I’ve just been listening to audio clips from Derek Matyszak and Rudo Gaidzanwa’s thought provoking presentations at a recent SAPES seminar on gay rights and the Constitution.

Gaidzanwa says some interesting, controversial things, such as:

In Zimbabwe there is also the issue of HIV because of men having sex with men, which people don’t want to deal with; not the health workers, not the government, not anybody. Somehow people pretend that it’s not there. Quite a lot of married men have sex with both men and women in Zimbabwe, but it’s never something that is admitted, its never put in the public domain. Those men, when they go into the clubs in Harare, they’ll be consorting with other men who are gay, and they (the openly gay men) say but what are you doing here since you are heterosexual? And they say Mukadzi wangu ari kumusha (my wife is in the rural areas).

You can read and listen to this discussion here

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 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.

The Research and Advocacy Unit, in collaboration with IDASA (an African Democracy Institute), the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) recently launched a report titled Women, Politics and the Zimbabwe crisis.

The report was the first of a set of findings from a survey taken in November and December 2009. The poll was conducted throughout Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces, and included 2158 individuals. Most of the women interviewed were from Harare, Manicaland, Mashonaland East and West, with the average age of the women being 38. Some of the women polled were located in the Diaspora, which is Botswana and South Africa.

The purpose of the survey was to gauge the opinions of women regarding four issues, namely: what women thought about elections; what women thought about violence; what they thought about peace and finally their thoughts on the Inclusive Government.

In general women believe that they should participate in politics. In comparison with previous Afrobarometer reports, this report found that an increasing number of women are voting, however they are still fewer than the total number of women eligible to vote. A small percentage of women thought that women should be involved in politics at all, or that they should only be involved in politics with the permission of their husbands.

With regard to elections and violence, the majority of women believed that violence was caused by political intolerance and the struggle for power. 68% of women said that they did not feel safe during the 2008 election period; 52% reported having experienced violence. Surprisingly, 9% of women from across the political divide said that violence during elections was acceptable. It is distressing to note that a significant number of women believe that violence and elections are inseparable because of the violence they have personally experienced over the last decade.

The report state that, in general, there was a greater frequency of violations reported at the hands of non-state agents. This corroborates the findings of several human rights reports over the past decade. Violations at the hands of non-state agents were twice as frequent as those at the hands of state agents. 3% of women reported that they had been subjected to sexual violence. Interestingly, the witnessing of rape was much more frequently reported that the actual experience of rape. It may be concluded that women in Zimbabwe are reluctant to talk about their personal experiences of rape. Credence is lent to this theory by the fact that Zimbabwean women in the Diaspora were more willing to report incidences of personal rape during elections.

Women were asked for their views on the Inclusive Government. 71% stated that Zimbabweans should have been consulted about the formation of the Inclusive Government; 43% felt that the new government did not represent the interests of women. The results of the report suggest that Zimbabwean women have significantly declining faith in the Inclusive Government compared with a previous Afrobarometer report. Apart from food security, education and health, the majority of women sampled expressed distrust in the Inclusive Government’s ability to deliver change. Popular support as noted by previous Afrobarometer surveys has significantly declined over the last 20 years. This report found that only 9% of those sampled expressed support for ZANU PF as compared to the 51% that expressed support for MDC-T. A significant number of respondents did not want to say where their party affiliations lay, indicating conditions of fear and intimidation.

In the discussion following the presentation, a few members from the floor feel that more needs to be done to help alleviate the situation of women in the country. One woman pointed out that NGOs were not doing very much to bring justice to women, with the Organ on National Healing and Reconciliation being largely felt to be redundant. It was also pointed out that very little research about the perpetrators of violence was being conducted by civic organisations, yet this information would be a necessary tool for addressing the root causes of violence. Among the criticisms of the report was that issues of patriarchy with regard to violence were not mentioned. It was noted that this is very critical in a culture that is buttressed by traditions that look at women as subordinate to men. Further, the report failed to identify the gender of the perpetrators, leading to the assumption that all the perpetrators were men. However, in some cases this was not so. It was reported during the discussion that women were also perpetrators of violence against women.

Ellen Chadehama and Ignatious Muhambi, two staff members of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) who were arrested last week Friday, have been released on bail. Police say they are “still investigating” the case, and the pair are to go back to court next month.

According to a statement by Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, the two staff members of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) who were arrested on Friday have been tortured by the police in their holding cells.

[Ignatius] Mhambi alleged that police used empty soft drinks bottles to assault him on his knees and forced him to “sit” in a position without a chair or any other tool for a long period. [Ellen] Chademana said the police also forced her to undertake the same action for a long period. Both detainees allege that they were subjected to assaults all over their bodies.

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