Q&A: "We Have Managed to Make the Female Agenda a Current Affairs Issue"

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Interview with Luta Shaba

HARARE, Mar 28 2008 (IPS) - Towards the end of last year, IPS reported on efforts to increase women&#39s political participation in Zimbabwe, ahead of the Mar. 29 elections. As it happens, only about 13 percent of candidates for the House of Assembly are women – along with some 30 percent of Senate aspirants, according to statistics from the Women in Politics Support Unit, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO). So, what went wrong?

To get an answer to this and other questions, IPS reporter Tonderai Kwidini spoke to Luta Shaba, executive director of the Women&#39s Trust, an NGO that is heading up &#39Women can do it!&#39: a campaign for increasing women&#39s participation in the political life of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe will also hold presidential polls Saturday (no women are contesting this election), and a local government poll for which gender-related figures have been hard to come by.

The ballot is taking place in a context of political and economic crisis that has already prompted rights groups to express doubts about whether voting will be free and fair; parliamentary polls in 2000 and 2005 and the presidential election of 2002 were marred by human rights abuses and allegations of vote rigging on behalf of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Some of the most pressing concerns in the case of Saturday&#39s elections relate to ongoing intimidation of the opposition and bias in the state-controlled media against opposition candidates, an inaccurate voters&#39 roll that could enable fraud, and the manipulation of food aid for political advantage.

Tonderai Kwidini (TK): Figures suggest that parties are falling short as regards putting women on the ballot. What are the main reasons for this?

Luta Shaba (LS): There is no clear mechanism in place to mandate political parties to abide by SADC guidelines on women&#39s participation in politics. (Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Southern African Development Community&#39s 1997 Declaration on Gender and Development, which set a goal of having 30 percent of decision-making posts in member nations in female hands by 2005, a goal since adjusted to 50 percent of posts.)

The guidelines are clear but there is a gap left between these and the national policies. We are therefore saying that the government has to put in place constitutional guidelines for all political parties to make sure that women have a place in politics.

TK: In an interview with IPS last year, you spoke of wanting to "to thrash out issues that are stopping us as women from getting into power and making transformative changes to the lives of women." What issues have you identified in this regard, and how have you dealt with them?

LS: The most distressing things have been the political party machinations, where female candidates have sometimes been used as pawns in a political game, being thrown into areas where chances of winning might be remote. The other big issue has been the lack of access to resources such as finance, which is in itself a gendered problem in terms of the historical preference towards men.

Women have been made to believe by society that their best place is in the home, via marriage.

The other problem is the lack of information. Women are fed with all kinds of falsehoods discouraging them from participating because of a poor education background. We have, however, tried to turn this around by saying that women must use the resources that they have – such as the big numbers and a deep understanding of the community networks, and spreading information about participating in issues of governance.

TK: Can you point to any successes, to date?

LS: We set out to achieve two main goals: to get women to put themselves forward as candidates for the 2008 election, and to engage women to vote for other women. I would say we have in a way succeeded because we have managed to make the female agenda a current affairs issue, and changed the mindsets of the average Zimbabwean (for them to realise) that women and leadership issues are no longer a…debate, but issues whose time has come.

TK: How have you managed to do this?

LS: Basically we have done this through radio and television adverts, several workshops…and sustained lobbying of political parties and opinion leaders.

We used a series of workshops throughout the country where we trained more than 2,000 women drawn from the three major political parties in Zimbabwe on issues of governance and leadership. Out of these, 260 registered interest to take up political positions and 160 succeeded to stand for their different political parties.

TK: How have you managed to keep everyone on board, given the hostile inter-party atmosphere ahead of elections?

LS: We did this in a common spirit as women of Zimbabwe. We worked with other organisations working on women&#39s issues, the Ministry of Women&#39s Affairs, Gender and Community Development and the Women&#39s Parliamentary Caucus. This made the campaign a collective effort and therefore everyone showed a unique level of maturity.

TK: Looking back, how might you have done things differently?

LS: The only regret that we have is that we did not have enough time to raise the awareness of the electorate on why it is important to vote for female candidates. The time for lobbying was short and we had to do our things in a very fast-paced manner, leaving very little room for planning. We would have preferred one-on-one interaction with women at the grassroots.

TK: Do you have any activities planned for the final days before the elections – particularly as concerns lobbying Zimbabweans to vote for female candidates if they feel these women are up to the job?

LS: We are going to be flighting our final adverts a week before the election so that when people go to vote they will have females candidates etched in their minds.

(* Please note that the original version of this story incorrectly stated that the Women&#39s Trust has taken the lead in the &#3950-50&#39 campaign, an initiative to have more women in political office in Zimbabwe. In fact, the trust is heading &#39Women can do it!&#39, a separate campaign for increasing women&#39s participation in the political life of Zimbabwe.)