By Wisdom Mumera
Harare 17 December 2013-The room is filled with mostly elderly women long into their menopausal periods. Their facial art speaks of an ongoing strain to catch a slipping age. However for all the mascara and weaves they have beautifully styled, time has ingrained itself upon their faces so that they are more beautiful grannies than women. The shared conversation drifts between shared experiences and humorous banter of comrades who are meeting once again.
They are familiar with each other from previously meeting at some other social event. Some have met in parliament or senate when they debated agrarian issues or some other technical national tactics. Others went to the liberation war together. They go back far.
Politics is as much a national job as it is a national art in the balancing of emotions against logic. Too much of any of the two can lead to the figure being ridiculed for being eccentrically useless or politically immature.
For such a huge gathering there is a lack of men in the room. About 4 men sit lost in the female throng whilst the other two are camera men who have sought to hide in constantly moving around, going about their duties, with a practised detachment that removes them from the female attention. They have become camera-men, not men.
After a while, a natural haired women clothed dryly in a grey African costume with a funny shaped collar, breezes into the room trailed by three small girls. They are not exactly small but thrown into a room filled with large and aged women and other socially well-off, too well-off, social activists, they really look small. She leads them to the farthest corner, still unoccupied, and they fit themselves into the chairs very much aware that suddenly the banter has hiccuped and silently eyes are scanning them. As a cold breeze, their entrance has brought in a new chilling atmosphere.
This gathering of social activists, parliamentarians and other enlightened women out to fight the scourge of rape and sexual violence has suddenly been invaded by the face of their enemy and they are lost on what to talk about. For a while they grope for conversation and the wine glasses of mints. Some lift unwanted bottles of water to take unwanted sips. Others forage into their handbags searching for nothing.
Without being told it’s obvious that the three girls are victims of rape. One of them has a fully formed womb, showing off her pregnancy. The beauty of a pregnant tummy is however transformed into a painful sight by the timidity and freshness of her face. She is young. Too young to be having another young thing growing in her tummy.
When the time comes for the woman to deliver her speech, it comes out weighted with all the emotion of a pained mother. Her name is Letty Musunda from Musasa Project. She laments the local government’s apparent ignorance towards happenings at Musasa Project which ironically is one of the leading organisations fighting sexual violence in the country. She is pained.
“We have had visitors from Malawi’s legislation coming over to see what we face at our homes for the sexually violated but no one from the local authorities has ever come over, therefore I have come with some of the girls so that our Ministers and legislators can see what we face on a day-to-day basis.
“We face a lot of stigma as an institution with cynical comments that we are just frustrated and divorced women who are getting back at men under the guise of fighting sexual violence”.
As Musunda’s voice moves around the Rainbow Towers room it doesn’t shake one person and go to the next one like a human being. It’s a spirit that reaches into every one of us and remains, perusing the folds of our consciences to see if we really mean what we have come for. Do we really believe in the fight or we are passer-byes who have come across an event where there is free tea with candies and polony slapped between bread.
Plus the free t-shirts and as one legislator reminded her fellow friend, “sign your name on the register or you won’t get any money”.
She finishes and gives the podium to the three girls.
One narrates about an employer who raped her when his wife had gone to work. The man went scot-free, for lack of evidence. The other was raped by her uncle. She doesn’t want the unborn baby. The last one is all tears, pain and anger. Tomorrow looks bleak.
The weight of emotion in her voice and the face of rape at close quarters compel every one of us to remain stiff when she finishes. No one claps hands. The sound of slapping palms appears to be an affront to her and we can only stew in the silence of our guilty consciences.
The Minister for Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development, Oppah Muchinguri stands up to give the key note address. After all the emotions, this is still a women’s parliamentary caucus and we will have the full kit of protocol. She doesn’t have any touching tales but also can’t ignore the painful stories of the three girls.
About the government’s ignoring of Musasa Project she says, ‘al-right that was noted, we shall come there”.
And she continues with her speech.
“Sentences for rapists are not deterrent enough and so female legislators should move motions in parliament for a change”, she says.
“Rape is about exerting power, controlling and removing women from categories of power”. Nice statement. Well coiffured too.
Nothing in what the Minister has just said is ground breaking, life-changing or bad. It’s all politically correct. She has urged legislators to wield female power firmly and objectively, slammed rapists (light-heartedly proposing castration) and assured every one of government efforts to fight rape.
However the figures from the police have revealed that something is failing. 2440 cases of child rape cases were reported in the first half of the year, representing an increase of 5% from last year. The trend has even evolved to see a high rise in the number of church leaders implicated too.
For all the exposure rape issues have been given its quiet apparent that some of those in government tasked with standing up for the fight still lack the passion for the fight.
They may have the statistics, but they lack the passion for the calling. Theirs is a borrowed fight which does not matter at the end of the day since its one among a plethora of other podiums upon which they can stand to project their images in favourable light necessary for re-election.
Last month during the Women’s Trust organized Women Parliamentarians Caucus at the Rainbow Towers it was quiet apparent that for many in there, the event was just another occasion among many on their way towards whatever they are in power for.
Not taking emotions for being the benchmark, the people who really seemed to be in tune with what the fight against sexual violence and rape is, where those coming in from civic organisations. Whether it’s the default setup of democratic systems that politicians have to be fixated with no definite issue so as to remain interested in everything is debatable.
What was not debatable, were the facial natures of those who were present. How they soporifically flowed along with the tide of events before they ebbed and they skipped for the tea line. The absence of interest, the presence of duty without passion.
It’s that kind of attitude that has led to forums for social issues like sexual and gender based violence degenerating into social events where pals swap tales, spend donor money and renew unrealized goals.
Everything remains a futuristic goal ever waiting beyond the horizon of renewed vigour either on the government’s part or the institution’s. The numbers of rapists continue to rise whilst seemingly rented politicians drone on without passion spewing sterile victuals legitimizing their existence as societal mothers but ultimately adding nothing to the effort to stop the rot.
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