BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
Women on the receiving end of political and socio-economic up-
heavals
Since the launch of the land reform in 2000, which President Robert
Mugabe justified as an economic ‘war to redress an enduring colonial
land imbalance between the black majority and white minority commer-
cial farmers, who were supported by Western imperialism,’^9 the national
economy dropped to unimaginable levels, leading some critics to dis-
miss the whole land reform programme as a failure, contrary to gov-
ernment^10 and other scholarly claims that it was definitely successful.^11
Political violence that marked the land reform programme badly affected
women. Apart from the fact that women who had been working as farm
workers were left without jobs, accommodation and sustenance, there
are several reports of rape, torture and intimidation. Although those who
invaded farms deny responsibility for the rapes and torture blaming it on
some criminal elements,^12 there are some sections of the Zimbabwean
society that point at war veterans and militia as perpetrators.^13
Be that as it may, the use of rape as a political weapon to intimidate and
suppress women across the political divide was so common that an
anonymous woman in an interview with Alex Magaisa noted that,
When a male victim is attacked, the weapon of choice is the stick but when a
female victim suffers, the weapon of choice is the reproductive organ. The
man is beaten hard; the woman, often, is raped and sexually violated. This
(^9) Mugabe, Inside the Third Chimurenga, 2001.
(^10) ‘Zimbabwe: Church makes strange fellows’, available online, http://www.alertnet.org/
thefacts/reliefresources/112239842449.htm, accessed 14 July 2010.
(^11) Ian Scoones, et al, Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities. Harare: Weaver Press,
2010.
(^12) Cf. Lovemore Togarasei, ‘Reading and Interpreting the Bible during Zimbabwe’s 2000
Fast Track Land Reform Programme’ in Katharina Kunter and Jens Holger Schjorring,
Changing Relations between Churches in Europe and Africa: The Internationalization of
Christianity and Politics in the 20th Century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008,
188.
(^13) Cf. Mary J. Osirim, “Crisis in the State and the Family: Violence Against Women in
Zimbabwe" African Studies Quarterly 7, no.2&3: [online] URL: http://web.africa.
ufl.edu/asq/v7/v7i2a8.htm, accessed on 01 Aug 2010; Cf. M. Osirim, ‘Women, Domes-
tic Violence and Rape in Southern Africa,’ African Studies Quarterly, 2 and 3, 2003; Cf.
Report produced by IDASA (An African Democracy Institute), the International Cen-
ter for Transitional Justice [ICTJ] and the Research and Advocacy Unit [RAU], ‘Preying
on the ‘Weaker’ Sex: Political Violence Against Women in Zimbabwe, November 2010,
accessed 02 July 2011.