In Shona culture we believe that November is an inauspicious month. You don’t get married or brew beer for the ancestors during that month, otherwise you will be cursed. And indeed, bad things do happen in November. First Yasser Arafat died. Then Condoleezza Rice was named new United States Secretary of State. And just when we thought nothing worse could happen, Joyce Teurai Ropa Mujuru was made vice-president of Zanu-PF.
One can’t help but be angry with little text and e-mail messages congratulating me and all Zimbabwean women for Mujuru’s election as Zanu-PF’s new vice-president. A crucial distinction must be made: there are female persons; then there are women’s women. The only thing Mujuru and Rice share with other women is biology.
My sisters may chide me, but how else is one supposed to greet the elevation of a woman who publicly declared: ”There is nothing like equality [between men and women]. Those who call for equality are failures in life”?
Mujuru was lauded by the patriarchal media when she made this assertion at a Salvation Army church women’s meeting in 1998. She has not been known to speak out for women’s rights issues in public, in Parliament (where she has sat since 1980), or in any notable forum (the short stint as minister for women’s affairs notwithstanding).
Women have entered the political arena in Southern Africa in increasing numbers. We have learnt that unless we are present and participate equally at decision-making tables, our needs will not be adequately met.
But we have also learnt that it is not enough to simply want to be there. It is no longer sufficient just to talk about balancing the numbers. Those of us in civil society who are called upon to support women in leadership, need to know why we are supporting them.
I do not want to work with radar-less women who seem to think that politics is a value-free science, or those who abuse office. What we need are women who will use their leadership positions to liberate themselves and other women. Trading on their biology alone is not good enough. I am angry with the kind of women who at every other time in their lives forget they are one of us, and remember their vaginas only when it suits them.
Women in leadership or aspiring to leadership have often argued, validly, that other women do not support them. But if these women make their views known so publicly, like Mujuru, should we celebrate them as our own? If they don’t bring in a different vision or values to those that currently prevail, why should anybody be congratulating them about their election? Why should I be asked to vote for other women, when all I am getting is same old, same old?
Mujuru has her own liberation war history credentials. Despite a number of newspapers’ attempts to cast her as a front for her husband, the woman has been there, done that, and was overdue for higher office. She has been in Cabinet since 1980.
Yet still we have to ask: Why is Mujuru being elevated at this particular moment? What is it that Robert Mugabe and his men have seen in her that they had failed to see in 24 years? What if she does succeed Mugabe and must clean up his mess? Once again we could see a woman being brought in when things are so bad that she ends up getting the blame when nothing changes for the better. This gives grist to the mill of those who say: ”See we told you, what can this woman do?”
The expectations of women have been raised. ”This one,” they think, ”will finally stand up for our rights.”
I am certainly not holding my breath. As many would say in Shona, ”Mujuru murume pachake” [Mujuru is a real man]!” She can stay one of the boys, but we need a few good women with whom we can identify and support as our own.
Everjoice J Win is a Zimbabwean feminist. She is currently International Women’s Rights Coordinator with ActionAid. She writes in her personal capacity