore, demonstrably foolhardy, to conclude that security sector reform, which featured prominently among the SADC leaders recently, (given more clear and fresh evidence that the ailing President Robert has ceded power to the ‘securocrats’, as represented by the Central Intelligence Organization, the military, and the police) will have an impact on the ground, without real commitment from the regional leaders to implement and execute noticeably workable plans to protect civilians.

And so while the Zimbabwe issue has been removed from the SADC troika’s agenda, greater responsibility now lies in the hands of facilitator, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, to take up urgent issues, such as the human security of women who are daily suffering from Zanu PF’s violent politics.

It is my belief that unless issues to do with women’s peace and security are not dealt with at the highest level, there is much cause for fear, that they will remain the silent battered victims, of Mugabe’s brutality. I will not go into the Lancaster House agreement but rather just look at the country’s recent history under the Government of National Unity and how the women’s agenda to assert their rights has remained on the fringes of democratic discourse.

A crude example, for instance, is how much women have struggled to be heard in the constitutional reform process under the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee (COPAC), in which women’s voices have been muted on key issues, such as land ownership, or how Zanu PF has sought to subvert the women’s voices through indoctrination at grassroots levels on how they should respond to issues that affect them.

On their part, the women should be applauded for putting together an election roadmap which was presented to the SADC secretariat by the Women’s Coalition. It covers broadly, from a gender perspective, key issues of central importance if a free and fair election is to take place. These issues include: constitutional reform, legal reform and reform of repressive legislation. It also includes demands to an end to politically motivated violence.

In this regard, the women are demanding an end to the culture of impunity and also that the state should ensure full security of women and girls. Political parties must commit to non-violent campaigning and desist from hate speech in accordance with the GPA.

Speaking at an international conference, on women and peace building, held in Harare earlier this year, Professor Mirjam van Reisen, Tilburg University Department of Humanities and also Director of the European External Policy Advisors (EEPA): ‘Women in Zimbabwe are united in their quest for peace. They demand that all political parties respect women. They ask that all political parties must put in place mechanisms to stop violence.’

The role of women in peace-building and conflict-resolution is enshrined in the SADC Gender Protocol, article 28 which states that: ‘State Parties shall endeavour to put in place measures to ensure that women have equal representation and participation in key decision-making positions in conflict resolution and peace building processes by 2015 in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.’

While, in general, international legal documents are clear on paper, in terms of women’s participation in conflict resolution, implementation on the ground remains problematic. It is patently clear that the SADC discussions, both in Livingstone and Sandton, have been a high stakes negotiations game to rescue Zimbabwe from fast sinking into an ugly political quagmire. One is, however, compelled to also caution that failure to include, for specific attention, more than half the country’s population is, in our day and age, not only callously inexcusable but also an oversight that could see Zimbabweans sink even faster into the quick sand of autocracy, greed and violent politics.

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* Grace Kwinjeh is a journalist and political activist.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.