Hundreds of residents from civil society organisations marched in the streets of Bulawayo on Dec. 1 to mark the 16 days of Activism Against Violence Against Women and Girls . But sex workers and members of gay groups were barred by police from joining the demonstration.

A dozen organisations took part in the event in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo. The commemoration was organised by the Musasa Project, an organisation that deals with domestic violence, under the slogan  “Structures of violence :Defining safety and security for women and girls.”

Among the marchers were around thirty men and women from the Sexual Rights Center (SRC), an organisation that advocates for the rights of homosexuals and commercial sex workers. Wearing pink t-shirts emblazoned “Pink and Proud”, they were carrying banners calling for the Zimbabwean authorities to respect the rights of sexual minorities.

Sibonginkosi Sibanda of the Musasa Project – which organised the 16 Days event – says the police asked to see the leaders of SRC.

“After the march, one police officer came to me and told me that someone had brought to their attention that we were marching with an organisations that promotes sexual diversity,” she told IPS. Police told her that because homosexual acts are against the law in Zimbabwe, they could not be present at an event where speeches that promote homosexuality would be made.

Police officers called the director of the Centre out of the crowd and told her to gather her people together and leave. The SRC’s director declined to speak to IPS for this story, or even be named.

Another woman who works with the group spoke on condition that her identity be protected.

“In line with the main theme of the day,” she told IPS, “we also wanted to have a hand in fighting violence against women and our main points were fighting against correctional rape of lesbian women and fighting against violence against sex workers.

“We were told the police have something against some of our principles and what we stand for as an organisation. Our main aim in marching was for the women’s rights. Are we then saying  lesbians and commercial sex workers are not part of society?”

Zimbabwe is one of many African countries in which homosexual acts are illegal; president Robert Mugabe is on record as saying gays and lesbians are worse than pigs and dogs. Zimbabwe, like neighbouring South Africa, there has been a reported increase in what have been termed “corrective rapes” – sexual assaults on women thought to be lesbians.

Some of the other organisations who took part in the march condemned the police action, saying it violated basic human rights. Lawyer Lizwe Jamela says the police did not have the authority to bar the Sexual Rights Center.

“If it was the police that ordered them out, I don’t find  it in order because it was not a question of [the police] vetting who participates or who does not because they were also [only invited guests at the event]. I think it was just arbitrary. From a human rights point, it’s definitely wrong.”

There have been a number of high profile violations of gay and lesbians’ rights in Africa this year. Malawi sentenced two men to jail after they got engaged in a private ceremony; the men were released, but their trial provoked an outpouring of public ridicule.

In Uganda, parliament is considering a law that would make homosexual acts punishable by death. Several people have been attacked there after their names appeared in a list of supposedly gay Ugandans published by a tabloid.

In November, Mali and Morocco led a vote to remove sexual orientation from a UN resolution against extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions – virtually every other African country followed their lead.

At the end of hte same month, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga unexpectedly told a crowd in his Nairobi constituency that Kenyans found engaging in “homosexuality or lesbianism” would be imprisoned: Kenyan law, dating back to the colonial era, punishes homosexual acts with up to 14 years in prison.

The incident at Bulawayo’s 16 Days of Activism event is a reminder of the violence directed against African gays and lesbians in violation of their human rights.

Faced with nearly six billion dollars of external debt, Zimbabwe’s national unity government is considering applying for Highly Indebted Poor Country status.

There is deep distrust of an IMF & World Bank designed programme that could offer Zimbabwe debt relief. Credit: ZIMCODD

According to the prime minister’s office, the 5.7 billion dollars owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and others prevents the country from borrowing more money, urgently needed to revive its economy.

The finance minister, Tendai Biti, says that joining the Highly Indebted Poor Countries programme is one way out.

HIPC was initiated in 1996 at least partly as a response to criticism of IMF and World Bank economic policy by civil society. The programme provides debt relief and low-interest loans to cancel or reduce external debt repayments.

To be considered for the initiative, countries must have an unsustainable debt burden. Assistance is  on condition that the national governments of these countries meet a range of economic management and performance targets.

“You should know that Zimbabwe is not a poor country. It has vast natural resources, but these resources cannot be turned into capital,” says minister of state in the prime minister’s office Gordon Moyo.

“Zimbabwe should come up with a poverty reduction strategy paper, which is a blue print of how it is going to use the  resources which are going to be availed to it once the debt is cancelled,” continues Moyo. “It is the responsibility of Zimbabwe, it’s not the imposition of the World Bank, IMF or the Paris Club or any other institutions.”

But Dr Qhubani Moyo, a public policy analyst and activist, says Zimbabwe’s economic problems don’t originate with its debt, but with the economic sanctions intended to weaken Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party, which ruled from 1980 until 2008 when it was joined by two factions of the rival Movement for Democratic Change in a unity government.

Responding to the minister’s assertion – citing debt relief and economic growth in Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia and Nigeria – that HIPC has worked well for other African countries, Qhubani Moyo says the comparisons are mistaken.

“If you think that there is one formula for solving problems that hit all African counties, then you will have a serious problem in the long run.

“Countries like Mozambique were coming from a bloody civil war. Zimbabwe is a country whose economy collapsed but there was nothing in terms of destruction of infrastructure and superstructure. Also: if you look at Mozambique and these other countries that have become HIPC countries, the so-called growth is nominal. It’s not being felt at the level of individuals.”

Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development representative Janet Mudzwiti criticises the HIPC plan from a different angle.

“We are against lender-led relief initiatives, simply because their ideology is not pro-people; they are not people-based policies. To us the HIPC principles still hinge on the neo-liberal policies that you have to open up your markets, introduce user fees for social essentials such as health and water. We are saying it’s not different from the Structural Adjustment Programme which was disastrous.”

Regarding the country’s debt, she raises two important issues.

“There is the issue of odious debt and the issue of illegal debt,” Mudzwiti says.

“When you look at the issue of Zimbabwe’s debt profile, there is the issue of colonial debt (incurred by a white-only government between 1965 and 1980). And we have the issue of debt (incurred) under the economic structural adjustment programme.”

Odious debt is debt entered into by a government on behalf of the people, but which doesn’t benefit them. Much of the $500 million dollars of debt run up by the Rhodesian state was spent on fighting a war against the black majority; there is a strong case for that debt to be deemed odious.

Much later, Structural Adjustment Programmes were imposed by the World Bank and IMF across Africa in the 1980s and 1990s as a condition for loans to cover a previous debt crisis.

The conditions it imposed sharply restricted government spending on things like healthcare and education, called for privatisation of valuable state assets and of services like water and electricity, required the devaluation of local currencies, and stopped governments from protecting local production by means of import tariffs.

Zimbabwe’s adoption of structural adjustment proved disastrous for the economy and activists are concerned that the conditions for HIPC may replicate this experience.

Once bitten, twice shy. Qhubani Moyo does not want the country to turn to the Bretton-Woods institutions for answers.

“Zimbabwe has a way of dealing with its problems. We can’t have a one fix solution for all. Zimbabwe has to come up with its own model to use its own resources for its own recovery and its own growth.”

By Zenzele Ndebele
MIDRAND, South Africa, Nov 11 2009 (IPS)

Water is a resource that binds people together, for better or worse.

Building a catchment pond in Uganda: Africa Water Week is a forum to discuss water issues across the continent. Credit: Glenna Thomas/IRIN

The care taken to prevent pesticides or sewage from washing into water supplies in one place, or decisions made in another about managing its flow to generate electricity or irrigate crops: it’s clear that water issues spill over boundaries.

The ongoing Second Africa Water Week taking place in Midrand, South Africa, gathers water ministers, U.N agencies, development partners, civil society and the private sector to discuss water and sanitation. The meeting takes place at the same time as the seventh meeting of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW).

“There is an under-utilisation and uneven sharing of water resources in Africa, and that remains a growing challenge in the achievement of food and energy securities,” African heads of state declared at the Sharm el Shaik summit of the African Union in July 2008.

That concern is part of the force behind the African Ministers’ Council on Water. AMCOW was established in 2002 in recognition of the central role water resources play in sustainable development in Africa.

Opening the meeting on Nov. 9, South Africa’s minister for water and environmental affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica summarised the issues to be discussed in Midrand.

“There will be four themes. First, financing water and sanitation infrastructure. We are also going to be discussing managing trans-boundary waters. We share the rivers in Africa, so we share the water.

“(Third), climate change adaptation. You will appreciate that Africa is very vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“The last theme will be how do we deal with the sanitation gap that exists.”

Sanitation was highlighted as critical to the social, economic and environmental development of Africa at the 2008 AU summit, with a recognition that Africa was lagging behind on achieving sanitation goals.

The Sharm el Shaik summit committed to increasing efforts to implement past promises; and raise the profile of sanitation issues on the continent, to address issues related to water and agriculture and food security; and develop national water management policies in order to achieve MDG targets for water and sanitation by 2015.

Ada Williams works on sanitation issues in West Africa with the non-profit organisation Water Aid. She says that sanitation should be prioritised, including receiving dedicated funding and agencies to design and implement sanitation policy.

She also argues that communities should become more involved in improving sanitation.

“There has hardly been an opportunity for citizens to voice their wants. In fact, all programmes, especially on sanitation, are driven by the expert advice and opinions of people from the outside,” Williams says.

“The opinion of the community is not being heard.”

To Williams’s call for greater citizen involvement, Nkoulou Mfoulou Parfait, a rural engineer from Cameroon, urged better education on water issues.

“At the level of policy, we have to to understand that water is the driver of public health and that in a country like Cameroon more than 60 percent of illnesses are linked to water,” he told IPS.

“It’s necessary to improve public awareness because we don’t stress this enough. We need to talk about it in the media, in schools, so that people know that (unsafe) water is a threat.

“Water is life, but dirty water is death.”

Burkinabé MP Yacouba Sawadogo had a different perspective.

“Water should be an instrument for development, but it’s not. Because we have not mastered the key points that would allow us to harness water for social and economic development. When it rains in West Africa, only 15-17 percent of the water is captured.

“We have to have it before it can be useful. We don’t have it. We don’t have enough water for it to be an instrument of development. We must master water before it can serve development needs.”

AMCOW is seen as a key mechanism for achieving all these goals and more.

As Africa Water Week and the AMCOW summit get underway in South Africa, the water ministers’ president, Bruno J.R. Itoua, sees the body as an important part of the solution to Africa’s problems.

“We think now we have (a body) which is becoming a leader in achieving all the issues about water sanitation in Africa, on behalf of the African Union, governments and civil society. We have established the basis for a very clear leadership on issues of water in Africa.”

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