Our problems in Zimbabwe are too big, we need women to solve them

Were we not told she is the best that is there? It was the mother I was talking about, I was trying to understand the concept of motherhood that I think has lost its meaning or it has never had any meaning in the first place. I am talking about the African woman and what has happened to her. Did we not all agree to this given angelic aspect of this African mother who can endure almost everything and anything and anytime. Did she not get married, work in small and big offices of authority, or plough in her fields, and got children in various degrees in numbers from zero to fifteen and nineteen? Yes she did, but how did she manage all that and kept on smiling?

Did she smile always when she had to deliver a baby every year, work so hard in the fields, cooks the meals daily, wash the clothes of the entire family, fetch the firewood and water, bear the ruthless husband, and survive the brutal beatings? She got her children through rape but she loved the children of her womb. In some cases when she was beaten to death, she stopped crying because she was dead. "Make you no cry again"! At the hour of her death she ran away with her life. But again in some cases again she enjoyed the status of a mother at home to the full and she sang the song: "Sweet mother, make you no cry again". Now, how many colors does this sweet mother have?

African family setups are dependent on this sweet mother and her abilities and capabilities. She has shown it in various degrees how she can make the micro-economies of the Sub-Sahara tick by keeping them afloat. Some sweet mothers are educated and they run homes singlehandedly: hence they are called woman-headed-families. (Omazakhela) Sweet mothers are in charge of many vendor market economies of buying and selling and by so doing they sustain families. Some income comes home and the children can go to school because there are school fees, books, school uniforms and pocket money. Sweet mothers are at home looking after the children while the husbands are working. Sweet mothers are also mothers who got children at their fathers' homestead and never managed to get married hence they are called: "those girls that got children without fathers", Mvana, wakabva vana. The colors of sweet mothers are unending. Sweet mothers cut across race and tribal divides, they cut across continents looking into all forms of survival because sweet mothers have gone global. They could be spiritual mothers as well by connecting their religious beliefs with their offspring only, they pray for their offspring for their wellbeing. Yes, the families are dependent of their emotional wellbeing on the sweet mother. She nurtures the family with her warm love, given to her by nature. She is consciously and unconsciously protective of the offspring. The success of most offspring stems from the ability of sweet mother who is the rock of the family. One cannot even imagine a home without a sweet mother as she appears to be everything in the home. But, she is very cruel, very cruel this sweet mother. In her effort not to cry again she can beat, insult, spit and even commit crimes beyond the pale. She can be very unpredictable in her nature and she hides so much of her pervasiveness beneath the veneer of a sweet mother. She can insinuate fights among other women, she can tell lies, she can be the divisive factor in most misunderstandings and she can even render false advice to younger girls and cause havoc to their lives. She is a very jealous person and could be a witch too. If she thinks she is not loved enough by her husband, she would commit him with some love potions.

What is a sweet mother? Who is the sweet mother? Is it the mother who biologically got the offspring or a female who gave emotional aspect of child and children? Can a childless woman be a sweet mother? Would she be able to empathize in the same way as the biological woman? A sweet mother is a mother of many colors and dimensions. There is no set of rules how they should be as they are very different in color, their hearts are of different colors. Colors of their hearts! It means that their values and virtues are different. This eBook "Sweetmother" highlights the life experiences of daughters with their mothers inclusively and how they affect societal family transformations. We look at some aspects of how a sweet mother can make and break the family. Their life experiences reflects the different colors of sweet mothers who all of them wish "never to cry again". It is the sweet mother who would be a projection of the life of the daughter, the son, the man and the woman for better and for worse. It is the art in which they deal with their wish never to cry that is a life changer to all children, men and women. It is the absolute dependence that children, men and women put on their mother that makes life extremely challenging to her: making and breaking them because of their effort never to cry again. The eBook takes it upon itself to develop and argue, offer suggestions, clues about the way forward but certainly not to mean this book has made breaking points or definite answers to the issues regarding the sweet mother, just to subvert evil getting the upper hand according to Shaw and take away the thunder in women's lives. Answers would be found in the union of sweet mothers themselves, in the working together of sweet mothers in Zimbabwe in relation to their regional and global connections. They would seek the root causes of the challenges women face in Zimbabwe and be able to name their problems, poverty whose gender is curiously feminine. It is therefore pertinent to argue that if poverty is feminine, the eradication of poverty is to educate women and girls. Only then can there be a sustainable elimination of poverty in Zimbabwean societies. Because Zimbabwe belongs to a family of nations, sweet mothers would seek answers to challenges affecting their lives by projecting its partnership and connectedness with progressive forces in the global village.