Gender politics and the pendulum of political and social transformation in Zimbabwe

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 49-67

  Ranchod Nilsson, Sita ^a  

^a DENISON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER ROLE; POLITICAL PARTICIPATION; SOCIAL PARTICIPATION; TRANSFORMATION; WOMENS STATUS;

AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; ZIMBABWE;

EID: 33644860853     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070500493761     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. Quoted in, 'Zim Women Fight for Lost Rights', Daily Mail and Guardian, 10 June 1999.
2. WAG, Speak Out!, 48 (August/October 1999).
3. Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI), 'Urgent Action Alert: Court Decision Denying Women's Inheritance Rights Violates International Human Rights Treaties', 30 June 1999.
4. See M. Osirim, 'Women, Domestic Violence and Rape in Southern Africa', African Studies Quarterly, 2 & 3 (2003)
5. 'We Were the Sex Slaves of Mugabe's Men', The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 31 March 2002
6. and 'Zim Women Speak Up', Mail & Guardian Online, http://archive.mg.co.za, 12 August 2003.
7. For more on women in nationalist movements in sub-Saharan Africa, see J. Allman and V. Tashjian, I Will Not Eat Stone: A Women's History of Colonial Asante (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2000)
8. S. Geiger, TANU Women: Gender and Culture in the Making of Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955-1965 (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 1997)
9. C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa (London, Onyx Press, 1982)
10. S. Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms (New York,Monthly Review Press, 1979) and 'Women in National Liberation Movements', in M. Hay and S. Stichter (eds), African Women South of the Sahara (New York,Longman, 1984), pp. 156-69
11. and for a broader discussion of women in the transition from revolution to state consolidation see S. Kruks et al. (eds), Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1989)
12. and A. Matsuoka and J. Sorenson, 'After Independence: Prospects for Women in Eritrea' (proceedings of Women's Worlds '99: The 7th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Troms, Norway, 20-26 June 1999).
13. M. Tétreault (ed.), Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia and the New World (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1994).
14. G. Seidman, '"No Freedom Without Women": Mobilization and Gender in South Africa, 1970-1992', in B. Laslett et al. (eds), Rethinking the Political: Gender, Resistance and the State (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 210-39.
15. S. Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 30-31.
16. For an expanded discussion of gender and state politics see L. Manicom, 'Ruling Relations: Rethinking State and Gender in South African History', Journal of African History, 33 (1992), pp. 441-65. It is also important to point out that these struggles include, but are not limited to women's issues. In 1995, President Mugabe shocked many in Zimbabwe and the international community with his hateful denunciation of homosexuality at the opening of the annual International Book Fair in Harare.
17. The notion of an 'ambiguous legacy' of the liberation struggle has been developed elsewhere. See N. Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, 1991)
18. D. Lan, Guns and Rain (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985)
19. I. Phimister, 'The Combined and Contradictory Inheritance of the Struggle against Colonialism', in C. Stoneman (ed.), Zimbabwe's Prospects (London, Macmillan, 1988), pp. 8-27.
20. See S. Ranchod-Nilsson, '"This, too, is a Way of Fighting": Women in Revolution in Zimbabwe', in Tétreault (ed.), Women in Revolution in Africa, pp. 62-88
21. S. Ranchod-Nilsson, 'Zimbabwe: Women, Cultural Crisis and the Reconfiguration of the One-Party State', in L. Villalón and P. Huxtable (eds), The African State at Critical Juncture: Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2000), pp. 255-76
22. S. Ranchod-Nilsson, '(Gender) Struggles for the Nation: Power, Agency, and Representation in Zimbabwe', in S. Ranchod-Nilsson and M. Tétreault (eds), Women, States and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 164-80.
23. See N. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003)
24. and 'The Politics of Creating National Heroes: The Search for Political Legitimacy and National Identity', in N. Bhebhe and T. Ranger (eds), Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War (London, James Currey, 1995) pp. 139-62.
25. See A. Astrow, Zimbabwe: A Revolution Lost Its Way? (London, Zed Press, 1982)
26. D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1981)
27. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness;
28. Lan, Guns and Rain;
29. See, Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War
30. Ranchod-Nilsson, 'This, too, Is a Way of Fighting'
31. and T. Ranger, 'Women in the Politics of Makoni District, 1890-1980', (unpublished paper)
32. R. Weiss, Women of Zimbabwe (London, Kesho, 1986)
33. A.K.H. Weinrich, Women and Racial Discrimination in Rhodesia (Paris, Unesco, 1979)
34. I. Staunton, Mothers of the Nation (Harare, Baobab, 1990).
35. There were a number of liberation movements in Zimbabwe that involved both political and military organisations. For much of the liberation war, it is fair to say that ZANU and ZAPU and their military counterparts ZANLA and ZIPRA, respectively, were recognised as the two most influential movements. In 1977, under international pressure, the movements united under the rubric of the 'Patriotic Front'. This article emphasizes the activities of ZANU/ZANLA for two reasons. First, this was the liberation movement-turned-political party that has held power in Zimbabwe since independence. Second, information on the gender dimensions of the rural mobilisation during the liberation war is drawn from my own research on Wedza district.
36. See Ranchod-Nilsson, 'This, too, is a Way of Fighting'
37. On Mozambique see E. Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969)
38. and S. Urdang, And Still They Dance (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1989).
39. Interview with Joyce Mujuru, then Minister of Community Development, Cooperatives and Women's Affairs, Harare, 21 November 1988. Chimurenga refers to the African uprising of 1890 in Southern Rhodesia which was frequently invoked during the armed liberation struggle almost a century later. It was common for combatants to adopt chimurenga names, not only to invoke the earlier uprising, but to reinforce the notion that they were children of the soil, or the entire country, as opposed to a particular area or lineage.
40. Interview with Fay Chung, then Minister of Education, Harare, 21 November 1988.
41. England in Phimister, 'The Combined and Contradictory Inheritance'.
42. Interview with Oppah Muchinguri, Harare, 13 April 1989.
43. Interview with Sr Janice McLaughlin, Harare, 23 May 1989.
44. According to Fay Chung, 'The original leaders were said to operate in a traditional way... These men might have several women in a very feudal sort of system and this became an issue.' (Interview with Fay Chung, Harare, 21 November 1988).
45. I am grateful to Pamela Scully for her insight on this point.
46. ZANU, Documents from the ZANU Women's Seminar, May 1979.
47. J. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, For Better or Worse? Women and ZANLA in Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle (Harare, Weaver Press, 2000), p. xxi.
48. I want to be careful not to overstate the case for 'new' gender relations within the military camps. Nhongo-Simbanegavi points out, for example, that many of the women who came to the military camps in Mozambique were refused training and, instead, classified as refugees. Those women who received military training often received educational or political assignments. Moreover, ZANLA did not know what to do with pregnant combatants. In 1977 they created Osibisa, a camp for nursing and expectant mothers. Women combatants viewed being sent to Osibisa as punishment and felt that, far from being revered as mothers, they were being condemned.
49. See Staunton, Mothers of the Revolution for women's accounts of how they survived living in the midst of the two opposing armies.
50. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, For Better or Worse?, p. 25.
51. On this point see Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War
52. S. Chinodya's novel, Harvest of Thorns (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 1991) also addresses the breakdown of discipline within the liberation army and its impact on relations between combatants and rural people.
53. According to Nhongo-Simbanegavi, one of very few scholars to have access to ZANLA archives, 'Wedza district was classified as a "contested area", an area where both ZANLA and the Rhodesian forces were operational, and referred to as "Vietnam", a term reportedly alluding to the continuous sounds of gunfire as the guerrillas and Rhodesian agents exchanged fire' (For Better or Worse?, p. 80).
54. For a detailed discussion of gender struggles during the liberation struggle in Wedza district, see S. Ranchod-Nilsson, '"Educating Eve": The Women's Club Movement and Political Consciousness Among Rural African Women in Southern Rhodesia, 1950-1980', in K.T. Hansen (ed.), African Encounters with Domesticity (Rutgers, Rutgers University Press, 1992), and 'This, too, is a Way of Fighting'.
55. For a complete analysis of these issues see Ranger, Peasant Consciousness
56. and Lan, Guns and Rain.
57. See E. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders & Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (Portsmouth NH, Heinemann, 1992).
58. Lan makes this point about peasant involvement in the liberation war in general. I draw upon this, but argue that the peasant experience was a gendered experience, and that rural women's agendas were, in some ways, distinct from men's. See Lan, Guns and Rain, p. 123.
59. For a more complete account of rural women's participation in the liberation struggle in Wedza district see Ranchod-Nilsson, 'This, too, is a way of Fighting'.
60. Interview with woman in Wedza district, 17 February 1989
61. See Kriger, Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War and Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe
62. and Lan, Guns and Rain.
63. J. Tungamirai, 'Recruitment to ZANLA: Building a War Machine', in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds), Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War (London, James Currey, 1995).
64. For an expanded discussion of this issue see N. Kriger, 'The Politics of Creating National Heroes: The Politics of Political Legitimacy and National Identity', in Bhebe and Ranger (eds), Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War.
65. See N. Yuval-Davis and F. Anthias (eds), Woman-Nation-State (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1989)
66. and A. McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Colonial Context (London, Routledge, 1995).
67. Interview with a woman in Wedza district, 23 February 1989.
68. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, For Better or Worse?
69. and Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans.
70. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 100.
71. Interview with a male ex-combatant, Harare, 20 November 1988. The difficulties of women ex-combatants demobilising are also described in Chindoya's novel Harvest of Thorns and I. Sinclair's 1996 film, Flame.
72. S. Jacobs, 'Zimbabwe: State, Class and Gendered Models of Land Resettlement', in J. Parpart and K. Staudt (eds), Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 1989), pp. 161-84.
73. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 182.
74. MCDWA, Community Action, 1 (Harare, Government of Zimbabwe, 1983).
75. Results of this research were published in the Report of the Situation of Women in Zimbabwe, compiled by the MCDWA (MCDWA in co-operation with UNICEF, Harare, 1982).
76. G. Seidman, 'Women in Zimbabwe: Postindependence Struggles', Feminist Studies, 10, 3 (1984), pp. 419-40.
77. Other important legal reforms that impacted women include the Equal Pay Regulations Act (1980), the Labour Relations Act (1985), and the Public Service Pensions (Amendment Regulations 1985). For a complete discussion of legal reforms see W. Ncube et al., Continuity & Change: The Family in Zimbabwe (Harare, WLSA, 1997)
78. and J. Stewart et al., In the Shadow of the Law: Women and Justice Delivery in Zimbabwe (Harare, WLSA, 2000).
79. See Nhongo-Simbanegavi, For Better of Worse? p. 142.
80. Jacobs, 'Zimbabwe: State, Class and Gendered Models of Land Resettlement', p. 179
81. and A. Goebell, '"Here it is the land, the two of us": Women, Men and Land in a Zimbabwean Resettlement Area', Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 17, 1 (1999), pp. 75-96.
82. 'Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe', Human Rights Watch, 14, 1 (March 2002), p. 31.
83. See Jacobs, 'Zimbabwe: State, Class and Gendered Models of Land Resettlement', p. 179
84. and A. Goebel, Gender and Land Reform: The Zimbabwe Experience (Montreal, McGill-Queens University Press, 2005).
85. WAG, Women Speak Out!, 1, 1 (1984).
86. See P. Watson, Determined to Act (Harare, Women's Action Group, 1999).
87. G. Geisler, 'Troubled Sisterhood: Women and Politics in Southern Africa', Journal of African Affairs, 94 (1995), pp. 545-78. Both Geisler and Watson point out that those women identified as 'prostitutes' in the state's campaigns were often independent, professional women who worked as teachers, secretaries or nurses and did not live under the immediate control of a male relative.
88. See E. Batezat, M. Mwalo and K. Truscott, 'Women and Independence: The Heritage and the Struggle', in Stoneman (ed.), Zimbabwe's Prospect, pp. 153-73.
89. SAPEM, (March 1990), p. 24.
90. The Chronicle, 2 August 1994.
91. Sunday Mail, 13 November 1994.
92. Sunday Mail, 20 November, 1994. Despite the rhetoric against it, LAMA did little to affect the practice of lobola. Although, according to the Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network, the practice had become highly commercialised, with charges in 1995 running as high as Z$5,000 to Z$10,000 per bride, in practice, few women were getting married without lobola.
93. See C. Getecha and J. Chipika, Zimbabwe Women's Voices (Harare, Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network, 1995).
94. 'Zimbabwe Parliament Threatens Women's Rights', Daily Mail and Guardian, 12 February 1999.
95. D. Bigge and A. von Briesen, 'Conflict in the Zimbabwean Courts: Women's Rights and Indigenous Self-Determination in 'Magaya v. Magaya', Harvard Human Rights Journal, 13 (2000).
96. J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2000), especially Chapter 8
97. J. McGregor, 'The Politics of Disruption in Zimbabwe' African Affairs, 101 ((2002), p. 402.
98. B. Raftopoulos, 'The Labour Movement and the Emergence of Opposition Politics in Zimbabwe', in B. Raftopoulos and L. Sachikonye, Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe 1980-2000 (Harare, Weaver Press, 2001).
99. S. Dorman, 'NGOs and the Constitutional Debate in Zimbabwe,' Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 4 (2003), p. 848.
100. Ministry of Community Development and Women's Affairs, Summary of Achievements and Future Projections (unpublished report, Harare, Government of Zimbabwe, 1985).
101. Also see Geisler, 'Troubled Sisterhood'.
102. Geisler, 'Troubled Sisterhood'.
103. K. Jirira, 'The Condition of Women: Has It Improved?', SAPEM (Harare), April 1990, pp. 13-23, quoted in Geisler, 'Troubled Sisterhood'.
104. 'No Regrets in Wearing Mugabe's Portrait: Chikwinya', Zimbabwe Independent, 10 September 1999
105. Ibid.
106. Dorman, 'NGOs and the Constitutional Debate in Zimbabwe', p. 847.
107. M. Osirum, 'Making Good on Commitments to Grassroots Women: NGOs and Empowerment for Women in Contemporary Zimbabwe', Women's Studies International Forum, 24, 2 (2001), pp. 167-80.
108. Ibid., p. 175.
109. Ibid., p. 176
110. The Musasa Project, 'Counseling, Legal Services and Shelter Annual Report' (Harare, The Musasa Project, 1999).
111. P. Watson, Determined to Act: The First 15 Years of the Women's Action Group (Harare, Women's Action Group, 1998), p. 21.
112. Ibid.
113. Mumbengegwi was replaced in early 2000. See 'Coalition dismisses shift from 'No' vote stance,' Daily News, 24 January 2000, and 'Harare women march against draft constitution' Standard, 2 February 2000.
114. G. Kauth, 'How Can Zimbabwe's Land Resettlement Program Be Made Gender Sensitive', Resource Net, Friday File, 66, Friday 1 March 2002, .
115. Zimbabwe, Land Reform and Resettlement Programme: Revised Phase II (Harare, Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Resettlement, April 2001), p. 13,
116. cited in A. Goebel, Gender and Land Reform, The Zimbabwe Experience (Montreal, McGill-Queens University Press, 2005), p. 143.
117. Cited in Kauth, 'How Can Zimbabwe's Land Resettlement Program Be Made Gender Sensitive?', Resource Net, Friday File, 66, Friday 1 March 2002 .
118. Raftopoulous, 'The Labour Movement and the Emergence of Opposition Politics in Zimbabwe', pp. 1-25.
119. The most prominent organisation of war veterans has been the Zimbabwe National War Veterans' Association, a national organisation representing both ZANLA and ZIPRA ex-combatants. McGregor points out that those veterans who have been most active in pursuing an alliance with ZANU(PF) 'have been drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the unemployed or poorly remunerated, who lack education and prospects'. McGregor, 'The Politics of Disruption', p. 11.
120. 'Zim Women Speak Up,' Daily Mail & Guardian, 12 August 2003
121. S.R. Mumbengegwi, 'Political Violence Must End', Speak Out/Taurai/ Khulumani, 51 (May-June 2000), p. 3.
122. See A. Tripp, 'The Politics of Autonomy and Cooptation in Africa: The Case of the Ugandan Women's Movement', Journal of Modern African Studies, 39, 1 (2001) pp. 101-28.