An appeal fromAVAAZ to sign a petition in support of WikiLeaks:

The chilling intimidation campaign against WikiLeaks (when they have broken no laws) is an attack on freedom of the press and democracy. We urgently need a massive public outcry to stop the crackdown — let’s get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?vl

WikiLeaks isn’t acting alone — it’s partnered with the top newspapers in the world (New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc) to carefully review 250,000 US diplomatic cables and remove any information that it is irresponsible to publish. Only 800 cables have been published so far. Past WikiLeaks publications have exposed government-backed torture, the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and corporate corruption.

The US government is currently pursuing all legal avenues to stop WikiLeaks from publishing more cables, but the laws of democracies protect freedom of the press. The US and other governments may not like the laws that protect our freedom of expression, but that’s exactly why it’s so important that we have them, and why only a democratic process can change them.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether WikiLeaks and the leading newspapers it’s partnered with are releasing more information than the public should see. Whether the releases undermine diplomatic confidentiality and whether that’s a good thing. Whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the personal character of a hero or a villain. But none of this justifies a vicious campaign of intimidation to silence a legal media outlet by governments and corporations. Click below to join the call to stop the crackdown:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?vl

Ever wonder why the media so rarely gives the full story of what happens behind the scenes? This is why – because when they do, governments can be vicious in their response. And when that happens, it’s up to the public to stand up for our democratic rights to a free press and freedom of expression. Never has there been a more vital time for us to do so.

They started building their nest a month ago
soon after they arrived from Zaire

For the last few weeks
we have watched these beautiful, minute creatures
set up home outside the kitchen door
and marveled at the extraordinary investment of energy involved!

we watched as a tiny cup was built of fine grasses
spider web-stitched,
lichen-adorned
and eggs laid

Last Sunday they hatched
and the parents began to work
diving, floating flashes of orange gold
snapping invisible insects out of the air around us
feeding three, inch-long scraps of skin, bone and beak

They defended their territory with huge conviction
fearlessly attacking any passing strangers
Wednesday saw them fight off a Hammercop
(just passing through on an innocent search for pond life)
attacking him with such vigour that
despite his huge bulk,
he fell off his perch
and lost his dignity.

We saw them chasing barbets and bulbuls
bombing the bush babies as they emerged at sunset

Last week we began to notice strange white sacks
with small brown tails
floating in our pond
what new life form is this?
they seemed not to fit into any category we knew

a few days later, as we sat at the table drinking coffee
the female floated over the pond and deposited a small white sack!
she was cleaning droppings from the nest
(we learnt later that they often build nests above water)
no predator would find her chicks by looking at the ground!

Today, 10 days from hatching
3 fat feathery beings are stretching their wings
struggling and jostling to stay on board
and finally out they popped
each one seemingly as large as the nest they had left
and sat on the branch stretching into this new found freedom

they are about to fly.

what extraordinary dedication
a journey of hundreds of miles
weeks of careful camouflaged nest construction
the laying of 3 precious minute eggs
the determined effort to feed
and protect them from passing predators

3 tiny new lives
no bigger than a thumb

In her editorial for the first edition of BUWA, editor Alice Kanengoni describes a typical domestic scene: women in the kitchen preparing a meal, men in front of the television or at a table playing games. I was reminded of the funerals; weddings etc that I’ve attended where the men are either around the fire or in the house waiting for a meal, drinks, and the women are doing the work. Women themselves view their rightful places in society as being by the fire or the stove, cooking and serving.

As an adult woman, I wonder at my mother’s strength and energy in my childhood; she worked full time, just like my father did, her job was just as demanding as my fathers, and yet at the end of her work day she came home to cook, clean and help with homework. My father came home to his favourite chair, television, snacks dinner and a drink.

I remember whenever I was untidy or refused to cook, or did some other unwomanly thing she would start her reprimand with “musikana akanaka ano…” (a good girl does..). When I asked her why I had to be a good girl she would reply that it’s part of our traditions, how would I be married if I couldn’t keep house? My mother is a highly educated woman, smarter than anyone I know, and a strong willed, independent thinker.  But for her, who she is at work, and who she is at home are two different and very separate people.

In her article for BUWA, titled Contemporary African Feminism, Professor Patricia McFadden writes:

In very general terms, feminism as a radical thinking/ conceptual tradition has deliberately ruptured the boundaries of conventional, often reactionary knowledge production everywhere it has been practised, and has challenged conventional as an ideological practice, by arguing for a politics of transformation and of daily life.

She goes on to say:

Feminism is the rejection of and struggle against Patriarchy (as a system and set of structures and ideologies that privilege men and allot them various forms of power in all societies) and is also the celebration of freedom for women everywhere. As Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones (1998) put it: ” Feminist theory seeks to analyse the conditions which shape women’s lives and to explore cultural understandings of what it means to be a woman.”

For many women in Africa, feminism is something that we practise outside our homes and our families. Our cultural understanding of womanhood is sometimes in direct conflict what we say in meetings about gender equity and social justice for women. Patriarchy is something we fight at work or in the streets.  At home not only do women accept it, they also seek to perpetuate it but granting privilege to their sons and insisting that their daughters become domesticated in the traditions of their mothers, grand mothers and great grand mothers. I think many African women, like my mother and even myself have struggled, or are struggling with the notions of being an African woman, a feminist and an African Feminist. We struggle to translate an academic concept into reality in our own lives, and often end up living two lives in compromise.

From PlusNews:

Risky sex does not equal HIV risk – study

JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwean women reported significantly less risky sexual behaviour than their counterparts in Tanzania, despite being almost four times more likely to be HIV-infected, a comparative study has found.

Researchers from the Universities of Zimbabwe and Oslo in Norway disseminated data from pregnant women who visited antenatal clinics in Moshi, Tanzania, and in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, between 2002 and 2004. The women answered questions about their sexual behaviour, medical history and socio-demographic background and were tested for HIV and several other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

HIV prevalence among the Zimbabwean women was nearly 26 percent against about 7 percent among the Tanzanian women. Risk of infection rose with age for women in both countries up until the 25 to 29 age group, after which it started to decline for the Tanzanian women but continued to rise for the Zimbabweans. The Zimbabwean women also had somewhat higher rates of STIs, but this may have been the result of more of the women being HIV-positive and more susceptible to such infections.

In the Journal of the International AIDS Society, the researchers described the “unexpected phenomenon” revealed by the data gathered on the women’s sexual behaviour. On virtually every indicator, the Tanzanian women reported more risky behaviour from having had a casual sexual partner in the last 12 months to early sexual debut to being in a polygamous relationship. They also reported much higher levels of alcohol consumption, another behaviour that has been linked to increased sexual risk-taking.

The authors can only speculate about the explanation for this “paradox”. Perhaps by the time the survey was done, women in Zimbabwe had lowered their sexual risk-taking in response to an epidemic that had already claimed so many lives; or maybe they under-reported their sexual risk-taking because such behaviours by women are considered socially unacceptable in Zimbabwe.

Numerous studies have failed to provide definitive answers as to why HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa varies so widely, with some countries recording infection rates of less than 2 percent and others recording rates of more than 20 percent.

It has long been assumed that different norms relating to sexual risk-taking from one country to another played an important role, but the recent findings suggest that other factors may be more important. The result has implications for the design of HIV prevention programmes, especially those aimed at sexual behaviour change.

The male partners of the Tanzanian women were much more likely to be circumcised, but the effect of male circumcision was not apparent in the study findings.

One possible explanation for the severity of Zimbabwe’s HIV problem compared with Tanzania’s, write the authors, is the role that non-sexual transmission of HIV may have played in the early years of Zimbabwe’s epidemic. They cite a 1990s study which found a 2.1 percent HIV prevalence among 933 women with no reported sexual experience.

“Early in the epidemic, syringes weren’t sterilized properly,” said lead author of the study, Munyaradzi Mapingure, from the Department of Community Medicine at the University of Zimbabwe. “We’re not blaming anyone, because people probably weren’t aware of it, but people who grew up in Zimbabwe in the 1970s were put in a queue and vaccinated with one needle.”

The theory that large-scale non-sexual transmission of HIV can explain severe epidemics like Zimbabwe’s is “very controversial”, admitted Mapingure, but “something we have to bring into the discussion”.

“Most HIV prevention programmes are failing because they focus on sexual behaviour,” he told IRIN/PlusNews over the telephone from Harare. “We need to look at the whole sexualization of HIV.”

During the weekend my single girlfriends and I were discussing the perils of dating in Zimbabwe. One girlfriend said that married men propositioned her regularly at work. Others had regular girlfriends on the side. We were shocked. What happened to love and the sanctity of marriage?

Of course some men will argue that this is Africa and monogamy is a European construct, that our culture permits polygamy, that women out number men, and their millions of years old biological imperative, that should have become extinct with the Neanderthals, to populate the earth is difficult to ignore. The religious might even quote God’s “Go forth and multiply”, and who can argue with God?

Surfing the Internet a few days ago I came across a dating forum on classifieds.co.zw. Among the men and women, whose pain and loneliness was palpable in the text of their personal ads, were a few married but available men:

Married but willing to explore: am married but would want to spice my life a bit with someone similar probably share experiences and passion but just a discreet relationship no strings attached (nsa)

Lets have fun NSA period! :… I am a funny dude who loves older open minded NSA ladies, who are funny to hang out and go out with …. email or call me on weekends only

With arrogance and assumed impunity both of these have posted their names, phone numbers and even pictures. They are well educated. One even works in development, where one would assume he should be more enlightened than the average man.

Love is hard, sex is easy. But at a time when HIV/AIDS exists because no one thinks it can happen to them isn’t a no strings attached non-relationship risking too much? It’s not just men who should be held responsible its women too. It is impossible to cheat without a willing partner. The men, who propositioned my friend, knew she knew they were married. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time they had thought to have a little fun with the pretty young thing in the office, and by extension experience has taught them that it doesn’t matter, pretty young things don’t care whether they are married or not.