Eternal mothers, whores or witches: the oddities of being a woman in politics in Zimbabwe

abstract

In the country where I come from, Zimbabwe, participation in politics and decision-making is very much a masculine affair. Women occupy peripheral positions in which they are expected not to decentre male dominance. Through cultural practices inflated with religious beliefs, women have often been relegated to the domestic space of the home in which their agency is reduced to executing banal household chores. Positionally, as a male academic, I am fully aware of my privileged position and the multiplicity of rights and liberties that accompany such a position. Even from such a position of privilege, I am not oblivious of the structural and systemic machinations that continue to hinder women from fully taking part in politics, not simply as voters, but more importantly as active holders of positions of power and authority. In this article i am interested in how women in politics in Zimbabwe are framed either as eternal mothers, ‘whores’ or witches who use their sexuality and bodies to get ahead in politics. Although I focus on Grace Mugabe (former First Lady) and Joice Mujuru (former Vice President), women politicians face similar treatment regardless of the political party or party faction that they belong to. I argue that as long as women politicians play according to the patriarchal and masculinist script, they are endearingly referred to as ‘Amai’ (Shona for mother). The moment that they stray from the patriarchal script and they seek to impose themselves as agentive political characters, they are referred to as ‘hure’ (Shona for whore or prostitute) or ‘muroyi’ (Shona for witch). Drawing on the concept of the “unruly African woman” that Chigumadzi articulates in her book These Bones Will Rise Again, and further develops in her essay “In Zimbabwe, the enduring fear of single women”, I contend that the trope of the whore is itself a productive imagining of women who refuse to toe the line of patriarchal dictates of feminine visibility and uprightness.

keywords:

• politics
• power
• masculinity
• women politicians
• Zimbabwe

Notes

1 Then Secretary for Administration in ZANU PF, Didymus Mutasa labelled Mnangagwa and his faction as weevils that had infiltrated the party and were seeking to destroy it from within. Mutasa stated that the best way to deal with these weevils in ZANU PF was to use the pesticide Gamatox. The names “Weevils“ and “Gamatox” were used to refer to the factions led by Mnangagwa and Mujuru respectively (Nyambi, 2016; Ncube & Chinouriri, 2016)

2 Fadzai Mahere, Dudu Nyirongo and Kudzai Mubaiwa are women politicians who ran as independents in the July 2018 Harmonised Elections in Zimbabwe. Mahere ran for the position of Member of Parliament of Mount Pleasant Constituency whilst Nyirongo and Mubaiwa ran for positions of councillors in Wards 7 and 3 in Harare respectively. These women faced harassment on social media in the run-up to the elections. None of the three women politicians won in their respective election contests.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gibson Ncube

GIBSON NCUBE is an Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Zimbabwe. He is concurrently an Iso Lomso Research Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (South Africa). His research interests are in comparative literature, gender and queer studies and cultural studies. His publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Homosexuality, Social Dynamics, Current Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literatures and the Journal Southern African Studies. He is the author of the book La sexualité queer au Maghreb à travers la literature (2018, L’Harmattan). He is Assistant Editor of the South African Journal of African Languages.