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POLITICS-MOZAMBIQUE: Ready To Roll

John Keitta

CHIMOIO, Mozambique, Nov 3 2008 (IPS) - The posters and flyers are ready, and so is Marta Simango. Ready for Nov. 4, when the municipal elections campaign officially kicks off in Mozambique.

Simango is running for a second term at the Municipal Assembly in the eastern province of Manica, bordering Zimbabwe. Her party is the opposition coalition Mozambican National Resistance Movement-Electoral Union (Renamo-UE, in Portuguese).

Renamo holds 15 of the 39 seats at the Municipal Assembly, and four belong to women. The ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique party (Frelimo) holds 24 seats, with 10 women (originally 12, but two died in office).

Manica province at a glance Population: 1.3 million Life expectancy: 46 years People below poverty line: 40 percent HIV/AIDS prevalence: 20 percent Stunted growth among under-fives: 38 percent Source: Demographic and Health Survey 2003

 Overall, women account for 36 percent of Manica's Municipal  Assembly, beating the National Assembly, where 30 percent are  women – one of the highest proportions in sub-Saharan Africa,  where  the average of women in Parliament is 16 percent.

 "We've seen significant progress in Mozambique's political  process,  but patriarchy and the culture prevailing in both the  family and public  spheres still prevents women from having  greater political  participation, voice and visibility," says Simango.

 The polls will take place on Nov. 19 in 43 towns and cities  across ten  provinces. These are Mozambique's third municipal  elections after a  17-year-old civil war that ended in 1992.

Today, the old foes – Renamo and Frelimo – compete with ballots instead of bullets, and with rising numbers of women along men.

Obstacle course

A 2006 study by the Electoral Institute of South Africa ranked the major obstacles for Mozambican women to enter politics.

These included a lack of party support in terms of resources and mechanisms to encourage women to run, scant media attention to women politicians, and an established way of doing politics along masculine values.

Other barriers are women's lower education levels, reproductive burden and general subordination. Female literacy in this country of some 21 million people stands at 70 percent, the average number of children per woman is five, and about half of the people are poor.

In Manica province, eight out of ten women work in agriculture and four out of ten have no formal education.

Beatriz Cintura, Frelimo's senior official at Manica's Municipal Assembly, knows many of these problems first-hand. Married with three children, Cintura, 47, is running for a third five-year term. She also heads the non-governmental group Association for the Promotion of Community Development (AFDC).

"It has not been easy to reconcile my professional and family life, but I have the duty to fulfill both and I try my best," she told IPS.

Every night, she lays out the clothes for her husband and youngest child, 9. In the morning, she fixes breakfast and drops her son at school on the way to work. "The secret lies in planning and managing time well," she says.

Going for forty

Whether at the Assembly or at AFDC, Cintura champions women's financial independence through income-generating projects.

The AFDC also runs civic education projects for the umbrella group Women's Forum, or Foro Mulher. For the last 15 years, the Forum puts on nationwide programmes at election time to get women to vote, to run for office, and to push for a women-centred agenda as both voters and elected officials.

Cintura notes that political parties in her country allow "space for full participation of women as defenders of women's rights."

In turn, Simango has concentrated in improving water and sanitation, drilling wells and installing taps to ease the burden of women and girls.

She explained to IPS that the Municipal Assembly monitors the plans and work of the municipal council. Because women officials took water issues to heart, they demanded results from the council, and, says Simango, they succeeded.

Simango predicts that women will take at least 40 percent of the Municipal Assembly's seats in two weeks' time.

Mozambique's challenge will be to reach the 50/50 representation of women in government by 2015, enshrined in the Protocol on Gender adopted by the Southern African Community for Development in August.

Come Nov. 4, both women will embark on a whirlwind of rallies, media interviews and speeches across Manica. The posters will be unbundled, the flyers handed out, and another democratic change of municipal officials will kick off.