A century has lapsed since the first celebration of the remarkable international day when scores of women took to the streets demanding their economic and social right in the abusively male dominated world. The world is reflecting on the past and pondering on the fate of women’s future.

Speaking at a women’s suffrage convention in 1868, citing sternness, selfishness, love of war among other qualities, which she said have seen a record of blood and cruelty in the male led world, Elizabeth Candy concluded that “the male element is a destructive force”. Women are full of love for peace, harmony and order. It is only sad that this heart has not yet been placed fully at the centre stage of development.

Now I need to challenge men to start thinking of a single normal day. Have we ever stopped to think how many women die daily while giving birth, how much a woman takes the family on her shoulders in the midst of difficulties, how many innocent ladies we abuse on the prostitution market today, how all children in the world seek the love and protection of a mother. And then stop to think how many women have been raped today, how many women are crying because of violence now. Yet they never stop to love and smile. The very same people at the sacrificial altar for the continuity of the human race today still cry for recognition in society. Look at a newly born girl child, a poor young lady in the remotest part of a war tone country today and know for sure that she is a symbol of this endurance, this suffering in this world into which we all come in the same means for the same life.

Turning to this day, consider how much we celebrate the turn of the New Year, how much we honour one fallen hero in your country versus how we honour mothers who die giving birth for instance. Do not we get to feel that it is not enough just to celebrate this day doing our daily duties behind our office desks? Do not we also feel that it is not enough to show love respect and honour to women during only one out of 365 days of the year.

All the same, turn to a lady next to you, yes you see that symbol, think of your mother, your own sister your neighbor, perhaps you are lady yourself, yes your are the symbol of humanity, love, care, life above all of this endurance. Your struggle is not a mere demand, its not a political exercise, not a fallacy but goes beyond measurable terms. As weak as you may seem physically, the power of sustaining life is in inherently in your being. For those of you who believe the Bible, consider that, when God wanted to serve the world He neither sought for a powerful King, nor a strongest man of the clan, but a woman in the name of Mary”

I salute you women.

The 8th of March was International Women’s Day and this year was the 100th year since the first Women’s Day was celebrated. As women around the world gathered to celebrate, the Zimbabwe Women Writers organisation took time to mark this remarkable event under the theme, “Promoting equal access to education through literacy”. Women writers both urban and rural, ZWW board and staff, partners and sponsors of ZWW, and the guest of honor Dr Thokozile Chitepo who is the chairperson of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe graced the occasion.

The organisation also took time to celebrate its twenty years of existence. “Gazing at the Environment” was ZWW’s first publication published in 1992. Their latest publication is “The African Tea Cosy” by Violet Masilo. But even in the midst of celebrations the organisation acknowledged that there is a daunting task ahead of them. ZWW believes in women uplifting each other and rejects the pulling each down syndrome. This is evident of the anthologies the organisation publishes – without team spirit these would not have been achieved.

The Zimbabwe Women Writers also launched their Women’s Voices Project. The role of the Women’s Voices initiative will be to advocate the use of hybrid new media amongst women writers and providing a platform for them to interact. The initiative is to take a global stance, thus it will encourage cultural exchange and knowledge sharing. This project is, ‘committed to articulating women’s voices’, as held by ZWW Director Audrey Charamba.

It was uplifting to hear performance of poems by women and speeches from members of ZWW board who have been with the organisation since its inception. Women celebrated victories by singing:

Semadzimai emuZimbabwe takamirira zvakaoma
Kurema kwazvo kunoda madzimai
Azvina mhosva nyango zvorema
Takamirira zvakaoma

A rapist doesn’t have to be a stranger to be legitimate. Someone you never saw. A man with obvious problems. But if you been public with him, danced one dance, kissed him goodbye lightly with a closed mouth, pressing charges will be as hard as keeping your legs closed while five fools try and run a train on you. These men friends of ours, who smile nicely, take you out to dinner, then lock the door behind you.
- Yasmine in For Colored Girls

When people think of rape, they might think of a stranger jumping out of a shadowy place and sexually attacking a woman walking alone at night. The thought of two people who know each other, going for dinner and the male counterpart sexually attacking the female counterpart is rare for some. Rape is an act of aggression and violence so even if the two people know each other well, and even if they were intimate or had sex before, no one has the right to force a sexual act on another person against his or her will.

We have heard, seen victims and read about rape, incestuous rape, and politically motivated rape, HIV infected men raping virgins, ritualistic rape to women raping men. But the cases of date rape being reported are very few and mostly go unreported. A blind eye has been given towards this kind of rape because people simple say it was the victim’s fault. ‘What were you doing in the first place, you seduced him. Don’t worry about it. It happens you might as well continue giving it to him!’ These are the words of our best friends when we share our date rape experiences. Big girls don’t cry but honestly that is so subversive. One would rather cry and not qualify in the ‘big girls’ zone.

I want people to know that date rape can happen to anyone, no matter what age, popularity, race or income group. Date rape is rape. Victims of date rape should not feel guilty. They are victims whose bodies, rights and trusts were violated.

Given a cursory glance, The Zimbabwean‘s Voice of the Voiceless campaign appears to be a noble idea and indeed a small poll of friends confirmed it. The suffering of Zimbabweans is indisputable, poverty unemployment and an estimated 2 million people who will go hungry this year point to a failed economy and bad governance, issues that must be become part of a greater public debate.

I recall reading a study that said people have a 15 second attention span when surfing a website. It’s not surprising then that the exploitative subtext of this campaign is not easy to see:

Should the Voiceless Campaign inspire you to continue to remain informed, you can consider purchasing a subscription through this website. Alternatively, there are many organisations within Zimbabwe that are unable to access the news. Please consider the purchase of a subscription on their behalf, by using the ‘Give a Voice to the Voiceless’ tab on this page.

The Zimbabwean is seeking to increase it market share and thus it’s revenues. There is nothing wrong with this, except that Mr Mbanga seeks to turn the suffering of Zimbabweans into profit. His model is hardly new; it uses the same morally corrupt rationale as the aid industry’s illustration of Africa as pot-bellied children covered in flies, and helpless women who have been raped and battered by illiterate AK-47 wielding primates.

On a list of credible news sources, the Zimbabwean ranks lower even than the Herald. There have been countless times when I have read a story, and have been shocked and alarmed, only to remember that I live in Zimbabwe, I was there when it happened and it was nowhere near the chaotic carnage that the Zimbabwean seems to take pleasure in describing in lurid detail. That is not to say that there is no suffering in Zimbabwe, the pictures on the website are of real people. But it is a shame that they and the photographers who took them would allow their images to be manipulated for the profit of the individual who publishes and edits the paper.

In choosing to publish a newspaper Mr. Mbanga should adhere to industry standards in terms of ethics and principles, none of which he as editor and publisher of the Zimbabwean seems to be familiar with. If he wanted to do something about the situation in Zimbabwe, then he would be a man and employ journalists who are actually in Zimbabwe, he would navigate the legal quagmire and publish here. It may be difficult but it is not impossible. There is no honour in exploitation. All the Zimbabwean really does is add to the misinformation that make people believe Africa is dark continent peopled by even darker savages and that the sum of Zimbabwe, with its different peoples, languages, cultures and experiences of politics is Robert Mugabe. It is not. Like many other alleged Zimbabweans, he has chosen to abandon the struggle and throw stones from a safe distance.

True Zimbabweans who work for progress in this country fight from where they stand. The real fight is on the ground, it is in the rural areas, it is in Chiadzwa, it is in Mbare, it is in a magistrate’s court, it will never be in the safe confines of a flat or hotel in London or Johannesburg.

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
- Janis Joplin, American singer

The Arts, Social Media, and Cultural Activism for a Creative Civil Society
24 – 25 February 2011

HIVOS in partnership with the Norwegian Embassy conducted a workshop with artists, activists and journalists in order to encourage and promote the use of social media tools such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook amongst arts and media practitioners. With traditional media being state controlled there is little room for alternative voices to be heard by ordinary Zimbabweans.

The aims of the workshop were to examine the relationship between the arts, media communication and technology, as a catalyst for national dialogue and active civil society participation; to explore all possible ways in which new media could be used to disseminate information that supports the democratisation process in Zimbabwe, and finally to encourage dialogue between artists, arts organisations, media practitioners and civil society organisations. Among the presenters were Chris Kabwato, media activist Takura Zangazha, and protest poet Farai ‘Cde. Fatso’ Munro.

Chris Kabwato from Rhodes University gave a presentation on social and new media tools and their uses. He noted the problems of access, and that it was drawn along gender and economic lines, with greater access being afforded in urban areas. Mr. Kabwato also said that the new technology brought with cultural and political changes as in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt. “The Internet is also changing our business models, in the publishing industry it is changing our production, publication and distribution models.” He further noted. He described how these tools had become communications game changers and gave the example of Wikipedia, whose users generate the sites content. It had changed the site’s audience from being passive consumers of information to active producers of content. He went on to discuss Craig’s List, a free classified ads site that was changing the business model for newspapers and magazines. He stated that advertising had moved from print to the web, and it was no longer supporting content.

In his remarks media activist Takura Zhangazha pointed out that media arts and culture were about freedom of expression. In their attempts to retain power, governments both before and after independence limited this freedom through several pieces of legislation. Currently this included POSA, AIPPA, BSA, the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act. As such the placement of Freedom of Expression was in a highly politicised, repressed and difficult space. With the environment being so polarized between political parties, media and arts practitioners also found themselves self-censoring to survive. Mr. Zhangazha stated that a key problem in Zimbabwe today was the way in which the economic environment has affected the creativity of artists, and noted the influence of civil society organisations as well as political parties, which led artists to create to an agenda. He went on to describe the competing hegemonic agendas of political parties and how the media and artists were complicit in their formulation and promulgation.

In his presentation, titled the revolution via twitter – the role of new media in arts and activism, protest poet Cde Fatso began by defining the meaning of social and new media. He briefly reflected on the role played by social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in the revolutions in North Africa. Finally he showed how he had incorporated other less well know tools such as Reverbnation and CrowdFunder into his business model as an artist.