On Tuesday, Varaidzo blogged about the sexual harassment she witnessed on her way to work on one morning, when she saw a woman in a mini-skirt being tormented by a heckling mob.

We shared this in our email newsletter this week, and received a number of comments from readers about the post – some more sympathetic than others.

We welcome  your comments on the original blog, or on the responses below.

I miss home so much but sometimes being away from all that madness is a good break. I was that girl a few years ago, I remember feeling so terrified as they shook the kombi back and forth thnking they would overturn it. I a full figured, beautiful african woman. I respect myself and those around me. What I wear should be a choice I am allowed to make and live with. If I am comfortable in it why not? The man I date absolutely adores that I dress that way. I am based in Cape Town now and those are some of the little priviledges that I wish I could have back home. The freedom to dress as I please without being named a whore, the freedom to go to a party or a bar for a few drinks with the girls without the men around thinking that I want to be picked up or that I am a prostitute. I am an educated, independant and empowered woman who hopes that one day those men will gain those qualities too. I wish I could attend the march against rape, but they have my support in sisterhood.

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This should stop i remember in the day women had a march in mini skirts and its time we did that again. Actually lets face it if Zimbabwe had a beach like Moz, Durban and Cape Town- will these men be disgusted? Why is it that the men who go to the beach do not ‘attack’ sun bathers are they more civalised than these landlocked’animals. No women do not desrve to be treated like this, afterall most of these women come from homes where their parents( including fathers), husbands and male figures allow them to go out. We need to publise and arrest men who dehumanise women’s bodies and esteem the DV Act surely has a clause, it is like being arrested when mob attacks a victim its time we start seesing arrests.

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I am very much disgruntled by such unruly behaviour. That is barbaric. I feel the long arm of the law should deal with ths hooligans. These are potential rapists. I am a man myself but it realy hurts me. Imagine if that was yo own sista. How would you feel. ZRP should wake up and do something with these rowdy people.

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This is the new world we’re living in . I was not at the scene but I can assure you that most of those men who were hackling the woman are not ‘very ‘educated-they miss the softening influences of morden civilisation. Thats exactly the kind of women we want in our streets-women who know that they are women. We are not from the Arab world so its not a crime to dress the way you like as long as you feel good about it.

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Yes males respond to visual stimuli and we are meant to either court if you like and leave if you don’t. I you like and you know you have NO chance of getting lucky, dont hurl abuse at her or even worse, abuse her physically. I reckon deep down thse chaps like what they see!

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Its ok for women 2 dress comfortably especially in these high temperatures .However there is a line to be drawn ,some dressing leave a lot to be desired,obviously vultures will pounce on such women.I’m also a man,a woman who dresses scantily will obviously attract the opposite sex.Women should dress scantily in their homes not outdoors.

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This hypocritical attitude by men makes me very cross because it is simply not true to tradition. I am old enough to remember what people wore as traditional clothes. I saw them with my own eyes.

In Mashonaland I saw women with narrow flaps of animal skin in the front and at the back that were tied to a string around the waist. Except for the inner part of the thighs there was no covering of the legs from waist to ankle. Admittedly, the flaps of animal skin reached to the knees, but the larger portions of the thighs and buttocks were completely open to view. Women wore nothing on top except a string or two of beads.

In Manicaland, near the Umvumvumvu Bridge, I remember seeing a young woman in about 1961 striding up the main highway as though she owned the universe. She was magnificent! All she was wearing was a miniskirt of knotted inner bark from a tree. I believe that was probably traditional dress for her area, although I don’t know for certain.

I think this persecution of women over clothing styles is fueled by men’s emotional fear of women’s female power. It has no logical reason behind it apart from the desire to control women and prevent us from realising what enormous power we have. Without women there is no life!. This desire is not confined to black males, but is expressed differently in other cultures e.g. lower rates of pay for the same work.

However, having said that, I think it is sensible to protect oneself by wearing less revealing clothes. Keep the miniskirts and tight trousers for home consumption. It’s not really so difficult. In Arab countries they wear their beautiful clothes under their burkas.

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Zimbabwean men need to WAKE UP and move with the times.  This lady was not trying to sell herself to the highest bidder, but wearing what she felt comfotable in and what she wanted to. I’m sure many of the men that were insulting this lady were in fact ogling/admiring her. What about the ‘big bellied’ men wearing baggy, hanging trousers, vests and sandals – now that is disgusting to women, but they never pass comments or insults. Wake up Zimbabwean Men!!

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I think there are things we simply have to treasure. Mahomed Ali once told his daughters that, u never find gold or rubies strawn on the surface, u have to dig deep underground to find the gold. A preacher once said, yo man must find something on you that he is proud of saying, it it only me who has ever seen this. Ladies, lets just be dignified and cover what has to be covered.

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I failed to get the gist of Varaidzo’s narrative on the dress issue.I think sometimes women take their freedom & rights too far or for granted. Women are their worst enemy, as much as we understand their quest for liberty and empowerment,what does nakedness or semi-nakedness got to do with the upliftment of women? We all understand that women have been marginalised but i think it’s stupid really to show us your buttocks and underwear in the same vein. Going the Britney Spears route is a disgrace.Let’s have demarcations on making our voices heard and misinterpretation of western modernity.Imagine men marching with their corks exposed to protest against male ircumcision,fine,we could have got the world’s attention but what about our image as a people.I will definitely support any woman fighting against partriachy but they don’t have to show me their buttocks for me to take them seriously,only the dignity with which they do it will do the trick.

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My sister Varaidzo has a point but in putting it accross had a bias and an element on her tone of demeaning men as barbaric yet it was a sample of few cultural conserved group. To this end, her article become offending to us men. The similar event also happened when i was travelling from Harare to Mutare, I had a stop over in Marondera and I saw a group of women with very few young boys shouting and calling all sorts of names to a lady who was in a min-skirt. I then out of curiosity asked some of the ladies who were doing that why they were doing what they were doing to a lady like them? They said it was all wrong for her to wear such a mini-skirt and was an embarrassment to women hood. Against this backdrop, Sister Varaidzo your tone stigmatised men as unreasonable people and as such your article can not go unchallenged. You took a paralysis of analysis of that event. The fact that she was rescued by a man shows that not all men would love to see ladies harrassed or embrassed because of their choices and taste. Again not all men are enticed by body exposure of ladies.

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I find it so repulsively shameful how the men of this nation behave and perceive women who are liberal enough to exercise their democratic right. Do we have to stage a protest like the one the South African women staged a few years back, clad in mini-skirts so as to shame the men into respecting us?

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Its unfortunate that such events still happen even when woman are aware that some areas are just a no no zone when some what half dressed. I dont blame the blunt crowd. Some woman just offend public decency. Wearing fabrics that they know surely heads will turn. However we cant change society (men) over this behaviour. Because even when you dress nicely and one passer by decides to comment and you dont answer hell can break loose. My advice go to lower density areas when you feel that short skirt is what you are feeling today.leave the other folks to the longs.

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Thanks for the enlightening expose about the way men/women treat women in everyday life. It however, provoked a wild thought about sexual harassment, a term usually used by men and women to highlight harassment of women by men. When and how are men harassed by females? If a man comments about the way a woman is dressed or her body structure it is taken as sexual harassment. But men are daily harassed sexually by women intentionally exhibiting their beautiful bodies in public places. Women boast that if they want something from a man they simply have to show off as much of their legs as possible. Ask taxi drivers, driving licence inspectors, police officers and they can tell you lots of stories of how women use their structure to get bargains. Have you ever seen a prostitute wearing a nun’s attire to solicit? They harass men by putting on mini skirts, scant clothing, etc. So when a woman appears in public scantily clothed, men are obviously harassed and they should be protected against sexual harassment. I am not saying that women should not be allowed to wear whatever they want. But they must in the process know that some men become provoked. No man is sexually provoked when he sees a mother nursing a baby. But when a woman exposes her breasts, then some men are sexually harassed. During the 16 days of gender activism, both sexes should be made aware about what sexual harassment entails, lest we keep bashing innocent people.

In an analysis titled Debating Zimbabwean-ness in Diasporic Internet forums, researchers Wendy Williams and Winston Mano explore the way in which national identity and citizenship were debated in an online discussion forum on the tabloid news site NewZimbabwe. The analysis focuses on an online discussion of Makosi Musambasi, who participated in Big Brother UK 2005, providing an interesting insight into how we as Zimbabweans construct our collective identity.

Like many Zimbabweans of my generation and more in the succeeding ones, all I wanted to do after high school was leave the country. Yet it was when I left and had experienced otherness in another country I wanted nothing more than to come back.  There is nothing that makes you feel more Zimbabwean than leaving Zimbabwe. In my time away, I spent hours on the Internet looking for anything and everything I could find that might possibly bring home to me. Including other Zimbabweans and time and time again I was disappointed. The group that was supposed to create a soft landing for fellow émigrés was mired in infighting and political struggles. Other Zimbabweans would get in touch only when they needed something.  I remember one African Union like gathering that was so overwhelmed by Nigerians that there was nowhere for them to sit. And even though there were several thousand Zimbabweans living in that city, our table for ten could hardly find three people. This is not to imply that that we are an exception among nationalities, but it is peculiar that even Zimbabweans themselves have observed that we are the least united of all the nationalities. There is not a single person living in or who has returned from the Diaspora who cannot recount at least one story of Zimbabweans being taken advantage of, excluded and sometimes even oppressed by fellow countrymen. An example is the news story of the man who was accused of selling the names of undocumented Zimbabweans to the Home Office in the UK.

The report observes that the Internet has provided a means for Zimbabweans both in and out of the country to set up a vibrant media culture, therefore a space for a more robust and inclusive debate regarding Zimbabwean-ness. It also notes that ‘[t]he discussion has shown how diasporic Zimbabwean media culture incorporated and subverted mainstream representations on the British media. The intensity and scope of the debates around the participation of a Zimbabwean nurse, Makosi Musambasi…are a good example of the mobilising aspect of national identity on the Internet.’

Disappointingly, those posting comments on the forum reject Makosi’s authenticity as a Zimbabwean because her parents were not born in the country.  Reflecting on this, Williams and Mano write:

Although Makosi had lived her whole life in Zimbabwe, forum participants excluded her from the nation in similar ways as the Zimbabwean Government sought to disenfranchise Zimbabweans of Malawian, Zambian and Mozambican descent from their citizenship. In this way highly exclusionary notions of the nation were thus reproduced on the New Zimbabwe forum.

I can see why the state chooses to broadcast propaganda, it works. And ironically it has worked on the very people who by virtue of their location outside Zimbabwe are economically if not politically opposed to the party’s authoritarian grip on everything Zimbabwean, including identity. But regardless of where they live, their political affiliation and even skin colour, for many people being Zimbabwean is no longer defined in terms of what country you were born and grew up in or common experiences. As Zimbabweans we define our Zimbabwean-ness in terms of what it is not, rather than in terms of what it is. We are just as guilty as ZANU-PF of perpetuating a nationalistic misconstruction of our common identity. Individually, we divide and create an ‘other’ based on what is perceived as mis-culture or acculturaltion. This becomes personally unacceptable, and instead of uniting and embracing the diversity within our culture we reject each other for petty small-minded reasons. It’s no wonder then that there are people in Matebeleland who believe in creating a separate Ndebele state, or that Zimbabweans of European descent are first white then Zimbabwean. In fact depending on where and how we grew up, we are all Zimbabwean second.

I am disappointed by Zimbabweans. Even as we create conversations and actions about rebuilding Zimbabwe, the same breath is used to exclude other equally capable Zimbabweans, be they ZANU-PF or MDC-x members, Diasporans, white farmers, or Angolan/Malawian/Mozambican/Zambian-Zimbabweans. Surely this is a process that will require every Zimbabwean, regardless of location, language preference, political affiliation and most especially ethnic origin.

I was having a tough time and needed to clear my mind and fill myself up again with what I care about. I have learned over the years how to look after myself and my work, and know that at a certain point it’s good to go off and find a different road. It is a matter of stopping and refuelling, filling yourself up again before you lose all feeling. Bringing yourself back.

Sound familiar?

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All manner of artists gathered in commemorating International Day of Tolerance (16th of November) at the Zimbabwe-United States of America Alumni Association facilitated discussion, under the theme: Promoting Tolerance through the arts, chaired by human rights activist and poet, Michael Mabwe. The aim of the talk was to interrogate the role that the arts can play in the promotion of tolerance, at whatever level and discuss how artists can better engage with the current reality in Zimbabwe as they try to promote tolerance.

Speakers included Mbizvo Chirasha – performing poet, writer and founder of Girl Child Creativity, Blessing Hungwe – author, producer, co-director, actor in the production Burn Mukwerekwere, Burn; a play based on the 2008 xenophobic violence in South Africa; and Tafadzwa Muzondo – theatre director, actor, taking arts to the grassroots through the Edzainesu Community Project.

Chirasha traced the history of intolerance in Zimbabwe, giving a few examples of tribalism, colonialism, independence struggle, the various women’s rights struggles, various student rebellions, the emergence of multiparty political system and consequent violence of 2007 elections and the 2008 xenophobic attacks in S.A. Hungwe said that the arts can be an invaluable tool in addressing intolerance by provoking thought, tackling divisive issues, breaking down barriers, bridging gaps, opening people’s minds and encouraging people to take a step back and investigate the prejudices and intolerance they hold at an individual level.

Since late October this year, 211 cases of typhoid have been reported in Harare. Reported cases of typhoid within Harare have opened a Pandora’s Box.

Though no deaths have been recorded so far, questions have been asked as to how a primitive disease such as typhoid can cause havoc in a country that has proper infrastructure in place for the supply of clean water.

Bigger questions are centred on how a country that has attained so much progress in health continues to experience typhoid cases.

Last year, Harare’s Mabvuku suburb was hit by a typhoid outbreak and hundreds of residents feared for their lives as the disease spread like a veld fire across the suburbs.

Then Harare City Council authorities claimed that they had contained the outbreak. Now a year later, the disease has resurfaced in Dzivarasekwa suburbs, making it clear that that only a temporary solution had been found.

More than 200 cases of the disease have so far been reported.

The underlying factor behind the outbreak of typhoid is the shortage of water.

Mabvuku is one place where residents struggle to get access to clean water. The residents have dug wells while boreholes have been sunk as alternative sources of clean water.

While for years Harare residents had thought that water problems are for those living in Eastern suburbs, which are furthest from Motorn Jeffrey Waterworks, the problems have come close next door. Suburbs such as Dzivarasekwa, Budiriro, Highfield, Glen Norah and Glen View also have serious water problems. Pessimists say the situation will become even worse while prophets of doom say the whole capital will end up being supplied by boreholes and wells.

But the million-dollar question is, has Harare really come to such a stage whereby residents have to accept that the city fathers cannot provide water?

Harare Residents’ Trust Coordinator, Mr Precious Shumba sees the typhoid outbreak as a sign of a gloomy future unless drastic measures are urgently taken.

For local government expert, Mr Percy Toriro, the typhoid outbreak in Harare is a clear sign of a failed system.
For years, the Harare City Council has been talking about alternative water sources but no action has really taken place on the ground. The peg that was planted at the proposed site of Kunzvi Dam ages ago has now gathered rust and has probably disappeared by now. Kunzvi Dam is a long-term solution.

Yet, the painful fact about Harare is that the council is simply failing to harness water from dams, purify it and supply residents who pay exorbitant charges every month.

While we huff and puff trying to find solutions, it is sad to realise that the capital’s authorities are clueless. The authorities have no solution to the capital’s water woes and are not treating the matter with the urgency it deserves.

For the ordinary person in Mabvuku, who has not accessed tap water for years, the question is: Can such a council continue to be entrusted with such a vital service delivery? Does the council still have a right to collect water rates? Or is it a matter of wrong people being given such an important mandate?

I remember the days when water in the taps sometimes used to come out cloudy and with a strong smell of the purification chemicals the City Council would use on the water. When this would happen some of us would complain that they were using too many of these purification chemicals and that they made the water taste ‘funny’. Indeed, others amongst us even wondered if these chemicals might be poisonous or harmful to our health. Ah, the good old days!

The water that comes out of our taps today is now harmful, and with its signature tinge of yellow-brown, is now a far cry from the cloudy, overly clean waters of old.

Many of Harare’s resident’s don’t even get to see this dirty water gushing out of their taps, as they no longer get City Council water. As a result, many are using and reusing dirty water from anywhere and everywhere. The water in Harare is no longer safe. In its latest assault on the City of Harare, the deadly water has hospitalised 211 (and counting) people. With the memory of the cholera outbreak of 2008 still fresh in our minds, I am perplexed that the council is doing absolutely nothing, when they know only too well how bad the situation can become.