Women bodies are prerogatives of men they marry? A reply to Khanyi Gumbo!

What an educative article to write Khanyi Gumbo on Bulawayo24, March the 21st 2017. Sorry about that sad experience you had to go through at that tender age. I really could not tell if Khanyi was a female or male. It does not matter anywhere but I just wanted to applaud once more the men who write articles exposing the horrors women have to go through in their social institutions called marriage in Zimbabwe sustained by the culture of silence.

Do men have authority over the bodies of women? Are women's bodies a prerogative of men-husbands? The answer is hell no. Hell no! Our bodies are our own: we women we own our bodies. No man has the right to claim ownership of a woman's body and determine what he wants from a woman's private body. Alone if a woman did not feel like having s*x that day and if forced: that is considered rape. We have day to day rape going on in our homes in silence. Because a woman cannot say no to her married husband she has to be raped. There is no amount of lobola/roora that can buy the body of a woman. Period!

We witness violence against women almost on daily basis. Femicide in Zimbabwe occurs often, is if it's normal: femicide is now a normalised event. Previously, any violent interaction from man and woman automatically it was said: no interference: it is a domestic affair and nobody should interfere: women have died in excruciating circumstances.

All over the world statistics report that 66,000 women are killed by their husbands or intimate partners sometimes in most brutal circumstances. The Sub-Sahara Africa has the highest rates of femicide case the whole world! In South Africa every six hours a woman is killed by a husband or a partner or an intimate male friend. Researched reports also say that in Zimbabwe cases of femicide emanate from women who are accused of witchcraft by any member of the family. Some elderly women who may suffer from diseases like dementia do g out I the night not realizing that they are undressed. When members of the family see her wondering in her birth suit, the next possible reason why she is walking stark nak*d is because she is a witch: she gets killed. She gets hacked to death by axes or machetes. When such cases are heard by Traditional Headmen and Chiefs they support this killing because witchcraft is still an accepted notion in our societies.

Of the murder cases in Zimbabwe 60% of them are of femicide nature. Domestic violence and child-abuse result in deaths of women, girl-children, toddlers and babies. There are babies and toddlers who have died when they got sexually abused by men who still think that they can cure their HIV/AIDS disease by sleeping with virgins. In most cases the nature of their deaths is so concealed by the families concerned, the law enforcement services do not have nearer to correct estimate of women's-  and children's deaths by sexual violence.

Highly talented women do suffer the same fate: an above average woman is not wholly accepted in our societies at all. A woman has to be less than a man intellectually all the time. If she shows signs that she is outshining the husband, there won't be any peace in the home, problems. We have read the fate of women at home and in the Diaspora how such women met their fate by kitchen knives or anything that will leave woman without her soul. There are criminal cases going on in the UK and Canada presently of women killed by their spouses because they happened to be smart. Zimbabwe rates the highest femicide cases in the UK.

Our tradition of roora/lobola, child marriages and virg*nity testing are so outdated and out of line with enlightenment:  they put the women and girls in a vulnerable position; they are to a certain extent the root cause of femicide.  Roora/lobola subordinates the woman, puts a woman at a disadvantage because she already goes to her marriage as a second class persona. When there is violence at home it is accepted as measure of conflict resolution. The culture of silence puts the women at a great disadvantage: violence under such conditions of concealing gender-based violence does extend the suffering of women in the domestic homes. According to research, gender based violence serves to perpetuate men-power and control and is sustained by absolute silence. A "good woman" does not tell it to the mountains that she is abused in the matrimonial home. When women are killed by their intimate partners, it's when one wishes she could have told it all, rather too late.

Women of all ages and girl-children experience sexual violence, physical violence, emotional violence, and psychological violence. Their vulnerability, coming from cultural and traditional practices perpetuates this subservient position of a woman it did not matter how old the woman is: a woman is addressed as a minor and has to behave like a minor towards men! It is also wholly accepted that women and girls can be physically punished by fathers and brothers and husband with absolute impunity. This leads to femicide in most cases.

Some US based author Barbara Mhangami suggests "the urgent need to eradicate gender violence, femicide and gender inequality. Evidence-based policies that specifically address femicide, its drivers and preventative measures must be drafted and implemented. It is imperative that this crisis is addressed through multi sectoral collaboration that attends to the root causes. Strategies must be backed by robust legislative and budgetary commitments and proper implementation of the law. Without immediate active commitment to this fight, the scales of injustice will not only escalate, but will weigh very heavy on our collective bodies and minds." Says Mhangami.

Despite the enactment of laws against gender-based violence, femicide remains very high in Zimbabwe. Khanyi Gumbo, Thank you a lot for that piece of work. If I am not wrong you could be a man. This makes our work to fight gender-based violence a lot easier because some men in our societies do not consider women as second class citizens but as equal partners in their marriages.