Connect Women: Break the Isolation

2010 VOF Week 1

Connect Women: Break the Isolation

Zimbabweans have lived through extraordinary times. Our crisis has been analysed from every conceivable angle. People know that at the height of the crisis Zimbabwe had the record for the world’s highest inflation, 5 billion percent. There was no food in the shops. Long queues were the norm. You saw a queue and joined it, only asking later what the queue was for. A queue meant there was sugar, or fuel or corn-meal or perhaps salt.

Stories that captured the lived reality of women’s lives were few; their struggles over the last 10 years, their triumphs, their hopes and their dreams. These stories of needed to be told by women. Web 2.0 means that we can start telling the stories and shaping the news about my world, as experience it not as decided by editorial policy or limited by repressive legislation. This is what l find exciting about Web 2.0

The story for the media was that unemployment was at 80%. What it meant for women was that there was no money for maternity fees and therefore you had to give birth at home. The equivalent of 5, 75 seater bus loads of women were dying each year as a result of preventable complications. This information should have elicited outrage. It did not. I am hopeful that Web 2.0 will provide a platform for me to share, the reality of our different lives as women in Zimbabwe.

In March 2008, people voted, tired of the sewage, the bone dry water taps and the humiliation of fighting over bread. The vote was crucial. The result was violence. The beatings were called “re-education”. People had the temerity to demand change. How wrong! How unthinkable! International media covered the violence. UNTOLD were women’s experiences of violence. How rape was used to punish women in politics. They were punished for being daughters, wives and sisters of opposition “enemies” of the government. Later the stories came out, when it was too late for many to receive the emergency treatment to prevent HIV infection. Months later the pregnancies started showing. Homes and hearts are still breaking. The displacement continues as wives are chased away for having been raped. UNTOLD is the isolation and fear.

Women responded. Their advocacy organizations evolved into humanitarian agencies. We tried to reach out to sometimes nameless and faceless women in the outside world who could stand in solidarity. We desperately brainstormed on women in the UN, international media and international NGOs we could tell of our need. We needed material support, solidarity and an end to the deaths of women and children.

We are bracing ourselves for more elections in 2011. How do we multiply our capacities beyond Zimbabwe? How do we mobilize support to ensure that organizations of women are empowered to serve and save women? This is where my new community of women on World Pulse comes in to mobilize support and solidarity for women in Zimbabwe. Connecting women’s capacities.