POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: Women Brave Violence To Say ‘NO’

By Mercedes Sayagues Reprint | | Print |

Mercedes Sayagues

HARARE, Mar 17 2000 (IPS) - For wearing a T-shirt urging “Women vote No to the referendum”, Betty Makura was assaulted and stripped down to her bra — a serious humiliation for a Shona woman-by a group of ‘Yes’ supporters in Mabvuku township near Harare.

Makura (44) was among thousands of Zimbabwean women who braved violence to campaign against a draft constitution.

At a referendum on 12-13 Feb, voters rejected it 55 percent to 45 percent.

Zimbabwe wants to replace the 1980 Lancaster House Constitution, which ended white minority rule in the former Rhodesia.

Zimbabweans, however, never felt it was homegrown, born as it was, of a compromise with colonialism following a bitter liberation war.

After 1980, Zimbabwe effectively became a one-party state ruled by the neo-marxist Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Zanu-PF amended the constitution 15 times, eroding human rights and reinforcing the executive. But the wave of multi-party democracy that swept southern Africa in the 1990s brought calls for reform in this country bedeviled by corruption and economic mismanagement.

Since 1997, the National Constitutional Assembly, NCA, a loose coalition of trade unions, churches and women’s groups, seeks to write a more democratic charter.

To co-opt the move, President Robert Mugabe last Sep set up his own 400-member Constitutional Commission, staffed with party loyalists and a few independents.

Both sets of public hearings were a novel and healthy national exercise on citizenship. More than one million people attended (pop.12 million). On record, people want less presidential powers and more democracy.

But the draft constitution disregards their views. Adopted without discussion by the Commission, the charter enshrines Zanu PF ‘s grip on power. It allows the 75-year-old Mugabe to run for two more terms, with sweeping emergency powers.

“This constitution was no good. They wrote things we did not say. The advertisements said whoever voted ‘No’ were sell-outs and they had no right to do that,” says Makura in halting English.

The Women’s Coalition, made up of 35 organisations, campaigned against the draft. Their activism made a difference.

“There is strong anecdotal evidence that women were key in the ‘No’ result,” says Julio de Sousa, regional director of Oxfam, a charity that funds several women’s groups.

The coalition criticised the draft charter’s weak stance on women’s rights. Equality between men and women is not clearly recognised. Rights can be suspended on vague grounds of public morality and national security.

The tricky issue of customary law vis a vis women’s rights is not addressed.

Customary law considers women as minors. They cannot inherit property equally as men. Because polygamy is legal, senior wives can be cast aside in favour of junior wives and their children.

Widow dispossession is frequent, since the husband’s relatives are entitled to his estate. Once a man pays lobola, or bride price, the wife belongs to him.

Last year, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide by setting herself aflame with petrol. She had fled five times from a forced marriage with an evangelical pastor already married to her eldest sister. Each time the girl was retrieved by her brothers, beaten up and returned to the pastor.

In 1999, in a ruling that shocked the world, the Supreme Court found that, under customary law, women have no right to inherit property.

A 1997 law ensures equal rights to all heirs but not in cases brought to court before the law was enacted. The Magaya ruling, as it is known, showed how women’s gains can be reversed if unprotected in the Bill of Rights or when the vague concept of culture is invoked to justify discriminatory practices.

At coalition meetings, rural women complained that “culture is used to oppress us”. They understood the need for a strong Bill of Rights to uphold equality and women’s rights over custom and tradition.

Confident on the power of the state machinery and 20 years of uninterrupted rule, the government called Zimbabwe’s first ever referendum.

In Dec 1999, a United Nations electoral team found the voter’s roll to be chaotic and the electoral system a shambles. Still the government went ahead. A nasty and racist propaganda barrage flowed in the state-controlled media. In the townships, Zanu-PF youth tore down ‘No’ posters and harassed campaigners like Makura.

Police arrested NCA activists. This correspondent was assaulted and threatened by Zanu-PF thugs inside a police precinct while constables watched impassively.

Six months before the referendum, the Women’s Coalition began a countrywide campaign to inform women about constitutional issues.

“This is the first time that women managed to overcome class, race and political differences,” says Margaret Samuriwo, a programme officer within Oxfam.

The Coalition organised provincial workshops for community leaders, a national conference, TV and radio programmes, and 500,000 flyers in eight languages.

Lydia Zigomo, director of Zimbabwe Women’s Lawyers Association and chairperson of the Coalition, was amazed at the quality leap in women’s demands:”Grassroots women are saying: We are full citizens of Zimbabwe and we want our full share. We are not begging favours from government.”

A key Coalition member is the 60,000-strong Association of Women’s Clubs, a rural savings scheme founded in 1938. To the surprise of urban-based, more educated groups, the AWC took constitutional reform to its heart.

Its members brought the debate into the grassroots, then turned out in numbers to vote and monitor the polls. Zigomo says that, where the AWC was weak, the Yes won.

Today, AWC women are training to be monitors, polling and presiding officers in future elections. “Our members saw how officials trick illiterate voters and how rigging happens during counting, and requested this training,” says AWC director Sekai Holland.

The referendum was a watershed in Zimbabwe. Turnout was, as usual, low, at 31 percent of eligible voters. But people in the queues spoke of civic duty, as if the constitutional process had infused them with a sense of citizenship and ownership of the vote. This is a new feeling in the former one-party state.

Democracy is less than 10 years old in Zimbabwe.

“A real constitutional literacy has developed. You can not stop that,” says Zigomo.

During two hot days, poll monitor Georgina Muziti (53) sat inside a tent at daytime, slept on the floor next to the ballot box at night, and went without a bath, a hot meal or a change of clothes.

By Sunday evening, her legs were swollen, she had flu and a headache but still held proudly:”That ballot box is not getting out of my view, no ways.”

At midnight on Monday, when the counting for Harare Central yielded 6,682 ‘No’ to 4,821 ‘Yes’, Muziti smiled. It was too late to find a bus to her home in Seke, 30 kms from Harare. Another night sleeping on the floor. “My bones hurt but I am happy. I would do it again,” she said. “For Zimbabwe.”