WOMEN AND THE RHODESIAN WAR

The Discourse on Zimbabwean Women in the War of Liberation and the Land Reform Programme: Myth and Reality
by Emmanuel Chiwome and Zifikile Mguni (University of Zimbabwe)

This paper focuses on images of women in discourse on Zimbabwe's war of liberation and the land reform programme. The discourse is part of myths in Zimbabwean history. The paper contributes to research that has attempted to deconstruct myths generated mainly by male politicians on the role of women soldiers in Zimbabwe's liberation war, and the condition of the generality of women in post-colonial Zimbabwe.

Women in the War of Liberation

On the importance of understanding the dynamic Zimbabwean socio-historical environment, Bhebe and Ranger (1995) in their general introduction to Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume One say:

Zimbabwe needs to remember and to understand the war: to understand it at the level of high analysis and to understand it at the level of suffering and trauma. We need to understand it for reviewing policy, for making the record more complete, for healing memories (Bhebe and Ranger 1995a:1).

They further note that:

there has been strange silence of the guerrillas since 1980¼ Many reasons have been suggested for this. Some scholars - such as Richard Werbner in south-western Zimbabwe - have found ex-combatants reluctant to talk about traumatic wartime experiences. Others have argued that for ZIPRA veterans, at least, and even for former members of ZIPA or the "left" groups within ZANU, it has not until recently been safe to do so. Yet others speak of the marginalization of even ZANLA ex-combatants... and of the creation of an "official" version of the war which gives all the glory to political leaders and to generals, many of whom are safely dead. For whatever reason, publishers have been reluctant to accept guerrilla life-stories. The result of all this has been that guerrilla experience has come to us through fiction rather than through history and autobiography (Ibid: 3).

Further to that, in Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War, Volume Two, which tries to unravel the socio-historical environment in which the war against colonialism took place, the same historians observe another information gap:

There have not so far been any fully satisfactory gendered accounts of the war and its aftermath. Instead there have been too many attempts to produce a heroic "herstory" of the war: attempts which have over-estimated the number of female guerrillas and over-stated the emancipatory mobilization of women (Bhebe and Ranger, 1995b: 26).

Zimbabwean accounts of the war of liberation that began in the late 1960s and ended in 1979, are coloured with a romantic hue that derives from socialist rhetoric and feminism. These factors shape the conception of war and independence which in turn impact on the image of women soldiers in the war.

Between the mid-1960s and the 1970s, young women found themselves leaving their communities for the promise of glory and success that lay beyond the village. In the excitement that came with the promise of patriotic adventure, as well as the threat of incarceration by the Rhodesian army, very few people had the full awareness of the imponderables of joining the war.

At independence in 1980 as part of nationalist triumphalism, politicians constructed romantic images of themselves and other participants of the war as official history. Like men, women were portrayed as larger-than-life figures who embodied all the values of patriotism as could be distilled from the war. In these accounts, women soldiers fought heroically alongside their male counterparts. The following romantic extract typifies the image of women soldiers:

They were women of a new generation who wore trousers like men and could aim just as steady. They were women who killed. They were fit and strong, running through the bush and brandishing AK 47's and machine guns. These were women who crept into the village¼ on their backs, they carried not runny-nosed babies but the hope of a new generation¼ They were as foreign to our traditional image of women as Eskimos (Maraire, 1996: 168).

This image is in line with myths that were constructed by men and women in top government positions, while the generality of the women who had survived the war, like most of their male counterparts, waited for their rewards. Spread by guerrillas as part of mass mobilisation in the rural areas, the propaganda was transmitted using oral traditional devices like songs. The narratives were embellished in hyperbole to make them memorable oral historical records. During the war, the myths were useful in keeping the morale of the masses who supported the war high, in an environment that was characterised by mass suffering, destruction and death.

The larger-than-life image of women created by the male-dominated political environment was part of the 1980s independence celebrations. First and foremost, it was used by the elite that emerged from the war to prove to the rest of society that the revolution had indeed been worthwhile, as it had put both men and women on an equal footing. It was envisaged that the new dispensation had indeed ended the oppression of women. Feminists, human rights activists and African womanist organisations which worked alongside the government embraced the same image to consolidate the emancipation of women in socio-economic and political spheres.

As a result of the economic hardships that followed in the wake of massive economic mismanagement, a series of droughts as well as global economic recession in the mid 1990s, it then became abundantly clear that the benefits that appeared to have accrued to women during the celebratory years had steadily been eroded. To make matters worse, the government abandoned the growth-with-equity socialist economic thrust in favour of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. In the resultant mass discontentment, society divided itself into interest groups to fight for the dwindling economic resources. Women used many fronts to get their fair share of the cake. They protested that they had been discriminated against while society generally favoured male nationalist politicians and other emergent civilian interest groups.

One of the responses of government to these accusations was to give women token political appointments in the bureaucracy. Since the benefits accruing from these appointments did not trickle down to the rank-and-file of the women, those at the bottom became increasingly vociferous. This led to the breaking of the silence surrounding their actual experiences during the war, thereby revealing inner aspects of the war environment that still impact on social progress today. The personal experiences constituted counter-discourse to official narratives about nationalist triumphalism which had been popularised by male politicians and guerrillas.

Some of the personal experiences of women are reflected in Women of Resilience: The Voices of Women Ex-combatants (2000). The book, which contains interviews with women ex-combatants and a chimbwido (errand girl) in the war front, represents a significant shift by the publishers, Zimbabwe Women Writers, from fictional images of women in society towards women in history. The women are interviewed by fellow women, who probe areas on which history has hitherto been generally silent. The fact that women talk tête-à-tête creates a congenial atmosphere for the exploration of subtle realities. However, the fact that the interviews are published with the actual names or guerrilla war pseudonyms of the interviewees may have lead to the filtering or editing of personal experiences. While a few of the questions appear to elicit answers that validate official war stereotypes, most of them do not pre-empt answers.

One of the interviewees, Marevasei Kachere, was forced to join the war because of the suffering she experienced in the notorious "protected villages" (referred to as "keeps" by villagers) of the Rhodesian era. These were guarded by soldiers round the clock in order to cut them off from guerrillas who could not operate effectively in isolation. Evident in the interview is gender discrimination in the recruitment process:

At first they [guerrilla leaders] refused to take us and said they were taking boys only, and that though they had taken girls before, they did not encourage those who were young to go. But we insisted that we were not going back to the keep to be beaten to death (185).

Guerrillas expected men rather than girls to join the war. It would appear that women were expected to stay at home performing chores which were customarily prescribed as the domestic domain. Catherine Nyamandwe, another interviewee, remembers being advised by guerrillas to return home because if girls left for Mozambique no one would cook for male freedom fighters. During the war, women's roles were extended to cooking for freedom fighters and bringing them blankets. Girls were expected to forego their quest for freedom in order to attend to the needs of their fighting male counterparts. Therein lay the paradox in the conception of freedom during the era in question. The reservations expressed at the front were later reflected at the rear.

Another ex-combatant, Maureen Moyo, a product of a broken family, sheds more light on other factors that might have driven girls to join ZANLA forces in Mozambique:

In those days I thought it was a way of punishing the people that were cruel to me - people like my father; if I came back with a gun... to punish him for leaving us... (Moyo, 160)

The conditions within the family were so bad that the youngster was forced to flee to an environment that she perceived as better. Contrary to the official version, she perceived the war in childishly domestic terms, and not in the context of oppression at national level.

Children who were traumatised by family problems swelled the ranks of guerrilla recruits. Added to this was the problem of poverty, as evident from some of the interviews. By the 1970s, it had become quite clear to many African people that employment was more of a privilege than a right. The educational pyramid ensured that only a few people got to the top while the majority dropped out to join the ranks of the unemployed youth. Besides, education was differentially offered; only a few families per community could afford to pay for it, thus forcing many young people of school-going age to go to Mozambique and Zambia to join the war.

In some cases, peer group influence played a major role in making young people join the war. Mavis Nyathi, another interviewee, joined the ZIPRA forces because she and her age-mates idolised and romanticised freedom fighters. They wanted to follow the path that had been taken by their acquaintances. There was sheer excitement about discovering what exactly happened when people joined the liberation struggle (131-132).

The war further promised girls an opportunity to equal men in terms of achievements, as evident in Nyathi's observation:

Yes, putting on that camouflage uniform, having a gun, feeling macho -especially for a woman. You feel a man in that attire. People would talk about their dreams... (159).

There were many accounts of young people who could become gun-wielding heroes that were needed to tame the cruel Rhodesian soldiers. In that sense, the gun promised adventure and freedom in a youthful sense.

Nyathi concludes that their reasons for joining the war "were not good enough". The motive was not to liberate "our country... It was more for selfish gain... I was not patriotic, I never looked at it that way" (161).

Evidently, Nyathi still has not reconciled her latent reasons for going to war with manifest ones given by nationalist politicians. The discrepancy between official reasons and private reasons which she rates as not "good enough", appears to have accounted for the silences of individual participants who were expected to make their biographies of war conform to official records, like all party faithfuls. In reality, the difference between "selfish gain" and the patriotic act of liberating "fellow sisters" has so far been a theoretical one; one of trying to differentiate between romance and reality. In independence, there has been more evidence of "selfish gain" than patriotism among the emergent political elite.

To their utter disillusionment and disbelief, upon crossing the border, the young people discovered that the reality about war was going to be different from the romantic escapades they had in mind. The ugly reality, which included, among other things, squalid living conditions, intense boredom and homesickness, starvation, disease, incessant attacks by the Rhodesian army and constant vigilance, was in contradistinction to idyllic expectations harboured by the young recruits.

As revealed in the interviews, the would-be-liberators lived as prisoners. The whole idea of using prison facilities to assist people who are recruited to fight for freedom presents a conceptual contradiction. Young people expected the war environment as part of the liberating process to offer conditions that would have been a prelude to the joys of independence.

Contrary to expectation, the youths were transformed into food gatherers who lived on the grain substitutes of traditional communities (187). While there is nothing wrong with the food provided by nature, the young recruits had been brought up to associate social advancement with the abandonment of tradition. The interviewees reflect a sense of remorse over the descent into this supposedly early stage of evolutionary life. In instances where familiar food was available, the diet was below the basic expectations of rural people:

[I]n the morning we had plain porridge, in the afternoon sadza and matemba or beans, or sometimes just plain sadza - plain sadza with nothing. We used to take our plain sadza, go to the river, put some water in the sadza and eat. Or sometimes, if we were lucky, and there was sugar then we put sugar on our sadza... (145).

Contrary to the dictates of African custom and the expectations of women, trainers were equally tough with both male and female recruits:

[G]enerally the whole training process was an unhappy event. During training you would hate all the instructors, all of them. But afterwards you realize that they were only doing their duties (142).

The fact that the training was tolerated only because it was the duty of the trainers undermines the ultimate value of the military training: the quest for freedom.

Women in particular found life in the camps intolerable. Yet, tragically, as in death, one could not return to warn those at home to change their view of the war. Prudence Uriri's experiences at Tembwe, Mozambique, made her conclude that:

I had made a mistake to go and join the war. I felt that what I had heard about it - what was going on - and the intention of this whole war was not really what was happening for me. So there were people who tried to run away and they were caught before they could go very far... (67-68).

The cultural shock tempted many recruits to escape back to Rhodesia. The reaction of the authorities to desertion was comparable to their incensed reaction to infiltration by Rhodesian spies:

[T]here was a lot of beating up. People actually had wounds that would go many centimetres deep into their flesh... (68).

Camps were very unsafe for the recruits, specially the women who were rarely deployed to the front:

I had never thought of the possibility of dying in a battle before. During my training I had imagined an exchange of gunfire, but nothing more. I had never seen a dead person, but now I saw so many. As we ran to the river I had stepped on the bodies of those who had died, and the thought of that experience horrified me (Kachere, 188).

This is also confirmed by Bhebe (1999) who states that recruits were regular targets of the Rhodesian army. The experience of the surprise bombings by Rhodesian security forces at Mkushi in Zambia and Nyadzonia in Mozambique proved to be the very opposite of the romantic battles of heroines and heroes in the propaganda at home. The trauma lives on in the lives of the survivors who witnessed the perishing of young people who had envisaged war as a fair exchange of gunfire. A feeling of emptiness pervades the survivors.

Although portrayed from the viewpoint of women, the problems outlined so far affected both men and women. There were however, problems that were peculiar to women, which made the lives of women more difficult than that of men. The worst problems appear to relate to sexuality. In this case men were the problem. In the absence of normal social structures, men in positions of responsibility exploited the military discipline that required subordinates to obey their seniors, and imposed their will on women of their choice:

[W]hen there is a rape or somebody has been raped, there was no mother to tell that somebody had abused you. There was no law, there was no justice where you could report to, there was no court of law... If you fell pregnant no one assisted you (126).

The licentious behaviour of the male superiors undermined the personal freedom of women, and threatened to render the struggle against social injustice meaningless.

Trips outside the camp appear to have given the generality of guerrillas space to engage in socially unaccepted sexual activities. That way the struggle for liberation lost its human face:

And as women we never got special treatment - we were the highly oppressed people. We were never even allowed to use contraceptives... (Dongo, 125).

In the war front, male guerrillas similarly exploited the civilian population. One of the chimbwidos confesses that many freedom fighters used pungwes (night-long meetings in which guerrillas politicised villagers) as opportunities to sexually assault women and girls. The girls had to contend with:

different men every week, every month... As a result, your body becomes nothing. And you lose respect for yourself as a woman... It is something that normal women, woman, cannot do.

We were not allowed to say "no" (Moyo, 168).

Thus, freedom fighters used guns that were perceived as tools for liberation by the villagers among whom they operated, to undermine the authority of community elders who normally regulated the sexual activities of young people. In this way, they seriously violated traditional African values which were part of the cultural environment of the masses who hosted the war. The women were also sexually assaulted by Rhodesian soldiers as punishment for supporting freedom fighters.

For those women who fell pregnant by guerrillas, paternity became a problem since it was difficult, if not impossible, to establish the true identity of the fighters. Guerrilla names like Bazooka and Sub (sub-machine gun) could not help any woman get a newly-born child affiliated to its father's lineage as required by Shona or Ndebele customs, of which most women were part. Besides, the constant threats issued to women did not allow them to identify the biological fathers. As a result the war caused a moral dilemma in rural communities.

Contrary to nationalist propaganda at home and women's expectations, men had problems allowing women to participate in spheres that the latter had hoped to operate in. Women's contribution was largely confined to carriers of ammunition and undertakers of victims of common illnesses. In spite of going through the same rigorous military and political training as their male counterparts, women would not be trusted to confront the enemy. Real battles were fought by men:

Our role as women was that we were carriers of ammunition. It was actually heavier than instituting the war itself... (Dongo, 127).

There was a tendency to say the women's speciality is in the kitchen... Women and men received the same military or political training... It is only [when it came to] power sharing, or making decisions, that women could not participate... (Dongo, 129).

Thus, women were expected to perform chores which are customarily ascribed to them in rural life, although they were denied the freedoms that rural women in a normal subsistence social environment would have enjoyed. The resultant overwhelming sense of powerlessness and oppression rendered meaningless men's claim that they were training women to liberate society back home. Women had no experience of the very freedom they were trying to establish at home. This appears to have been one tragic dimension of the war.

After independence, men who participated in the war were never keen to allow women to spell out to society their side of the war: As one interviewee puts it, male politicians "will try to make it out to be as nice as possible so that they would remain the so-called trusted party cadres. They do not want this country to have the proper history of what actually transpired during the war" (126).

The confession of the truth would have shocked society into reducing the moral and political stature of the fighters whom it had idolised in the first decade of independence. For those who materially benefited from the war, the revelation of the truth would have been considered as unpatriotic and subversive. Attempts were made to sweep the unpleasant truth under the carpet.

Tragically, prior to these published accounts, women had not disclosed that they had not fought in the sense that official narratives had claimed. The problems that arose from fighting a just war outside a properly supported moral environment created problems that spilled into independence. With the breaking of the silence, people are slowly realising that the aspirations of independence were based on false premises.

Many wartime promises, for instance, giving women ex-combatants preferential treatment in the formal employment sector failed to materialise after independence. To make matters worse, many women ex-combatants who entered into marriages were similarly frustrated:

Many marriages of the female ex-combatants did not last. There is a lot of prejudice to overcome. People say a woman who used to kill will bring a bad influence into the family (Saungweme, 53).

In Zimbabwean society, it would have been perceived as unbecoming of a woman to fight to kill, the very thing that those women who had gone to war were exalted for. Ironically, those women who were accorded the heroine status were considered unfit for marriage as their perceived vicious qualities made them too grotesque for marriage in the same society that idolised them. That contradiction has remained unresolved. Paradoxically, among all those interviewed, no woman appears to have engaged in battle in a way that could have directly resulted in killing.

Sexual harassment and victimisation by men haunted many women who tried to settle down into married life, as the latter were viewed as "prostitutes; [who] belonged to comrades, [who] slept with them" (176).

The stigma attached to the women ex-combatants "makes it very difficult for us to come out confidently in most places..." (148-149).

It is clear that many women ex-combatants perceive themselves as victims rather than heroines of the war. Some of them have had to seek psychiatric treatment to rid themselves of the ghosts of the war period. Ironically, some have recovered partly by rejecting the romantic image of heroism which denies that brave heroes could also be victims of trauma.

Women and the Land Reform Programme

The foregoing observations apply largely to women who are defined as former freedom fighters. In reality, so-called former freedom fighters comprise a small part of womenfolk who participated in the liberation of the country. The role played by girls in the villages (chimbwidos) and elderly women whom Irene Staunton regards as "mothers of the revolution" (1987) , is not part of nationalist rhetoric on independence.

The chimbwidos provided such services as preparing food, keeping the male fighters entertained and singing songs of war. Their mothers, who according to tradition, own such assets as chickens and goats, provided these delicacies for the fighters. Without their chickens, the fighters would have performed poorly at the war front, much like their counterparts who faced starvation in the rear bases. Yet, independence did not give due recognition to the majority of peasant women who parted with chicken, goats and sheep to support a collective cause. It is common knowledge that chickens and goats are vital assets in the rural subsistence economy (Mararike, 1999). The fact that peasant women and their families got only rare nominal tokens at independence yet they offered the war a base, means that the new ruling elite subverted the rural economy. These women, joined by an equally exploited class of women celebrated by nationalists as patriots, found themselves continuing in the underdeveloped rural society established through colonisation.

By 2002, the generality of peasants suffered economic deprivation as a result of natural and man-made causes such as frequent droughts, corruption and mismanagement of the economy. However, in international patriarchy-dominated elitist conferences, representatives of government continue to make high-sounding speeches about strides made in improving the lot of women including the issue of giving land to landless women who have borne the burden of producing food in unproductive land, most of which is not fit for human habitation. The following are highlights from the exposition by a Zimbabwean representative to the United Nations based in New York:

a. gender inequality still impedes social and economic development
b. women constitute 51% of the population, 86% of whom live in rural areas
c. there a is need to improve conditions in rural areas through land redistribution, and land ownership by women
c. women contribute 70% of agricultural labour
d. female-headed households make up the majority of the rural poor

The state functionary acknowledges the importance of rural women in creating a better society, and, therefore, the need for gender sensitivity in land redistribution. He goes on to make the following claims, which cannot be substantiated by the reality on the ground:

a. "women in Zimbabwe have mobilised themselves to form savings and credit cooperatives and village banks governed by the communities themselves¼ Efforts are underway towards the establishment of a women's bank"
b. there are efforts towards socialising the girl child in the home, school and community in order to improve her condition in an otherwise patriarchal society (Mutumbike, 2000).

These pronouncements are in line with official rhetoric on women and the land reform programme.

Having realised the need to tighten its grip on power after its shock defeat in the February 2000 Constitutional Referendum, the ruling Zanu PF party resorted to one of its long-neglected wartime promises to equitably redistribute land. In 2000, President Robert Mugabe promised that in order to redress colonial imbalances, women, particularly those in female-headed households, would get 20% of the total land identified for redistribution under government's controversial fast-tracked resettlement programme. This despite the fact that women's organisations had lobbied government to allocate women 35% of land identified for resettlement purposes (Mgugu, Daily News, Friday 8 November, 2002). The subsequent policy document came as a disappointment to women as it failed to match government rhetoric on the need to empower women through land redistribution. Although the ruling party's Presidential campaign was centred on land redistribution, as evident in its many political rallies, "women's access and control of the land" were not enhanced. There has been no attempt by government to provide legal and administrative frameworks to implement a gender-sensitive land reform programmes in Zimbabwe (Mufundikwa, 2000).

The violence surrounding land reform has also made it difficult for women to compete fairly with men, resulting in the director of a leading women's organisation remarking that:

Because of the violence accompanying land reform, many potential female beneficiaries of the programme ¼ are afraid to apply or take up land in the few instances where they have been lucky enough to be approved for resettlement (Mgugu, 2002).

There were numerous press reports that depicted thousands of women as silent and invisible victims of rape, torture and murder in the name of empowering them through giving them land. Tragically, these women face a dilemma as the social stigma attached to rape makes it difficult for its victims to openly articulate their ordeal. In the words of Mufundikwa (2000), "cultural taboos around the issue of rape have silenced women".

In communal lands, customary law, which quite often reflects the attitude of colonial legal officers and African male patriarchs rather authentic African customs (Bhebe, 2000) is still used in land allocation and use. The anti-women colonial land tenure arrangements, which deny women land tenure rights, have failed to accommodate the needs of women in relation to "land and related resources as well as the formulation of policies even at village level¼" (Mufundikwa, 2000). Men who are often the heads of households are given land rights and women benefit as dependants of men.

Contrary to high-sounding pronouncements by government officials, "Section 23 (1) of the Zimbabwean Constitution, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, does not prohibit sex discrimination" (Zigomo-Nyatsanza, 2000). The Constitution recognises the primacy of customary law, which places emphasis "on customary considerations" in land inheritance. The discrimination is also evident in family laws, and rights to property in marriage or divorce and on death.

There is still no provision for "vulnerable groups" like women, the poor and child-headed households in the law which is enshrined in the Constitution. The law has so far failed to accommodate the strategic needs of women.

Conclusion

The change of discourse on the war is a result of changes in the politico-economic environment. The one-sided interpretations of war experiences which belong to the war period and the euphoric days of the early 1980s are slowly being challenged by multiple-voiced interpretations of social history, precipitated by a pervasive sense of disillusionment with the surrender value of independence. Like other sectors of society, women have become increasingly disgruntled with elitist discourse which tries to monopolise the charting of the nation's history. Counter-discourse demonstrates that women, and indeed all other people in society, can speak for themselves, about themselves. The rejection of the romantic-heroic images of the war in favour of more down-to-earth images is indicative of the fact that a nation cannot successfully forge into the future without taking thorough stock of its past, of its gains and losses. A more just and humane environment can only emerge from an honest reflection on the mistakes of the past. There is a sense in which the romanticising of the war in itself is tragic, as it is essentially a celebration of organised violence whose many fronts brutalise the host society.

In the post-colonial era, the claims by the government of Zimbabwe that it is "making efforts to ensure that land is distributed equally and fairly to all those in need" have not been substantiated in the recently completed land reform programme. Despite the fact that women constitute the majority of Zimbabwe's population, and also contribute a large percentage of agricultural labour, they have not benefited from the land reform programme. The 16th Amendment of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, which provides for the fast-track programme, does not deal with gender issues at all. The official version of the significant strides that have been made to improve the condition of women runs contrary to the reality of the condition of women in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe.


References

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