Urban women meet rural women -

A visit to north-western province

Few African countries have had a heavier urbanisation in the last years than Zambia. With 50% of the population living in the towns, few countries can show a greater gap between urban and rural life. Three women working with Non-Governmental Organisation Coordinating Committee (NGO/CC) in Lusaka set out to meet some of our rural sisters to share information with some women's groups in North Western Province. As women living in the same country, we wanted to find out more about our differences and similarities.

First stop was at Mitukutuku Farm Centre run by Zambia Council for the Handicapped, outside Solwezi, with welcoming ceremonies, lots of singing, dancing and a warm reunion with the women who once came to Lusaka for a seminar. They were then in a hurry to get back home; city life did not agree with them at all.

Our main aim as we travel, is to inform women what work our office is doing. We want to tell them about women's organisations fighting for their legal rights in Zambia. The Non-Governmental Organisation, Coordinating Committee was established after the Nairobi Conference in 1985 to co-ordinate activities reorganised by the government through the UNIP Women's League and National Commission for Development Planning. The organisation has got a membership of 22 local NGOs. Some member organisations are directly connected to their international sister organisation and have in this way had experience in exchange programmes, travelling abroad for seminars and conferences.

We are quite sure the rural women do not have much knowledge of what is happening with women's development and networking in Lusaka; Prisca Molotsi talks to them about the necessity of women's unity, the need to support each other as women regardless of background, on women's legal rights.

The Law of inheritance has just been passed in Parliament. The Zambia Association for Research and Development (ZARD) has been working on changing the law to protect widows. There have been panel discussions, aiming at lobbying for the passage of a proposed wills and inheritance bill. The bill was met with a great deal of resistance in Parliament. The NGO/CC has been doing a public opinion poll on the Bill showing that 78%
of the country's population favours the new law, which now will give widows 20% of the husband's property on his death. The children will inherit 50%, parents get 20% and the other dependents 10%. There are still a lot of questions connected to the passing of the bill. Now is the time to prepare the educational campaign, which the NGO/CC will carry out in the coming months.

It was an interesting session listening to the debate announced from the Public Gallery in Parliament.

The traditional property sharing, when the husband's family could grab everything after his death was something the widows at Mitukutuku have experienced. The local health authority is responsible for bringing out information on Health, Nutrition, Family Planning etc, and is meant to do extention workin the districts. Enormous transport problems and long distances make this an extremely difficult task. As Alice Munalula was talking on Family Planning the laughter soon started. There were high voices from the group, a lot of giggling and hands covering faces. Contact between the women was made. The men were strictly told that this was the women's arrangement as men all met for AIDS education. Hopefully some false beliefs were corrected. Sometimes I really wondered what the interpreter was saying - the teacher surely did not say this much?

We travel further North towards Ikelenge, a bigger village centre originally a Mission Station, only a few kilometres from Zambia borders with Angola and Zaire. The road from the regional centre, Mwinilunga to Ikelenge has obviously experienced lots of rains. We are told that the rainy season started in August. In the period August to March the sun has shone for only two days. The sky has been grey. most often with heavy rainfalls. The muddy roads make the car slide elegantly from one side to the other and again I have the feeling of driving on slippery Norwegian winter roads. Ikelenge still has its Mission Station run by Father Puis a Dutchman who received us warmly and is our host for three nights. Mary and Bernadette, Women's group co-ordinators explain our travelling route which we knew would be strenous.Lost of anxious children peep in and out of windows in the public halls and classrooms we visit. The women have been waiting for hours with children, most often one on their breasts, a couple on the ends of their chitenge and maybe one in their bellies.

Evidence, Loveness, Queen and Charity are sitting listening to talks on the Nairobi Conference. They listen with round eyes to talk of the Lusaka women's work.

Our lives are different. Knowing that women and children in the area are suffering from hunger, Lusaka seems a different world. While there are lots of queues for essential commodities in Lusaka, you also find long queues of luxury cars waiting at the robots.

It also seems difficult to trace the 300 million U.S. Dollars which are yearly poured into the Zambian economy. None gets out the starving families in the Ikelenge area.

There are differences between me and my Zambian colleagues in town. The are even bigger differences between urban educated women and rural women in Zambia. Despite these differences, we all share common problems as women, and women have much to learn from each other.

Source: NGO Coordinating Committee,

1st Floor, Bible House, P.O. Box

37879, Lusaka, Zambia