The Social Movement for Equality and Citizenship, a movement established by the Democratic League for Women's Rights in Morocco, has put forth a new project in which it calls on Moroccan women to vote responsibly during the coming legislative elections and to defend their demands. The movement named the project, which receives support from the Fund for Supporting Equality between the Sexes, the "Responsible Citizen Project".

Ministers for gender and women’s affairs from southern Africa have endorsed the contents of a Gender Protocol that would make regional decisions on gender equality legally binding for the first time. The protocol contains several measures to address the attainment of commitments to gender equality, justice and women’s empowerment in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The National Faith-Based Council of Zimbabwe (NFBCZ)
Based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Two-year contract (with the possibility of renewal)
For further information and an application form visit (see section "jobs @ Progressio").
Closing date: 19 August 2007
Interviews: End August 2007

Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN. Based in Harare, Zimbabwe Two-year contract (with the possibility of renewal)
For further information and an application form visit (see section "jobs @ Progressio").
Closing date: 16 August 2007

Interviews: End of August 2007

A group of nursing mothers were ordered to put down their babies by Zimbabwean police before being beaten for hours. The six women were among 160 people rounded up at the offices of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), an organisation dedicated to constitutional reform, after activists tried to hold a demonstration.

Ghana's newly appointed Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood has reaffirmed her commitment to ensure that issues involving women and children were "speedily dealt with at the law courts." Ms Wood is the first female Chief Justice to take office in Ghana.

Two years ago, a government official broke into a home, seized property and detained one of the occupants without a warrant. Two Ugandan lesbians are suing the government for trespassing, theft of property, illegal arrest, and inhuman and degrading treatment. The case has been in court since December 2006 and a verdict is expected when the court session resumes in August.

For the first time in Zambia, men having sex with other men (MSM) will have a government endorsed assessment aimed at identifying their existence and sexual behaviour in relation to HIV and Aids. This is done to draw the government’s attention to health issues faced by MSM in that country.

Uganda's decision to bestow more of its university scholarships on science students worries gender advocates in a country where female scientists face strong cultural bias. Education advocates such as the Forum for African Women Educationalists, say the new scholarship policy will further restrict the number of women going to university because of cultural biases against girls in science

The finalists of the 2007 Shoprite Checkers / SABC 2 Woman of the Year Award were announced in Johannesburg and these 21 outstanding achievers selected from over a thousand nominations countrywide, will now compete for the prestigious 2007 Shoprite Checkers / SABC 2 Woman of the Year title. The finalists include world-renowned sportswoman and administrators, internationally recognised researchers, academics, public health workers and business entrepreneurs who have achieved not only in their own right but who have also made a difference to the broader South African society.

"It is a nasty experience, which I do not want to be reminded of. But if you try to keep it to yourself, it will remain a shock for a long time. I cannot even explain the pain I felt after being told that I was carrying dead bodies in my womb," says Sesedzai Manzanga, a Harare teacher, as she recounts giving birth to a dead set of twins two years ago.

Daughters have become a high-priced commodity in Zimbabwe, where a dowry has become a means of escaping poverty in a rapidly declining economy. "When people are mired in such hunger as we have been seeing in this country for over seven years, they will do anything to survive," Innocent Makwiramiti, a Harare-based economist, told IRIN.

LGBTI organisations appear to be taking some action after the recent murder of a lesbian couple in Soweto. The Joint Working Group (JWG) - a national network of LGBTI organisations and partners - hosted a meeting on 18 July at Constitution Hill Women’s Gaol. It was attended by a range of organisations and individuals with the purpose of coordinating various initiatives in response to the murders of Salome Masooa and Sizakele Sigasa - two black, lesbian activists who were killed in Soweto two weeks ago.

Much of the discourse on women and information and communication technologies (ICTs) seems to indicate that as a result of using these technologies, marginalised groups like rural women can get empowered. ResearcherPatricia Litho conducted a case study of an ICT project that was established in Uganda with an aim of economically empowering women, to asses the extent to which rural women were able to access ICTs, and if as a result they were empowered as claimed by the project reports.

The idea of the grand debate remains everything but grand in so far as the debate is seen as an imposition by our leaders, to the exclusion of the people, especially the masses, and of course we know that women constitute the bulk.

When I first heard about it, I asked myself a couple of questions which I did not get answers to. First, I asked why it is qualified by the adjective, ‘grand’ when there is really nothing grand about it in either scope or substance.

The idea of the grand debate remains everything but grand in so far as the debate is seen as an imposition by our leaders to the exclusion of the people, especially the masses, and of course we know that women constitute the bulk. There can be nothing grand about the debate so long as its train is moving, and the people, both women and men, are not carried along with it.

One of the next questions I asked myself was: why should we be having this debate in the first place? I would have thought that the question 'to be or not to be' on regional integration is as good as answered; and the questions remain ‘when’ and ‘how’? The question should not be: whether or not. It is a given, and there is no going back. It is a situation of forward ever, backward never. Unlike the OAU, the AU's envisioning for Africa of a peaceful, united and prosperous continent driven by its people lays claim to be a union of African people, and not just a club of heads of states. But how far this is true, we are yet to see.

Our leaders did not stop at theorising. They stepped further by creating new organs like the Pan African Parliament (PAP) and the Economic and Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) through which the voice of the people will be projected to provide room for popular participation by the people in its activities.

The adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights in 1999 signalled one of the preliminary and important steps towards including African peoples, including women, in deciding their own affairs. This was further elaborated with the signing of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa in 2003, and its coming into force in 2005.

The difference between the OAU and the AU is also seen in the AU's highlighting of human rights, which includes gender equality. This is evidenced by its excision of the clause of non-interference in the internal affairs of member nations, for which the OAU was notorious, and also the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa of 2004. But the extent to which these have made a difference in the lives of African women, if at all, is not clear.

Speaking of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality, it struck me that when a document is referred to as being solemn, it simply depicts the deep sincerity underlying its signing and adoption. In all the AU documents I have come across, it is only this very important document that, paradoxically, bears this adjective. I stand to be corrected. The document could anyway have been referred to simply as a ‘declaration on Gender Equality in Africa’, given the little or no attention paid to it by our leaders, thereby connoting neither deepness nor sincerity.

But come to think of it, when our leaders signed the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality, no one held guns to their heads. They were not cornered, threatened or blackmailed into making commitments to it, leaving one wondering why they are now paying lip-service to it. Why they are dragging their feet and why are we having such a hard time getting them to implement it? At the recently concluded G8 meeting in Heilingendamm, our leaders accused the G8 of reneging on their promises to Africa, but many Africans sadly do not see our leaders in the same light.

Not only is the low level inclusion of women noted in the grand debate, the inclusion of the masses generally is rather more than a little disappointing. If most of the citizens are not included in the debate, how then is this situation different from what it was centuries ago, when our forefathers ceded our entire land and livelihood to the colonial masters for mere ‘shoestrings’. Women were not consulted then, as we are not now. How many peoples and groups have had the opportunity to deliberate and contribute to this ‘grand debate'?

Analysing the official AU study on the proposed union government, gender was mentioned in passing as an area of focus, but did not carry with it any substance. It was not clear what is to be done with respect to gender. As a matter of urgency, African women want this to be broken down so as to be sure we are not being ‘offered’ another white elephant. If gender is a crosscutting issue, as it is often said, and all the areas of priority would be viewed through gender lenses, this should not just be done, but be seen to be done.

Apart from African women, civil society organisations should be included to make the debate meaningful. It is recognised that one of the causes of collapse of some previous regional integration arrangements, e.g. the East African Community (1967-1977), was the low level of involvement of civil society in their activities buttressing the fact that the effectiveness and sustainability of regional integration in Africa will be ensured through sustained political will and involvement of the people in the continental integration processes.

Civil society organisations have been challenged severely on what and who gave them the mandate to represent the people, who elected them and what the basis is of their legitimacy. But when patients are referred from government’s hospitals, due to inadequate facilities and expertise or both, to Nairobi Women’s Hospital, no one raises the question of legitimacy.

The AU has secluded itself in this debate so much so that even the legislative authorities at national level and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are left behind in the grand debate, despite the fact that Africa’s integration process has always been government-led. Yet the latter are supposed to be the building blocks on which the foundations of the union are based.

It is essential that involvement in the debate on union government should not stop at jaw-jawing, but include considering the peoples’ interests and opinions, taking them on board, and basing them on the strategic area of focus on shared values and common interests.

They should not stop at just soliciting public participation and opinion, but should also find ways of exciting them, just like it is done in voter education before an election, where political parties state their manifestos, who is contesting and what the electorate stands to benefit.

It is noted that there has been a dearth of information from the media, both of the process leading to it, and also of the debate itself. But that is understandable, such is the inactivity on this question for the media to cover widely and deeply.

I am sure when our leaders started thinking and deliberating on these issues, right from the beginning, they did not foresee that it was not going to be a thorny path. This path hopefully will be in a smooth and straight road. Yet they should remember that they can only get there if they remain dedicated to the cause of the journey and do not waver.

We can see from the experience of the EU that there certainly will be conflicts. We should then, even at this formatory stage, begin to think of the conflict prevention and management that should put mechanisms we want in place without waiting for them to erupt, and we start applying the fire brigade method.

* Roselynn Musa works with African Women’s Development and Communications Network, FEMNET, Nairobi, Kenya.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

After burning the midnight oil for many weeks while preparing a US$50 million gender-based project proposal to lay before the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, Swazi activists found that it had vanished from their country's grant application. They were dumbfounded. "No one would tell us who had taken it out, but someone told us that women's issues are not a priority for the country," said Siphiwe Hlophe, of the non-governmental organisation (NGO), Positive Living, which assists people living with HIV.

Congolese women have been thwarted in their ambition to improve their showing in the National Assembly after the first round in the Congolese legislative elections. The results of the 24 June vote show that only one woman has been elected and it is unlikely the numbers will improve in the upcoming second round.

On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Gender Links in partnership with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism will be hosting a panel discussion on the first Southern African research report on gender and advertising as part of the monthly seminar series of the Gender and Media Diversity Centre.

Sometimes, numbers speak louder than words. Six years ago, the Kenya Women Finance Trust (KWFT) was losing around US$290,000 a year. By 2006, it was posting annual profits of US$1.87 million and changing the lives of more than 100,000 poor women. By any standard, this is a remarkable turnaround. But behind the numbers lies an even more remarkable story.

A twenty-year-old gay man has laid a charge against a Gugulethu police officer, in the Western Cape, who is said to have assaulted and insulted him because of his sexual orientation. Banele Ngwenze-Qhina was walking home with his brother and cousin just after midnight on Monday 23 June when police stopped and started searching them.