Opinion / Columnist
Approaching International Women's Year 2016: We join hands in celebration with Mnumzana Albert Nyathi and Patson Dzamara
28 Feb 2016 at 21:09hrs | Views
We are nearing the month March with loads of social events, among many other important events; we shall be celebrating the international women's year. We reflect our successes and failures in our respective countries. In Germany where I reside, the focus is on women and children who found warmth and comfort in German hands having left their beloved countries: Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan with a very painful heart. Reasons why they had to flee; there is war. The common basic needs all human beings yearn for is safety of their beloved families and above all, civil life, human acceptances irrespective of religion, gender and culture differences. Those are basic human needs enshrined in the UN for Human rights.
In Zimbabwe the reasons of exodus to South Africa, UK, Canada, USA or New Zealand to some, to squat and squalor are different too. The freedom of religion is in abundance in Zimbabwe. There is a church at every corner of the street shouting: Jehovah mufudzi wangu, ujehovah ngumelusi wami! The women in Zimbabwe have serious and heart-breaking challenges in their lives. It is the poverty smelling at every corner of the country, in rural areas it is worse. It is poverty that mostly compels us to leave and go somewhere; it is this "somewhere" we always think, it is better, somewhere and not at home.
Our girl-children have no future perspective to look forward to, so they are compelled to leave and go somewhere. Zimbabwe is not safe for our toddlers, girls, young women, mothers and grandmothers, are in danger of gender-based violence. If rape occurs at the rate of every 90 minutes, it says a lot about safety of our land Zimbabwe, it is indeed a national security issue.
Food insecurities mostly in rural areas are very serious. The El Nino is on record for the past two consecutive years. Most areas of Matabeleland are reporting famine and desperation in terms of food shortages. It may rain now, but the farming season has passed, another failed harvest this year. Again food shortages are a national security issue too.
The past year, we have witnessed several women reported killed by their spouses. Savage beatings of women, wives, mothers and grand-mothers are the order of the day curiously in every societal ladders of the establishment and even in higher social mobility sections of the country. We have read with utter disgust how our Prosecutor General Tomana interpreted the law to acquit his fellow friend, could be a paedophile, if found guilty, Munyaradzi Kereke, ironically a law maker in Zimbabwe's good parliament. In civilized countries Prosecutor General is supposed to have resigned from his post long, long back.
Self-induced abortions or non-clinical ones painfully kill hundreds of our young women in Zimbabwe because abortion is illegal in Zimbabwean hospitals. Rape is so wide spread, how many young girls are forced to still keep pregnancies through rape because getting abortion in the hospital through rape is an uphill task? How many child-infanticides do we read in social media, girls have no means to maintain fatherless babies born in most devious and excruciation circumstances? Babies are dumped in Blair toilets, in wild animals infested bushes, in rivers, strangled immediately after birth, not because of cruelty on the part of the woman, but shear desperation on the part of the girl, poverty.
In all our challenges and adversities in Zimbabwe, what stands out is gender based violence. The disproportionate beatings and killings of women have even touched the vein-running of our Bulawayo eminent artist: Mnumzana Albert Nyathi. Hardly 24 hours, was I penning a note to Mnumzana Patson Dzamara appreciating him for his sensitivity regarding women? His article was telling the Legislator Maziwisa to refrain from using denigrating language to describe women. I read again in the Bulawayo 24 of the February 28th about Mnumzana Albert Nyathi finding answers through art to fight gender-based violence. I smiled and beamed. Some Zimbabwean men are gender sensitive indeed! They are on our side in our fight against gender-based violence.
One can sincerely conclude with equal truth that there is a section of men in our society who are gender sensitive, they respect their women and sisters and mothers and daughters. We welcome this and we are proud to see prominent people like Mnumzana Nyathi going further, taking those initiatives to educate our communities against gender violence. Be it drama or plays, that kind of art sends strong messages to the societies to think and retract their violent behaviours towards women and children.
Sociologists, psychologist political scientist and lawyers etc. are found wanting in finding out through thorough and comprehensive research works, the root causes of high levels, unprecedented and disproportionate abuse of women and girl-children in our societies today. It could be possible that the level of poverty has ravaged societal values and principles we all held as Africans: Ubuntu. Ubuntu bungaphi lapho if a man of 50 years can enjoy sexual intercourse with a child of eight, a baby of two years, a girl of 11 years without any guilt as long as it's not his biological child. Even biological fathers and grandfathers have been caught sexually abusing their underage grandchildren. Everybody will agree with me that it's not in our culture to engage sexually with toddlers. But why is it done?
It is worse still for those women who bring in with them girl-children in their second attempt to get married. It's those wicked step-fathers that will use the wife by the night and abuse the step-child by the day equally as he will be the provider of the household. If it's not in the main-line grammar with the cultural thinking, where does this sexual abuse of minors come from, by the very people they are looked up to as guardians and providers? Is there an end to this abuse? Do these men who abuse the babies' toddlers, girls and young women know the long term consequences of sexual abuse? Ignorantly they don't know.
One of our great successes is the need to deliberate a Women's Manifesto this year 2016. We wish that women of all social sections of the Zimbabwe will embrace the need to produce a document, a Women's Manifesto. We shall learn to put aside our political, religious, ethnic differences and work together as one in putting the document together. For the first time women will work together and manage to give themselves time to speak with one voice, a voice that will give answers to our social challenges facing us as women. It will be topics on gender-violence that will find more attention to issues regarding women in Zimbabwe in the women's manifesto. The document will emphasize on women-empowerment that will indeed alleviate poverty and reduce violence in our societies. In some cases, people are less violent if their stomachs are full. An empty stomach nurtures violence and feeds on violence until a human being is reduced to an animal. Fight or flight!
On behalf of all women in Zimbabwe, I wish to thank Mnumzana Albert Nyathi for the great work he has taken, to effect change in the stereotype thinking of men that regard women as mere objects of sex and objects sentenced to hard labour in homes. Because gender violence is so multi-faceted, some men will argue and say, "I don't beat my wife and my daughters; it is their non-physical, mostly economic deprivation, emotional violence in the form of insults, sexual advances at work places, deprivation of health facilities, and many other aspects of abuse on women that are equally termed as gender-based violence. The most vulnerable niche is the women with physical and mental challenges, who cannot manage to fight back any abuse against them.
Mnumzana Nyathi is using his talent to educate the society of its poverty induced ills- gender-based violence against. Music, drama and even debates will go a long way in sensitising our men folk and thereby saving our girls, toddlers' young women and mothers from gender-based violence. There is indeed light at the end of the dark tunnel. Mnumzana Albert Nyathi and Mnumzana Dzamara I salute you. You really stand out as men among men! God Bless you!
U gogo omncane
Chirikadzi
In Zimbabwe the reasons of exodus to South Africa, UK, Canada, USA or New Zealand to some, to squat and squalor are different too. The freedom of religion is in abundance in Zimbabwe. There is a church at every corner of the street shouting: Jehovah mufudzi wangu, ujehovah ngumelusi wami! The women in Zimbabwe have serious and heart-breaking challenges in their lives. It is the poverty smelling at every corner of the country, in rural areas it is worse. It is poverty that mostly compels us to leave and go somewhere; it is this "somewhere" we always think, it is better, somewhere and not at home.
Our girl-children have no future perspective to look forward to, so they are compelled to leave and go somewhere. Zimbabwe is not safe for our toddlers, girls, young women, mothers and grandmothers, are in danger of gender-based violence. If rape occurs at the rate of every 90 minutes, it says a lot about safety of our land Zimbabwe, it is indeed a national security issue.
Food insecurities mostly in rural areas are very serious. The El Nino is on record for the past two consecutive years. Most areas of Matabeleland are reporting famine and desperation in terms of food shortages. It may rain now, but the farming season has passed, another failed harvest this year. Again food shortages are a national security issue too.
The past year, we have witnessed several women reported killed by their spouses. Savage beatings of women, wives, mothers and grand-mothers are the order of the day curiously in every societal ladders of the establishment and even in higher social mobility sections of the country. We have read with utter disgust how our Prosecutor General Tomana interpreted the law to acquit his fellow friend, could be a paedophile, if found guilty, Munyaradzi Kereke, ironically a law maker in Zimbabwe's good parliament. In civilized countries Prosecutor General is supposed to have resigned from his post long, long back.
Self-induced abortions or non-clinical ones painfully kill hundreds of our young women in Zimbabwe because abortion is illegal in Zimbabwean hospitals. Rape is so wide spread, how many young girls are forced to still keep pregnancies through rape because getting abortion in the hospital through rape is an uphill task? How many child-infanticides do we read in social media, girls have no means to maintain fatherless babies born in most devious and excruciation circumstances? Babies are dumped in Blair toilets, in wild animals infested bushes, in rivers, strangled immediately after birth, not because of cruelty on the part of the woman, but shear desperation on the part of the girl, poverty.
In all our challenges and adversities in Zimbabwe, what stands out is gender based violence. The disproportionate beatings and killings of women have even touched the vein-running of our Bulawayo eminent artist: Mnumzana Albert Nyathi. Hardly 24 hours, was I penning a note to Mnumzana Patson Dzamara appreciating him for his sensitivity regarding women? His article was telling the Legislator Maziwisa to refrain from using denigrating language to describe women. I read again in the Bulawayo 24 of the February 28th about Mnumzana Albert Nyathi finding answers through art to fight gender-based violence. I smiled and beamed. Some Zimbabwean men are gender sensitive indeed! They are on our side in our fight against gender-based violence.
Sociologists, psychologist political scientist and lawyers etc. are found wanting in finding out through thorough and comprehensive research works, the root causes of high levels, unprecedented and disproportionate abuse of women and girl-children in our societies today. It could be possible that the level of poverty has ravaged societal values and principles we all held as Africans: Ubuntu. Ubuntu bungaphi lapho if a man of 50 years can enjoy sexual intercourse with a child of eight, a baby of two years, a girl of 11 years without any guilt as long as it's not his biological child. Even biological fathers and grandfathers have been caught sexually abusing their underage grandchildren. Everybody will agree with me that it's not in our culture to engage sexually with toddlers. But why is it done?
It is worse still for those women who bring in with them girl-children in their second attempt to get married. It's those wicked step-fathers that will use the wife by the night and abuse the step-child by the day equally as he will be the provider of the household. If it's not in the main-line grammar with the cultural thinking, where does this sexual abuse of minors come from, by the very people they are looked up to as guardians and providers? Is there an end to this abuse? Do these men who abuse the babies' toddlers, girls and young women know the long term consequences of sexual abuse? Ignorantly they don't know.
One of our great successes is the need to deliberate a Women's Manifesto this year 2016. We wish that women of all social sections of the Zimbabwe will embrace the need to produce a document, a Women's Manifesto. We shall learn to put aside our political, religious, ethnic differences and work together as one in putting the document together. For the first time women will work together and manage to give themselves time to speak with one voice, a voice that will give answers to our social challenges facing us as women. It will be topics on gender-violence that will find more attention to issues regarding women in Zimbabwe in the women's manifesto. The document will emphasize on women-empowerment that will indeed alleviate poverty and reduce violence in our societies. In some cases, people are less violent if their stomachs are full. An empty stomach nurtures violence and feeds on violence until a human being is reduced to an animal. Fight or flight!
On behalf of all women in Zimbabwe, I wish to thank Mnumzana Albert Nyathi for the great work he has taken, to effect change in the stereotype thinking of men that regard women as mere objects of sex and objects sentenced to hard labour in homes. Because gender violence is so multi-faceted, some men will argue and say, "I don't beat my wife and my daughters; it is their non-physical, mostly economic deprivation, emotional violence in the form of insults, sexual advances at work places, deprivation of health facilities, and many other aspects of abuse on women that are equally termed as gender-based violence. The most vulnerable niche is the women with physical and mental challenges, who cannot manage to fight back any abuse against them.
Mnumzana Nyathi is using his talent to educate the society of its poverty induced ills- gender-based violence against. Music, drama and even debates will go a long way in sensitising our men folk and thereby saving our girls, toddlers' young women and mothers from gender-based violence. There is indeed light at the end of the dark tunnel. Mnumzana Albert Nyathi and Mnumzana Dzamara I salute you. You really stand out as men among men! God Bless you!
U gogo omncane
Chirikadzi
Source - Nomazulu Thata
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