Sithembiso G.G. Nyoni

Written for /SIS by Ms. Sithembiso Nyoni, a woman from Zimbabwe, this article explores the plight of rural women in Zimbabwe.

Rural women in Zimbabwe are in a situation similar to that of the rest of rural women in Southern Africa today, and perhaps in the rest of the Third World. They are caught in a complex situation of all forms of domination, exploitation and conflict. Widespread efforts are being made to pay them lip-service, and to give them timid development schemes in the form of women's club-activities as means for them to overcome their plight. But the crucial question is always left unasked: Does this approach to development help to liberate the women? Does it help them to solve their problems? Clearly this does not, and most of these schemes are irrelevant to the crucial needs of deprived  women.

Rural women in my country today make up nearly 95 percent of the adult population in the rural areas. In the war of liberation that is raging at the moment, the rural areas are the main battleground. Thus the majority of the women are caught up in the vicious circle of poverty and deprivation and war that dominate their lives these days. Basically, they normally depend on subsistence agriculture for their food and income. Most of them combine many roles - as wives, mothers of those who have migrated from the rural areas to the cities and of those young people who have gone into the bush to fight for national liberation, and economically, as breadwinners for the remaining members of the families. The responsibilities they are expected to carry are mounting each time, as does their plight also. Because they are for the most part silent (being often illiterate and unschooled about the operation of a modernised society, and in any case lacking both time and facilities) it is usually assumed by those who should care that they are happy with their lot. These women have to work hard to support their entire families, and to pay the indirect wages of the underpaid migrant workers of their families in town. The war has dramatically added to the demands made upon them. They are caught in the middle between the demands and pressures of the Nationalist freedom fighters on the one hand, and of the "security" forces of the Smith regime, on the other. These demands and pressures are considerable, ranging from the requirement to provide shelter, food, portage,intelligence, organizational and political tasks to the guerrillas; to providing anti-nationalist demands to the forces of the illegal regime. The latter involves high risks to personal life for refusing to comply, and considerable inconveniences resulting from the regime's counter-revolutionary measures

Zimbabwe has a dual economy. There is the subsistence sector which is largely managed and run by women and is characterised by widespread poverty and deterioration, and there is the capitalist or wage sector which is prosperous and relatively expanding. The latter consists of mining, manufacturing, agricultural and plantation industries, as well as domestic and commercial services. It draws its cheap labour from the subsistence economy. In his study of the Poverty Datum Line in Rhodesia (1974) Roger Riddell found that most African men working in the cities lived on salaries that kept them below the Poverty Datum Line. This means that the majority of these men are so underpaid that they can hardly afford to meet all the basic necessities of life from their salaries. They cannot afford to supply good food, education, clothing, rent, transport, pension savings, hospital fees etc. for themselves and their families. This is why they have not strongly opposed the law that forbids them from taking their wives and children to live with them in town where they work. 

The rural woman, therefore, has to work hard on her land to provide the indirect wages of her underpaid male members of the family. She sends them food supplements like mealiemeal, meat, peanuts, vegetables and any greens while they are in season. When the men are on leave from work and back in their rural homes, she provides them with free food, board and lodging as most African men are entitled only to unpaid leave. When the men fall ill or are dismissed from work for any reason, or when they retire, it falls on rural women to provide for their health costs, unemployment and other social needs through their agricultural produce.

In recent years, rural women have been encouraged to take up wage labour. In 1974 Duncan Clarke of the University of Rhodesia found that such women were absorbed in commercial agriculture and plantations as casual or seasonal workers. Such women also make up the largest labour force in the domestic services where they work as house servants. They are preferred to men because they can be paid three quarters to half the male wages for the same job and the same number of hours. As temporary workers on low salaries, they also depend on other rural women relatives for their social and other needs resulting from their unsteady employment.

With the escalation of the present war, the situation and problems of rural women have worsened. All the able-bodied men as well as big numbers of school-leavers (boys and girls) have fled to the cities to seek refuge from the war. Most of these young people do not and cannot get jobs in the cities. It is common to find between eight to a dozen of them living on one working relative's salary in crowded quarters, often only a single room but usually no more than two. Whenever possible, rural women have to send food to these people. They also find that they have to feed, protect, and often house the guerrillas at the risk of their own lives from the regime's soldiers. In addition, these soldiers sometimes come demanding food from these same women, and they risk reprisals from guerrillas who would accuse them of "selling out" to the enemy. It is an incredible burden to be expected to bear by people already very much oppressed by the harsh demands of a rural existence.Most efforts in Zimbabwe today, and indeed in the rest of Southern Africa, are concentrated on the liberation struggle. This is taking and using up most of the country's economic, physical and human resources. The Government forces use up to half  a million Rhodesian dollars a day. Nothing is at the moment done to help the rural women to improve their economic situation. The Whitsun Foundation of Rhodesia, which is dedicated to the development of the rural areas, wrote in 1974: "The subsistence economy makes an annual growth of only one per cent. Some areas have now become so underdeveloped that it will be almost impossible to develop them unless something drastic is done in the near future."

For rural women in Zimbabwe, women's rights and the reformist development programmes based on traditional and timid measures are not enough. Rather, women need to be assisted to look beyond their immediate situation. They are to explore and search for the root causes of their plight and identify the real enemy. They are to realise too that the enemy they call their male oppressors may not be directly responsible for their situation. They have to understand why their own men oppress and exploit them, and why they as women have to work so hard for the benefit of all at such high cost.

Meeting in women's afternoon groups once a week to sew, cook, sing, dance, listen to various lectures, and "participate" in already prepared demonstrations will not help women understand the reasons for their plight and the myths that are used to oppress them. Neither will the women fully understand why they are involved in the liberation struggle, and where it is leading them to, and what their part ought to be at the end of it. They have at this point to be aware and to refuse to be used by both sides in the present conflict. They ought to pose as useful elements and continue to play a positive role in the liberation of their country and of themselves throughout the process, and make sure that they share the cake of freedom with those who hold the guns and who sign the Agreement papers on their behalf. 

The women can best do this by being assisted to articulate their situational experience and problems with the explicit intention to act so that they can start making plans and taking responsibility for their actions towards their own solutions. The women are to be their own liberators along with the men .