By Wallace Mawire.
HARARE. (News Of The South) – The Federation of African Media Women (FAMWZ), an organisation established to advance the status of media women in Zimbabwe has announced change of its name to the Gender and Media Connect (GMC), at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held in Harare recently.
At the EGM attended by male and female journalists from Zimbabwe’s media fraternity, it was learnt that FAMWZ was initially established in 1984.From that time, one other name change had been proposed but did not succeed.
According to Patience Zirima, Chairperson of the newly endorsed GMC, the first 18 months of the rebirth of FAMWZ have been momentous, with commendable strides having been made towards reclaiming its position as a reference point for gender and media issues in Zimbabwe.
Zirima said that FAMWZ secretariat was re-established in January 2014 with support from women and men in and out of the media, including media persons, media support groups and media houses.
Virginia Muwanigwa, a gender activist and interim board member of the GMC said that FAMWZ was also caught up in the difficult times which affected many other organisations during Zimbabwe’s economic downturn and is focusing on its rebirth.
“After a long search, we have successfully retrieved the founding documents. With input from some of you during our strategic planning meeting of 2014, we have reviewed the constitution and are still in the process of re-registering the organisation as a Trust with a new name to Gender and Media Connect as adopted by members and Trustees,” Zirima said.
Zirima said that the constitutional reviews, name change and re-registration processes were necessitated by two reasons.
She said that the original identity of the organisation which recognized FAMWZ as a chapter of a regional body was no longer applicable because the regional body is now defunct. Also the other name which had been proposed WOMENZ, which came as a result of amendment in 2002 failed to stick on anyone’s tongue and as a result people continued to use the name FAMWZ despite it having been changed.
“We hope all of you will embrace the new name GMC which we feel truly identifies with contemporary trends in the gender discourse and articulates our ideological position. We are positive that the re-registration process will be completed in the next few weeks,” Zirima said.
Abigail Gamanya, National Coordinator of the former FAMWZ said that as an organisation that views women’s elevation to positions of influence and decision making, they celebrate the triumphs that have been registered in media houses that have women among their most senior officials.
“It is our hope that this will be a telling factor in enabling FAMWZ to promote gender mainstreaming in media houses in the near and distant future,” Gamanya said.
At the recent EGM, members discussed membership issues and the next Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the organisation is slotted for next year. Also members endorsed the new name of the organisation.
A veteran Journalists and Publisher of the Observer newspaper, Barnabas Thondhlana endorsed the transformation of FAMWZ and said that there was need to promote females’ participation in the media landscape to achieve their intended goals.
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