On the Wednesday 25th April, 2007 a group of women numbering 300 plus were assaulted by members of the Police Force in Kano State, Tarauni Federal Constituency while staging a peaceful protest to express concern over the denial of the mandate they gave a female candidate (Saida Sa’ad) who contested the National Assembly elections on the platform of Action Congress (AC).

According to close associates the women comprising all ages and dispositions of women assembled at the Oando petroleum filling station in Tarauni off the Maiduguri highway from where they crossed over obstructed traffic. Just as they assembled a group of military men inquired on the mission of the women. Upon satisfactory explanations these military men volunteered to assist the women by offering protection and warding off youths and any unwanted intruders.

30 minutes into the protest, armed Police men arrived and started dispelling tear gas and shooting in the air hoping to disperse the procession. In the ensuing confusion and Saida attempted to get an explanation canisters of tear-gas were blown not too far from her position. Consequently, Saida who is asthmatic collapsed and was eventually rushed to hospital where she was placed on oxygen. She is still on admission. Other supporter numbering 6 were also adversely affected by the tear gas and rough handling by the Police.

The development was aired on the Hausa service of the BBC.

We will keep you posted on the subject

Following the successful run of its first ever gender and media literacy course that took place in June-August 2006, Gender Links will be conducting another Media Literacy Training Course from 3 May - 2 August 2007. The course material has been developed by Gender Links (GL), a Southern African NGO that specialises in gender, governance and communication. The tool kit being used draws from research and training material developed over a number of years on gender and the Southern African media.

While gays have been accepted in many countries, like South Africa which legalised same-sex marriages recently, homosexuals are still frowned upon in Ugandan society. However, a Ugandan lesbian is making news around the continent for being outspoken about her sexuality and other people like her. She was among the delegates who discussed gay issues at the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Political activists gathered in Algiers to discuss women in the workplace, to identify the issues they face and develop responses and solutions to improve their status and overall integration into the nation's workforce.

Roselynn Musa is Nigerian based in Kenya working with African Women’s Development and Communications Network, FEMNET. In March, Saloman Kebede interviewed her on the upcoming “Grand Debate on the Union Government” to be held at the June 2007 summit of the African Union. This interview is part of a series of interviews, to be published in AU-Monitor, of African citizens and civil society leaders on the AU proposal for Continental Government. Emily Mghanga of Oxfam’s Pan Africa Programme edited this interview.

Saloman Kebede: Why is continental integration important to African Citizens?

Roselynn Musa: In unity lies strength! Continental Union will allow greater coordination and mobilization of our resources, which is fundamental for growth and development in Africa. It also gives better opportunities for economy of scale.

Saloman Kebede: Should it be adopted in Accra in July 2007, what would you like to see the African Union Commission achieve within the first phase (2007-2009)?

Roselynn Musa: The most pressing needs in Africa are the issues of peace and security as well as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Women and children are the most affected. It is crucial that they focus on the economic empowerment of women as a way of addressing most of our societal ills. Let the AU commission set priorities in these areas.

Saloman Kebede: How could states and non-states ensure that continental union efforts are transparent, participatory and driven by an appreciation of political and economic rights?

Roselynn Musa: The AU-NEPAD peer review mechanism is an important tool for transparency if implemented as planned. We need to put our own house in order so as to be able to hold others accountable. We should practice what we preach.

Saloman Kebede: What obstacle must the AU overcome for the continental union to be successful?

Roselynn Musa: Conflict and human insecurity. If there is no peace, it is difficult to unite either individually or continentally. A positive way to start could be to address those issues that have been generating conflict in our continent.

Development and Communications Network, FEMNET. In March, Saloman Kebede interviewed her on the upcoming “Grand Debate on the Union Government” to be held at the June 2007 summit of the African Union. This interview is part of a series of interviews, to be published in AU-Monitor, of African citizens and civil society leaders on the AU proposal for Continental Government. Emily Mghanga of Oxfam’s Pan Africa Programme edited this interview.

Saloman Kebede: Why is continental integration important to African Citizens?

Roselynn Musa: In unity lies strength! Continental Union will allow greater coordination and mobilization of our resources, which is fundamental for growth and development in Africa. It also gives better opportunities for economy of scale.

Saloman Kebede: Should it be adopted in Accra in July 2007, what would you like to see the African Union Commission achieve within the first phase (2007-2009)?

Roselynn Musa: The most pressing needs in Africa are the issues of peace and security as well as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Women and children are the most affected. It is crucial that they focus on the economic empowerment of women as a way of addressing most of our societal ills. Let the AU commission set priorities in these areas.

Saloman Kebede: How could states and non-states ensure that continental union efforts are transparent, participatory and driven by an appreciation of political and economic rights?

Roselynn Musa: The AU-NEPAD peer review mechanism is an important tool for transparency if implemented as planned. We need to put our own house in order so as to be able to hold others accountable. We should practice what we preach.

Saloman Kebede: In what policy area, would you like to see greater convergence and unity across Africa and why?

Roselynn Musa: Peace and security, but also health and women’s economic empowerment.

The views expressed here are the perspectives of the interviewee. Roselynn Musa can be reached at: advocacy at femnet.or.ke or musarose_ng at yahoo.com

"Women in South African History by Nomboniso Gasa (Ed) published by HSRC Press, 2007.

Women in South African History traces the lives of South African women from the pre-colonial, pre-union period (mid 18th century) through to the post-apartheid beginnings and present day South Africa. It is written in four thematic parts: Women in the pre-colonial and pre-union periods; Women in early to mid-twentieth century South Africa; War: armed and mass struggle as gendered experiences; The 1990s and beyond: new identities, new victories, new struggles.

The book is a radical departure from the traditional history texts in that it uses a feminist analysis rather than the “more acceptable gender analysis” in it’s approach by examining “the ways in which gender intersects with race, culture, class and other forms of identity and location in South African history“. By including the present as part of history the book shows how the past and present are inextricably linked and thus better examines women’s experiences over the past 300 years. The experiences of women’s struggle and their continuing hazardous journeys towards liberation are expressed through the dual metaphors of “they move boulders” - challenges; and “they cross rivers” - dangers.

Women in South African History goes far beyond the many well known events and periods by feminizing those events and periods where women’s participation has never been acknowledged. In the chapter “Like three tongues in one mouth”: Tracing the elusive lives of slave women in (slavocratic) South Africa, Pumla Dineo Gqola, brings to life the slave women brought to South Africa from South East Asia, East Africa and Southern Africa. Despite the scarcity of historical and biographical narratives, Pumla is still able to document the lives of some slave women and more importantly the ways in which they resisted and revolted against their enslavement and their central role “to the historical constitution of Afrikaner society“. Other examples are women’s mass protests against carrying of passes in Bloemfontein and Potchefstroom in 1913; women’s involvement in the trade union movement during the 1930s; the participation of women in the ANC underground and military wing in the 1950s; township uprisings in the Eastern Cape in the 1970s and 1980s; naked women protests against lack of housing in Soweto in 1990; migrant women in Johannesburg and women learning to live with HIV/AIDS in present day South Africa.

The book concludes with a powerful essay by Yvette Abrahams in which she chronicles her experience of researching and writing on Sarah Bartman. Or rather searching for the REAL Sarah Bartman not the racialised sexualised object constructed by white male fantasies …

“a living specimen of barbaric savage races” one who according to Lindfors [Courting the Hottentot Venus] was willing to collaborate in her own degradation in order to earn more money… she allowed herself to be exhibited indecently to the European public, and she persisted in this tawdy occupation for more than five years….. She may have been the victim of the cruelist kind of predatory ruthlessness, but her collusion in her own victimisation was unmistakeable…."

he concludes

"To put it plainly, she may have engaged in prostitution as well as exhibitionism. Her degradation may have been complete.."

Abrahams tears these racist, sexist texts to pieces written not in the 1800s but in the 1980s. Men such as Lindfors were able to pass these lies off as academic text by so called intellectuals. Abrahams leads us through to the convincing conclusion that Sarah Bartman was a slave - a Khoekhoe slave woman. She does this by connecting her own personal herstory to that of the Khoekhoe. Born in the pre-colonial period of the 1780s, she must have had a Khoekhoe name and the only way she could have lost that name at that time was through slavery. Also the only way for her to move from her home in the Western Cape to England was as a slave. Sarah Bartman lied (that she willingly exhibited herself) because she was a slave and knew very well that her words would not be believed over that of a white man and the consequences of her telling the truth would have been too horrible to contemplate such as life imprisonment and even more degradation and abuse.

Abrahams again makes the absolute convincing statement without any hesitation or qualification that the “abuse and degradation” of Sarah Bartman was rape. Rape not only of Sarah but of the whole Khoekhoe nation. The white male racist, sexist texts she quotes in her essay are a form of “surrogate violence” against African women, Black women, Khoekhoe women and Sarah Bartman.

“Was it not rape of a symbolic sort to parade the degradation ad humiliation of auntie Sarah before me? Was it not a sexually violent act which expressed male power and my vulnerability to pain? Has not each male author I have brought before you been unable to resist the temptation of demonstrating their psychosexual power and auntie Sarah’s inability to resist?"

"In the place of false witness it is time to speak the truth. I name the posthumous abuse and degradation of auntie Sarah’s body, rape. The rape of her body is a rape of my mind."

As Abrahams writes, Sarah Bartman whose real name, real self was stolen like that of millions of other slaves and their descendants, is dead and therefore can no longer feel the pain. But she (Abrahams) feels it - I feel it and Black women throughout the world feel it. Every racist, sexist, misogynist text by whiteness against Black women is felt by me, by all of us. The symbolism of this sexual violence is explained by a more “refined and broader” definition of rape.

"…the element of sexual abuse are the violation of a person’s integrity by force and/or threat of physical violence, dishonouring the ethic of mutuality and care in relationships of domination, and an infraction of one’s psycho-spiritual-sexual integrity. Sexual abuse is sacrilege of God’s spirit in each of us [Eugene, TM “If you get there before I do: A womanist ethical response to sexual violence and abuse. In J Grant (ed) Perspectives on womanist theology”

In reviewing South African Women in History, I chose to focus on Yvette Abrahams essay because the story of Sarah Bartman speaks to the book as a whole and speaks to me personally. It is both the beginning - pre-colonial and the present, continued racism but always resistance. Sarah Bartman’s agency was expressed in her act of survival against all odds. For me Sarah Bartman, Khoekhoe woman represents the loss that came with slavery and colonialism as well as the struggle for liberation and emancipation.

Women in South African History is a “transdisciplinary” interrogation of events and periods in the history of South Africa from a feminist perspective. The narratives bring to life the daughters of Africa in their quest for emancipation, sometimes at great cost to themselves and their families, particularly their children. But always there is an unflinching determination - choices are laid bare and the choice is still emancipation.

The recently concluded International Conference on Women and Law issued a declaration dubbed "Tripoli Declaration to Ensure the Women's Rights". The document stresses the role of women as essential in societies of today since women represent "half the world and a mother of the second half."

Mothers Union – a Christian faith-based movement caring for welfares of families globally, is due to receive a letter of grievances from Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo) the ill-treatment of the organisation during a recent dialogue on homosexuality that took place in Botswana.

The African Feminist Forum took place from 15th -19th November 2006 in Accra, Ghana. The meeting brought together over 100 feminist activists from all over the region and the diaspora. A key outcome of the forum was the adoption of the Charter of Feminist Principles, which was agreed by the Regional Working group for the Forum, to be one of its principle aims.

South Africa, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs will host the 4th World Congress of Rural Women at the International Convention Centre in Durban from 23 to 26 April, 2007. The congress will be preceded by an African Consultation of Rural Women that will be held at the same venue from 19 to 21 April, 2007.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/300/showzimgov.jpg Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist and revolutionary activist currently based in Cape Town. She is known for her role in the women’s movement in Zimbabwe. Ronald Wesso spoke to her on 18 March following a week of unashamed and escalating brutality visited on the opposition by the Mugabe regime, a month before Zimbabwe's 27th year of independence.

RW: Shereen, where do we begin if we are talking about Zimbabwe today?

SE: I think that today I would begin with a woman by the name of Grace Kwinjeh, the deputy secretary for international relations in the Tsvangirai MDC, but also a women who is part of the broader women’s movement in Zimbabwe. A women who was beaten, tortured and denied medical assistance. That is what freedom has translated into in Zimbabwe, and that is where I would begin.

RW: Does her experience mean women have been specifically targeted in the spate of state violence we have seen?

SE: Women are always targeted. They are targeted differently depending on what the political economic and social context is. Our society is deeply patriarchal and misogynistic. During the liberation war, women's bodies were used as part of the struggle. That struggle was by no means equitable.

In the 1980s when the state went into moral panic about the freedoms women had gained after independence they targeted 'women as prostitutes' in something known as Operation Clean Up where any women out after 6pm was arrested. Now 27 years later, women are being targeted for being women and political activists. The violence is sexualised, that is why they can be called 'Tsvangirai's whores'.

Gender-based violence against women is more acute where, as in Zimbabwe, traditionalist patriarchal values persist. This is not only due to a value system which treats women as being in some way lesser people than men, and thus not worthy of the protection of the law. It also arises directly from a certain proprietal attitude.

As male 'property' women are not treated as actors in their own right. Hence the epithet 'Tsvangirai’s whores' directed at female members of the opposition by state agents and Zanu PF supporters, implying that they are merely acting on behalf of a man, motivated by considerations other than their own desire for change or political activism.

Furthermore, sexual violence perpetrated upon women is perceived not so much as an assault on the woman herself, but an attack on the 'property' of the 'owning' male. Combined with traditionalist attitudes towards sexuality and virginity, there is a perception that sexual violence perpetrated upon women members of the opposition is viewed by the perpetrator as a particularly effective way of attacking and humiliating male members of the opposition. The resultant social disruption is extensive.

RW: I take from what you are saying that the clampdown is on the opposition but that it’s also important to understand it as a clampdown on women specifically. Let's talk about Gukurahundi, which can also be understood as a clampdown on opposition with an ethnic dimension - the targeting of the Ndebele people. Would you argue that it was also a violent attack on women?

SE: Gukurahundi was an early example of the extent Zanu PF would go to in order to stifle dissent and opposition. Gukurahundi means 'the early rain which washes away the chaff'.

And yes, gukurahundi is the euphemism used for the actions of Mugabe's fifth brigade in the Zapu areas, the Ndebele provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands during the 1980s. An estimated 20,000 civilians, mostly Ndebele, were killed or disappeared and have not been accounted for to this date. It was vicious and violent.

As Yvonne Vera’s Stone Virgins testifies, it was played out across women’s bodies in very particular ways: rape, brutality, the ripping apart of women, of people and families and communities. Gukurahundi is part of the same continuum that leads us to the events of the last month.

RW: Speaking about Murambatsvina. You spoke about how today and in the past violence was deployed to demobilise and repress women. In the public discourse on today’s events and on Gukurahundi this aspect is played down or left out. It is seen respectively as an attack on Ndebeles and the MDC. Murambatsvina is understood as an attack on the urban poor. Was there a dimension of targeting women?

SE: Look. Murambatsvina was specifically aimed at ‘cleaning up the filth’ and in this instance the filth was people staying in structures for which there had been no legal permission to build. The way this thing played itself out was that the majority of people in the front-line of feeling and dealing with the effects of Murambatsvina were women and it saw the displacement of an estimated 700 000 people.

Women and children are the most common victims in situations where organised violence and torture become prevalent and are frequently the first victims in civil conflict. They are also the most greatly affected in cases of internal displacement. Mrambatsvian was no different.

RW: What is the purpose of all this violence from the state’s side?

SE: The purpose of this violence is about clinging to state power at all costs.

RW: Okay, so given all that, can you see a positive purpose and role for state power?

SE: As long as a minority make decisions on our behalf then we cannot be free. The decision making and enforcing apparatus this minority uses is the state. The state apparatus and way it is conceptualised needs to change radically.

I’m going to go back to women. If one looks at the experience of women in Zimbabwe and one looks at the role of the state in relation to women’s lives the state has never had the interests of women at heart. Women have actually never been considered full citizens of Zimbabwe. They are only considered citizens when the state has something to gain. For example, in March 2007 the state held a celebration for international women’s day under the theme of ‘stop violence against women', on the grounds that they had passed a domestic violence bill. This is interesting and intriguing, given that at the exact same time you had women being detained and tortured by the very same state.

RW: Let’s talk a bit about the MDC that has been placed so centrally in these events. What do you think of the MDC?

SE: The MDC was born out of a dynamic process of social justice activism. Many of the people who are in the MDC came out of the trade unions and civic structures, when people realised that the prevailing energy could be turned into some kind of power, some kind of counterforce to the Zanu regime. That is how the MDC was born. The MDC came to prominence on a wave of popular support in that they provided an alternative.

But I think things did not continue in that spirit, with a commitment to true democracy, to a struggle that is guided by principles of freedom and alternatives. There is no sound articulated strategy to fight for change. True change. In very real ways the MDC have adopted the political culture of Zanu.

So it would seem that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Does the MDC offer a viable alternative? We should be clear about what the MDC is and what its policies are. While the word 'democratic' in the opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change evokes pleasant feelings, some of the party’s policies are rooted in neo-liberal ideology.

In fact, what needs to be happening now is the building of a mass movement, linking the struggles by women, workers, residents, traders, Aids activists, students, disability rights activists, debt cancellation activists, the rural poor to start defining the content of the change we want. That means a movement that fights for a new political, economic and social order.

RW: Shereen, let us move the discussion away from the dramatic events of the last few days, as well as the drama of Murambatsvina and Gukurahundi. Let us talk a little bit about what some call the normalcy of everyday life in Zimbabwe. Life expectancy for men in Zimbabwe is now 37 and for women 34. What does it say about normality and everyday life?

SE: I read something about Zimbabwe the other day:

'Yes there is tension in some places, but for the majority life goes on normally. And unfortunately within that "normality" is a gross amount of struggle.'

What is normal? And what is abnormal?

I think that in Zimbabwe right now the lines are incredibly blurred. People find ways to continue and to survive, brutally. Perhaps surviving is resistance. Is that normal or abnormal? What does everyday life look like given life expectancies of 37 and 34?

Inflation is at 1700 per cent at the moment. If you go into the shop today and pay 40000 Zimbabwean dollars for something, the next day it could cost 65000 dollars. Not many people are earning salaries that keep up with inflation. The strikes by teachers and doctors are indicative of that. Everyday life in Zimbabwe is for many a life of struggle, hardship and deprivation. A life of brutality, without the basic things that you need to be human.

But there is something else that is very interesting about everyday life in Zimbabwe. You can arrive at Harare international airport and drive into town and you will see luxury cars everywhere. You will see BMWs. You will Mercedes Benz’. You can go to restaurants and have the best seafood. In the face of all this deprivation you have the consolidation of a very small elite. There are flows of money outside of the formal economy that means that people are making money from the current situation. And for such people it is not in their best interests that anything should change.

RW: All of this happens against a backdrop of a Zimbabwe that’s actually at war in the DRC. What is the importance of that?

SE: It’s interesting that you pick up on the DRC because I think that Zimbabwe’s involvement in the DRC was yet another watershed in the spiral downwards. In 1998, the war veterans under the leadership of Chejerai Hilter Hunzvi basically held Mugabe hostage and demanded a pay out for war veterans, which the budget of the country could not sustain. In the same year Zimbabwe sent troops into the DRC even though financially it was not viable. But it is common knowledge that the elite network of Congolese and Zimbabwean political, military and commercial interests seek to maintain their grip on the main mineral resources, diamonds, cobalt, copper, germanium.

RW: Which of course raises the question of Zimbabwe’s place in the continent and the world, its political and economic relations with other countries. Let’s approach this through South Africa’s role. What do you think South Africa's role is? And what do you think of the many calls on SA to intervene?

SE: It is imperative for the South African government and SADC to take action to hasten an end to the oppression of the Zimbabwean people. The existing softly-softly policy of quiet diplomacy to encourage internal dialogue has failed. One needs to listen to the call by Desmond Tutu and civil society organisations in southern Africa for intervention. The Mugabe regime needs to know that it can no longer rely on the unconditional support of the South African government.

RW: What would an intervention from SADC and South Africa look like?

SE: Mugabe must be called to task. He must be called to account. If he is not, all African leaders are as guilty as Mugabe.

For a start they need to explicitly condemn the violent actions being undertaken in the name of Zanu PF and the Zimbabwean government. End all defence force, security and intelligence collaboration. Cease supplies of all military hardware. Cease to roll over all loans. Respond sympathetically to asylum requests. The argument that it is wrong to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign country is no longer sustainable. Without international intervention against apartheid, the struggle for liberation in South Africa would undoubtedly have taken longer and been even more bloody.

RW: I want us to talk about art and culture. Zimbabwe still has the highest literacy rate in the SADC region. The Harare International Arts Festival (HIFA) is in the world’s top ten. And the recurring theme of Zimbabwean art through the ages is the transformation of a human being into a beast. I just want you to reflect a little on that side of Zimbabwe.

SE: Interesting. Zimbabwe is rich in cultural production, pottery, textiles, jewellery, carvings, baskets, sculpture, music, theatre, writing. There’s some really amazing work that is being done. I think that the transformation of human being into beast in something that in some ways Zimbabweans know about intimately. If cultural production is about a critique of what is happening at a socio-economic and political level, then that is what is going to be woven into cloth or chiselled out of stone. Human to beast.

HIFA is an annual international arts festival that encompasses five main disciplines: music, theatre, fine arts, dance and the spoken word. HIFA began in 1999 and since then has taken the Zimbabwean and Southern African arts scene by storm. The Festival showcases the best of Zimbabwean performances and fine arts while at the same time staging and exhibiting the most exciting and creative international and regional performances.

HIFA 2007 is dedicated to artistic expression that has meaning and purpose for a community that is facing challenging balancing acts every day. It is a time to show that in Zimbabwe in 2007, the arts express our desire to make life better for ourselves as individuals and as a diverse community; a time to show that HIFA and artists recognise the paradoxes faced by Zimbabweans each day as we step out on to our own personal tight rope.

Most of all, it is a time to show that creativity surrounds us and makes us smile each day- HIFA 2007 is a celebration of all the small-scale acts of creative heroism that give magic, enchantment, existentialist ideals to ordinary things.

RW: So Shereen, how do we get from beastliness and brutality to humanity and tenderness?

SE: Chirukure Chirukure in his poem 'Smoke, Dust, Tear-gas' hints at this:

'in the heavy, belching clouds of dry dust there in your tired, barren patch of rocky land you could still tender the grey, shrivelled crops, weeding the way to the starving family’s future...in the crude, suffocating thunder of tear gas, there in your tense neighbourhood turned into battlefields, you could still see the damp, blood-soaked secret paths, tenderly shuttling to give direction and inspiration to the cause ... in the perfume, tobacco, alcohol and laughter fumes, there in the extensive, excited victory celebration parties, your eyes could stretch beyond the beaming rainbow knowing that out of the brutality, there is the humanity, that this is only but a seed germinating...'

RW: Are there such spaces for the creation of this humanness in Zimbabwe, or at least in the process of creation?

SE: I think the spaces have to be created. They are not just delivered to you on a platter. People are creating the spaces. Women are creating the spaces. There have been a number of women who have been very involved in the 1980s and the 1990s who because of political and social and economic reasons are now scattered around the region. Who have reached out to each other in order to create those spaces to see what possibilities can spring from that. So spaces have to be created, and they will be.

RW: Is this the Feminist Political Education Project?

SE: Yes

RW: So tell us a bit more about it.

SE: The Feminist Political Education Project in some ways was born out of shared experience and friendships. Shared experience within the women’s movement and within the National Constitutional Assembly [NCA] across the MDC and friendship, in that the women who came together to form the project were friends.

They understood the urgent need for something. In 2003 we didn’t know what that something was, but we agreed that as an alternative to the way that the mainstream malestream works we would come together as a very loose network. We would not consolidate as an organisation. We would pool our skills and resources and come up with interventions based on what was happening at a particular time in the country and create spaces for women to come together both to share and reflect but also to think through ways of doing even in the limited room that exists in Zimbabwe right now to organise and to do. And so we have been working since 2003. The Feminist Political Education Project is a space of hope.

RW: Apart from the Feminist Political Education Project are there any other projects or groups or movements that you would urge people to join and build?

SE: I think the Zimbabwe Social Forum is an important space in the struggle against globalisation and in building mass based resistance on the ground. You know, that’s important. I think Zvakwana is important. SW Radio is important. Many formations that are contributing to the dreaming of a new dispensation.

RW: What are the prospects for Zimbabwe Shereen?

SE: This last week has been a watershed. Things may get worse before they get better but things are going to come to a head either way. People outside and inside the country are preparing for that. They are consolidating networks to come with strategies and I think that the pressure is now on. It’s a different game.

RW: What would true freedom and democracy look like?

SE: A Zimbabwe that confronts its various pasts and names the violations its peoples have suffered; freedom would look like a space to look at the militia in the eye and say, ‘you violated me’. It would be a chance to talk back to the commercial farmer, for all those years of exploitation and abuse. To be able to point a finger at the minister and the war vet and ask: 'why?' It would allow for a woman to define the Zimbabwe she wants to live in. Is that not what democracy is about? A chance to be listened to. And be heard. An acknowledgement of the pain endured? A piece of land to call one’s own would go a long way. Space to be a citizen. Speaking on our own behalf. Defining our own futures. Ukuba ngumuntu – muntu. To become people. Our personhood restored.

* "Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist and activist
* Please send comments to

Later this year, women in Southern Africa expect a leap forward when it comes to gender equality as Heads of State are discussing more binding commitments to raise women's share of decision-making positions to 50 percent. South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki is putting heavy pressure on his colleagues, who also can point to considerable gains.

Like many people living in countries where expressing unorthodox views can be difficult, Egyptians have turned to the Internet. The recent surge in blogging has given many Egyptians the opportunity to voice opinions about a range of subjects. Women in particular have tapped into the blogosphere.

The case against 14 gay men arrested last year and charged with public indecency at Camp David Bar in Pretoria, South Africa, has been thrown out of court. The charge of operating a brothel laid against the owner of the club was also dropped because of lack of evidence.

In spite of the previous protests and the international pressure exerted upon the Nigerian government since the infamous Anti-gay bill, all efforts now seem to have come to a standstill pending the federal elections on 21 April this year.

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Zimbabwean women with HIV/AIDS who present with AIDS-related Kaposi sarcoma (AIDS-KS) are younger than male counterparts of similar AIDS-KS status and have a more severe course of KS, according to the findings of a cross-sectional study published in the March 1st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Educating the boy-child and the grown man would go a long way to ensure that gender equality and women's rights on the African continent were upheld, delegates attending the African Regional Meeting on Gender Justice in Conflict-Affected Countries were told.

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In Malawi – where 16 women die every day giving birth or during pregnancy – the Government has kicked off a United Nations-backed campaign to combat maternal and infant death. “Pregnancy and childbirth are supposed to be joyful occasions,” said Esperance Fundira, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative in Malawi.