One of my favourite feminist quotes comes from Mary Wollstonecroft and it says “I do not wish them (women) to have power over men but over themselves” because I believe that is the essence of women empowerment.

I never resonate with the preoccupations of some activists with ‘demanding’ that men create spaces for women in politics, in education etc… the whole idea of creating quota systems sits rather uncomfortably with me.

For what a man gives to a woman, he has the power to withhold at some point and there is no empowerment derived from being ‘given’ – empowerment only comes with what one achieves, attains and realizes from their own efforts.

I don’t doubt women’s capabilities, potentials and talents – I don’t think they need men to ‘liberate’ them – I think they can pretty much liberate themselves – if they acquire education, work their way to the top, begin to actively participate in the highest echelons of decision-making, policy-formulation and governance.

In 2007, when I was at the University of Zimbabwe, we were witnesses to the first ever female candidate to run for the powerful (and often violently contested) post of Secretary General of the Students’ Executive Council, Maureen Kademaunga.

She won the elections in that year because she managed to galvanize the female students into one cohesive, critical mass of voters and became the most powerful student in the country at the time because student activism was very robust, radical and influential.

I have come to believe that what women need is to have power over themselves and that power manifests in overturning the status quo whenever it is employed to oppress, marginalize or discriminate against us.

Recently there was a landmark passport ruling by a Supreme Court Justice Rita Makarau ruled in favour of Margret Dongo who, two years after filing a constitutional challenge (seeking the, nullification of certain provisions of the Guardianship of Minors Act, which she claimed were discriminatory against married women who were not regarded as natural guardians of their children) finally triumphed.

I want to believe that having a female Justice presiding over the case had a lot to do with the verdict; I want to believe having a determined woman who knows her rights had a lot to do with Margeret Dongo daring to challenge the status quo.

I want to believe that the results of that ruling, which will impact favourably on married women were wrought through the actions of fellow women and that no man played a part in ridding us of that cumbersome piece of discriminatory legislation. I want to believe that these are just examples of women exercising power (not over men) but over themselves, over their lives and ultimately over the system of patriarchy that informs the conditions of their oppression, marginality and discrimination.

So, I too, wish that we as women, may choose to have power over ourselves, choose to exercise that power and choose to liberate and empower ourselves.

Political activist and commentator Rejoice Ngwenya recently sent this through to us. If you know someone who was killed during the Gukurahundi, email rngwenya [at] ymail [dot] com

In the 1980s, a decade of so-called ‘economic growth’, I and four million other Zimbabweans of Ndebele origin lost friends, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in an orgy of political madness that cost the lives of more than twenty thousand people of Matebeleland and the Midlands.  Repeated attempts by courageous Christians, progressive political parties, civic activists, sympathetic regional and international organisations to get the government of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF to acknowledge the massacres have failed.

Now that the organ of national healing – whatever that means – has been accorded a status to pursue the Gukurahundi issue as a good case for ‘reconciliation’, I propose that everyone in Zimbabwe who knows someone whose life was wasted by the cruel bayonet of the notorious Fifth Brigade send names to the e-mail address below so that I can forwarded them to this ‘organ’ as a first step in seeking redress, with eventual incarceration and prosecution of all perpetrators. Contact rngwenya [at] ymail [dot] com

I do a lot of running and on my way through Newlands Shopping Centre over a week ago I ran past a very badly leaking water pipe. The road running through the shopping centre had become a river.

I sent a text message to the Mayor of Harare, Mr Masunda, asking him if he could send someone to attend to it as soon as possible. A week later, the pipe was still madly spewing water. It is important to point out that this shopping centre, along with the majority of Harare, suffers from crippling water cuts. So I sent another text to Mayor Masunda asking for an emergency number to call so that the problem could be fixed. I didn’t receive any replies to my text messages – yeah, he’s a busy man I know – and in the meantime I heard that the leak was over 3 weeks old and that the BP petrol station attendants had tried, in vain (understandably because they’re not plumbers), to fix the leak with pieces of black rubber. The petrol station had asked the city works department to come and fix the leak but it seems like they haven’t put this problem on their list of Things To Do.

What are we to make of this? Shop owners and residents of Harare pay their rates; motivated citizens report problems and yet the City of Harare, knowing that the provision of water is an essential service, allows major water leaks to remain unresolved for weeks at a time.

Financial Times newspaper (FT) decided at the last minute to pull this Amnesty International ad targeting oil giant Shell this month. Amnesty is asking you to share the ad that FT wouldn’t publish and make sure as many people as possible see it.

The ad, which was due to appear on 18 May, the day that Shell was holding its London AGM, focuses on the poor human rights record of Shell in Nigeria. It compares the company’s US$9.8 billion profits with the consequences of pollution caused by Shell for the people of the Niger Delta in the past decades.

Amnesty says that in Nigeria “numerous oil spills, which have not been adequately cleaned up, have left local communities with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land, and breathe in air that stinks of oil and gas.”

Amnesty received an email from “FT” the night before saying the paper was not going to run the ad. Yet, Amnesty said, “We gave them written reassurances that we would take full responsibility for the comments and opinions stated in the advertisement.”

The Amnesty ad ran in two other London-based newspapers the day of the meeting. The funds to pay for the advertisements came from more than 2,000 individuals online.

To take action, share the ad on Facebook, Twitter and on your blogs.

I was listening to a story on the Bradford murders on the BBC the other morning. One of the interviewees in the story stated that crimes like this happen disproportionately frequently to commercial sex workers because of the criminalisation of commercial sex work. Women in this profession are far more likely to be on the fringes of society, less protected by the communities around them, and less able to go to authorities for help when they need it. Because of this marginalisation, potential attackers are also more likely to think they can get away with it – that no one will follow up on these cases.

This resonated with an article a friend recently pointed me towards, on the Accelerating Prevention news service. The article pushes for the decriminalisation of sex work for these reasons:

• Sex work will not go away;
• There are many harms associated with sex work, but these can best be dealt with by other areas of criminal law or by non-legal interventions;
• Anything short of decriminalisation makes those harms worse, particularly to sex workers themselves; and
• Enforcing a sense of morality through the law is likely to generate other harmful immoralities.

The article goes on to argue for the legalisation of commercial sex work by advocating that “consensual sexual contact between two adults in private is legal.” As my friend rightly pointed out, one could use the same approach to decriminalise homosexuality.

The argument is essentially that people’s sex lives – so long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process – are their own business, and the rest of us have no place trying to control them.

People will live lives differently from how other people might – or how other people might want them to. I might be compelled by choice, curiosity, DNA, personality, biology, nature, nurture or any other number of reasons to take actions you might not take. But, as long as I’m not hurting anybody in the process, is it your right to judge, condemn, or legislate my behaviour?

Ignoring the things that make us uncomfortable doesn’t make them go away. Secrets thrive in the dark, like mushrooms. If I’m shamed, or stigmatised, or legislated into keeping my behaviour hidden, it is far more likely that problems will fester. Let things into the light, where we can talk about them, disagree about them, share ideas and concerns and advice. And accept that if I’m not hurting anyone else, I have the right to be who I am, just as you do.

On Tuesday morning, June 1st, the police blocked public entry to Doon Estate in Msasa because a Chinese Delegation was visiting the sculpture garden housed in the same venue. People trying to get to the restaurant, as well as the coffee and curio shops were turned away and told to come back at 3pm.

This illustrates the kind of abuse of power and position that we have come to experience in Zimbabwe. The authorities showed a total lack of awareness, appreciation and respect for the business owners in this complex who consistently service the few tourists that still come to Zimbabwe, rather than infrequent “VIP” delegations.

The shop owners and business people in this complex already have to contend with power and water cuts – they shouldn’t have to add spontaneous closures on account of delegations to their list of challenges.

Email the Chinese Embassy in Harare (chinaemb-zw@mfa.gov.cn) and ask for their comments on this incident.