The idiot’s guide to misogyny: East and South African edition

Every two years – during the Africa Cup of Nations and the soccer World Cup, to be precise – I change my citizenship to my four self-assigned West African citizenships: Ghanaian, Nigerian, Malian and Ivorian. If you are a soccer fan, you will understand the necessity of this symbolic migration. East and Southern Africa have many things going for them. Soccer is not one of them, save for occasional flashes of hope from the Angolans. But in March this year, I found it necessary to symbolically emigrate from East and South Africa, for less sporty reasons: I could not handle the toxic gender politics in these two regions, in March. In an inadvertent collaboration, East and South Africa embodied the idiot’s guide to misogyny in March and, as they say, I just couldn’t deal.

On March 24, Kenyans received an apology from Dr Susan Mboya-Kidero, the wife of the Governor of Nairobi County. You see, her husband, Dr Evans Kudero, had been spotted in public wearing a torn sock. A local daily had found this so newsworthy that they published the governor’s foot with the torn sock. This photo apparently prompted the good senator’s wife to apologise to Kenyans for this ‘lapse’ in her responsibilities as a wife, and promise all offended Kenyans that she will “put stricter measures in place” to ensure this doesn’t happen again in future.

Eight years ago, another prominent politician’s wife apologised to Kenyans for a similar ‘lapse’ in vigilance over her husband’s feet. Apparently Kenyans take serious offence to these lapses in wifely duty by their politicians’ spouses. These wives’ failures in managing their husbands’ wardrobes have serious implications for service delivery in the city of Nairobi, the commercial engine of East and Central Africa.

So, Dr Mboya-Kidero told Kenyans she “takes full responsibility for this serious mistake” in her husband’s dressing. In her defence, she cited the notorious Nairobi traffic, which forces him to leave home at 5.30am, before she has a chance to ‘approve’ his dressing. Of course the good Nairobians will accept her apology, and will in fact forgive the little fact that the person who should be speaking to them is the good governor himself; and not about his torn socks, but about his plans to unblock Nairobi’s legendary traffic jams. In fact, they might also forgive the not-so-small fact that this same governor of torn socks allegedly slapped a woman politician in a public altercation a few months ago, sparking public uproar, a court case, and finally a court order that they reconcile.

But I digress. One of the beautiful things about South Africa for feminists is that you get to mark women’s month twice: in March, along with International Women’s Day, and in August, the national women’s month. March holds a special spot in my heart as the month when I formally encountered the language of feminist thought as a young undergraduate student, thanks to a group of politicised friends in university. Together, the four of us started marking International Women’s Day with themed public lectures and feminist marches on campus, much to the amusement of fellow students and some university staff members. But this March was a hard one to be a politicised woman tuned into East and South African public discourse.

Reflecting on it, I can’t help but note the ways in which women’s bodies occupied centre space in March in East and South Africa in very troubling ways. Of course women wrote brilliant books this month (the fantastic South Africa scholar and novelist, Zoe Wicomb, launched her new novel October); they won Oscars (Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o); and countless other ordinary women engaged in various acts of excellence, heroism, generosity and courage. But how were women figured in public discourse?

Reeva Steenkamp and Thuli Madonsela
During this month, two South African women dominated the public space, for very different reasons, with different responses: the murdered South African model Reeva Steenkamp occupied centre stage as her boyfriend and killer, Oscar Pistorius, stood trial to prove his case – that he didn’t kill her in moment of rage, but actually mistook her for ‘an intruder’, whom he presumably intended to kill. That this high-profile case’s defence essentially hangs on the assumed appropriateness of pumping bullets into an intruder – code for young black criminal – is a whole other conversation.

The second woman to occupy South African public discourse is Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela, who delivered her report on the so-called Nkandlagate scandal relating to the opulent expenditure on the president’s security, which included a state-of-the-art chicken run.

What was curious for me was the spectrum of responses these two women attracted: distress over Reeva Steenkamp’s killing, with murmurs of a possible case of an abusive relationship; and the mixture of celebration and vilification of Advocate Thuli Madonsela for her findings on Nkandla. Significantly, despite attempts to frame these two cases differently – blue collar and white collar crime in South Africa – ultimately, the two women’s gender continued to haunt them; in the shape of a possibly emotionally abusive relationship that spilled over into tragic violence; and an equally tragic attack on the public protector’s person and looks, for daring to speak out against massive misuse of public funds.

Meantime, on the side strips of these high profile cases, two other largely unrelated stories unfolded: a man in Limpopo province offered to launch a series of awards to reward young girls for maintaining their virginity. He neglected to offer men a similar incentive. Apparently there is no premium on male virginity, nor for that matter is it necessary to incentivise them not to pressure young girls into sex.

Back in East Africa a few weeks earlier, the Museveni government arrived at the ‘scientific’ conclusion that homosexuality was a lifestyle choice, and therefore, decided to formally legislate against it. If we remember the ways in which homosexual men are often feminised in public discourse and how the abhorrent phenomenon of ‘corrective rape’ targeted at lesbian women has become a plague in South Africa, it is not hard to see that the common denominator in these two moments is anxieties about policing the female body and female sexuality. This push for female virginity is just one face of patriarchy via female sexual purity. The other face patriarchy wears is homophobia, precisely because same-sex love makes lesbian women symbolically unavailable to male sexual pleasure, hence the need to ‘correct’ them through rape. Gay men on the other hand sabotage patriarchy by deviating from the script of heterosexual consumption of women’s bodies and through their feminisation, which further threatens the ‘approved’ template of manhood by blurring the assumed rigid boundaries between masculinity and femininity.

It has been a long month, March. So, I mentally exiled myself to West Africa. But I know my other countries will disappoint at one point or another. In the meantime, I’ll hope for a better April. Being my birthday month, my biggest wish is a misogyny-free month for all women. Hopefully the universe and my ancestors are both listening.

Grace A. Musila is a Kenyan who studied in South Africa.

10 years ago

CT Jazz Fest: Where were the other African artists?

“Africa’s grandest gathering” was the tagline for the 15^th annual Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF) held last week. Having attended it, I can see why. The magnitude of the event was awe-inspiring, bringing in people from around the world. The streets were packed, there was not a spare hotel room in the city and the cab drivers made a killing.

(Pic: Jonas Gwangwa)

However, despite the grand nature of the event I have to question its lack of an African focus. There were only three African countries represented at the event. We had Moh Dediouf from Senegal, Frank Paco Art Ensemble and Jaco Maria from Mozambique, and a slew of South African artists.

The rest were from a host of western countries including the Netherlands. I am not completely sure when the Netherlands became titans in jazz, but there they were.

The question is: Why is it that in order to make things ‘grand’ and more prominent in Africa we need to add the ‘international element’ and constantly overlook our own African talent?

Although I understand the commercial need for an international heavyweight (Erykah Badu as the headliner brought in the crowds), the festival seems to rarely engage with other African acts – a fact that was mentioned during the preceding workshops and talks held before the actual event. This means that festival organisers sometimes play hard and loose with what can be considered ‘jazz’. Case in point: the presence of English rock band Level 42. Talk about an effective way of clearing out an auditorium. Jazz lovers poured out of the main stage area and filled the outside streets. The first night of the jazz festival was officially done when the rock chords were hit.

Acts from the USA and the UK dominated the numbers. With some of the South African acts, there were repeat offenders who had appeared as recently as the previous year. The organisers could have at least waited for them to produce a new album before putting them back on the stage.

Furthermore, anyone who knows the South African music scene (especially the Afro Jazz scene) knows that there are more than enough Afro Jazz musicians with fresh acts every year. Allowing old acts meant there was less space for other African acts, both from within South Africa and beyond. The legendary Simphiwe Dana or even up-and-coming young talent such as Ugandan saxophonist Brian Mugenyi could have been worthy additions to the line-up.

Why was there a need to reload old acts while filling in other slots with miscellaneous acts from the Netherlands and Australia, with artists many have never heard of? I am all for redefining the meaning of jazz and growing one’s repertoire of music but sometimes there is a fine line between being eclectic and being out of place.

If the CTIJF wanted to promote new jazz acts, there is certainly no lack of regional and local acts that could fill the slots whilst also pushing the boundaries.

You only need to look at the host of events popping up around the continent to know there is a minefield of talent. At the Safaricom Jazz Festival in Kenya in February, Richard Bona from Cameroon headlined. The beautiful thing about this concert was that all of the acts were from Africa. The Zanzibar Music Festival (Sauti za Basura) along with the fringe events in Basura Xtra is held each year as a celebration of East African music, showing that there is an abundance of talent on the continent that needs to be tapped into.

The Cape Town Jazz Fest is truly one of Africa’s biggest music festivals but I don’t believe it has showcased enough musicians from the continent, which is sad as the array of musical talent remain largely untapped at this point.

To acknowledge the depth of talent is to struggle with the entrenched idea that we must look outside to find the best and the brightest. The festival showed that Africans have the potential to redefine an age-old genre. Moh Dediouf, a Senegalese musician in a sequinned dashiki, accompanied by a saxophone and his back-up singers in traditional Zulu jewellery, brought a certain flavour to the festival that is not seen anywhere else.

With festivals like the Cape Town International Jazz Festival going from strength to strength, there is potential to build a billion-dollar industry right here on the continent rather than always having to go and beg for affirmation on the ‘international stage’. It would be great to be at the centre of a genre rather than constantly being relegated to the realms of ‘world music’ a la the Grammys.

Kagure Mugo is a freelance writer and co-founder and curator of holaafrica.org, a Pan-Africanist queer women’s collective which engages in activism and awareness-building around issues of African women’s identity, experiences and sexuality. Connect with her on Twitter: @tiffmugo

10 years ago

Culture clash over tribal wife-swapping in Namibia

Wife-swapping among Namibia’s nomadic tribes has been practised for generations but a legislator’s call to enshrine it in law has stirred debate about women’s rights and tradition in modern society.

The practice is more of a gentlemen’s agreement where friends can have sex with each others’ wives with no strings attached.

Swinging with an African tribal touch? Or “rape”, as some critics see it.

The wives have little say in the matter, according to those who denounce the custom as both abusive and risky in a country with one of the world’s highest HIV and Aids rates.

But the Ovahimba and Ovazemba tribes, based mainly in this southern African country’s arid north, contend their age-old custom strengthens friendships and prevents promiscuity.

“It’s a culture that gives us unity and friendship,” said Kazeongere Tjeundo, a lawmaker and deputy president of the opposition Democratic Turnhalle Alliance of Namibia.

“It’s up to you to choose (among) your mates who you like the most … to allow him to sleep with your wife,” said Tjeundo, a member of the Ovahimba ethnic group.

Concerned that HIV and Aids could be used as an excuse to stop the ancient tradition, he and others are suggesting regulations be adopted to ensure “good practice”.

Tjeundo said he plans to propose a wife-swapping law, following a November legislative poll when he is tipped for re-election.

Known as “okujepisa omukazendu” – which loosely means “offering a wife to a guest” – the practice is little known outside these reclusive communities, whose population is estimated at 86 000.

Mainly found in the northwestern Kunene region near the Angolan border, the tribes are largely isolated from the rest of the country. They have resisted the trappings of modern life, keep livestock, live off the land and practice ancestral worship.

A woman from the Ovahimba tribe. (Pic: Flickr / Martha de Jong-Lantink)

Many still reside in pole-and-mud huts and both men and women go bare-chested.

The women wear short skirts of goat skin, carved iron and cowshell jewellery and cover their braided locks in thick red ochre paste, which they also rub on their skin as a sun screen.

Unlike any modern-day swinging, tribal members make no random draw to pair couples. They meet in their own homes, while the husband or wife of the other party is banished to a separate hut during the exchange.

‘Not benefiting women’
Women cannot object to sleeping with a man chosen by their husbands, a point that angers rights activists like Rosa Namises who says the custom is tantamount to rape and “rape is illegal”.

“That practice is not benefiting women but men who want to control their partners,” said Namises, a former lawmaker who heads a non-governmental organisation called Woman Solidarity Namibia.

Other groups like Namibia’s Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), a public interest law firm that vows to protect the rights of all Namibians, have challenged its continued existence in a country where 18.2% of the 2.1-million residents have HIV, according to national statistics.

“It’s a practice that puts women at health risk,” said Amon Ngavetene, who is in charge of LAC’s Aids project. He contends that most women are opposed to the practice and would want it abolished.

But 40-year-old Kambapira Mutumbo is completely comfortable with the custom and has been asked to sleep with her husband’s friends.

“I did it this year,” she said, and “I have no problem with the arrangement.”

“It’s good because its part of our culture, why should we change it?” she added.

Cloudina Venaani, programme analyst with the United Nations Development Programme office in Namibia, is adamant that women only tolerate it because they are afraid of defying their husbands.

Traditionalists, however, insist the custom does not violate the rights of women, noting that women are also free to choose partners for their husbands – even if this rarely happens in practice.

Like opposition lawmaker Tjeundohe, Uziruapi Tjavara, chief of the Otjikaoko Traditional Authority in the Kunene region, wants the custom to continue but paired with education on HIV.

Details, however, are still vague.

“We just need to research more on how the practice can be regulated,” said Tjeundohe.

Shinovene Immanuel for AFP

10 years ago

Growing up in war – the DRC’s child soldiers

When he was seven Dikembe Muamba* became a soldier on the orders of his uncle, a chief in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu Province.

“I stole my first gun, when I was 10. It was a flintlock. By the time I became a captain at 14, I had many guns. I led 50 people, both children and adults. There were about 30 children in the unit. The youngest was 10,” Muamba, now 17, told IRIN.

When IRIN met him at one of the “half-way houses” for former child soldiers in the town of Kiwanja in Rutshuru Territory, Muamba was enjoying his first month of “comfort” in a basic brick and mortar house after a decade of bush living.

“I am still angry with my uncle. Those 10 years feel like a waste of a life,” he said. “It was very difficult. There was no school. I had only completed two years of schooling [before being forced into child soldiering].”

The “half-way house” – which provides counselling, parental tracing services and tutoring in preparation for a return to school – is run by mother-of-nine Afiya Rehema*. Her own children are aged 7-19 and in the past nine years she has cared for more than 50 former child soldiers.

This boy was 11-years-old when he became a child soldier with an armed group. (Pic: IRIN / Guy Oliver)

“At the moment there are children from Mai-Mai Nyatura, FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda] and Pareco [Alliance of Resistant Congolese Patriots] staying here. When they arrive some can be disrespectful, but they soon become like other children. There has never been any violence towards me,” she said. “Only one ever stole, and then left.”

“I do get some financial support [from local NGO Union pour la paix et la promotion des droits de l’enfant au Congo (Updeco)]. But I do this as a parent. Maybe one of my kids will be taken by an army. And if that happens I hope another parent will be there to look after my child [if he/she escapes from an armed group].”

Muamba spent his first few years as his uncle’s bodyguard before being enlisted into Pareco, which emerged in 2007 from a variety of diverse North Kivu communities, including Hunde, Hutu, Nande, Nyanga, and Tembo.

With a barely discernable pencil moustache indicating the onset of adulthood, he knows exactly how many battles he has fought and replies without hesitation: “It was 45, but I don’t know how many people I killed… The youngest was a girl about six. She was shooting at me.”

Muamba was wounded twice during his decade as a child soldier.

“The first battle I fought in was against the FDLR [an anti-Rwandan armed group that had an informal alliance with Pareco]. I fought against ADF-Nalu [Allied Democratic Forces – an Islamist armed group opposed to the neighbouring Ugandan government] in Beni, and M23 [23 March Movement, an alleged Rwandan proxy armed group].”

In the end, it was his rank and a chance meeting with members of a local child activist NGO that allowed him to walk away from soldiering.

“As a captain, I was free to go where ever I wanted. By chance in Lubero, I met people from Updeco. They told me they could give me demobilisation papers and then I could leave Pareco forever,” he said.

A girl sergeant’s testimony
Eshe Makemba* (17) rose to the rank of sergeant in the FDLR, but enjoyed no such freedom of movement. Being “discriminated” against for being a Congolese national by the FDLR’s Rwandan officers prompted her desertion, she says. “I could not speak out as they told me Congolese were no good.”

After seven years as a soldier for the armed group she ran for two days through the forest evading a search party, which she says would have executed her had she been caught.

She was 10 when she and four other girls were kidnapped near Kisharo, in Rutshuru Territory, by the FDLR. She was the youngest of the captives and the only one to survive a river crossing shortly after her abduction. She then did three months of military training.

“I stole and killed people for nothing… killing people was my way of saving my life,” she told IRIN. She was involved in operations against Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka’s Ndumba Defence of Congo (NDC) and M23. At other times she was raiding farms and homesteads.

Four months after her escape and dressed in her only set of clothes, the former child soldier said she did not think about her time with the FDLR, but acknowledged that the gun she carried gave her access to “material [plundered goods]”.

“I felt OK after the battle. I enjoyed the battle because I knew that afterwards there would be clothes, money and food,” Makemba said.

“One day I was with a group [of FDLR soldiers] that raped a woman. But I did nothing. I did not fear being raped as I had a gun and I could defend myself. But I could not do anything to stop the rape [of the woman],”she said.

Call for effective prosecutions
An October 2013 report by the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (Monusco) entitled Child Recruitment by Armed Groups in DRC From January 2012 to August 2013, said in the past five years about 10 000 children had been separated from armed groups, but in the period under review nearly a 1 000 more were recruited and the use of children by more than 25 armed groups remained “systemic”.

Three armed groups, the FDLR, Nyatura and M23 accounted for about half of the child recruitment in the review period.

The International Criminal Court’s 2012 conviction of Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC) militia leader Thomas Lubanga for conscripting child soldiers in northeastern DRC’s Ituri region between 2002 and 2003 “is important, because it sends a strong signal that those who recruit and use children will be held accountable,” Richard Clarke, director of London-based NGO Child Soldiers International, told IRIN.

“But it needs to be complemented with effective investigations and prosecutions at the national level in order to address impunity for these crimes,” he said.

Clarke said other strategies to prevent the practice included “clear military orders” prohibiting recruitment of children; “strengthening recruitment procedures through the development of age verification methods; training members of the armed forces on child rights and child protection principles; establishing child protection structures inside the military [and] allowing child protection agencies to visit military sites to verify that no children have been unlawfully enlisted.”

Patrice Munga*, a civil society activist based in Tongo, in Rutshuru Territory, told IRIN the FDLR recently began recruiting “really young [under 15] children”.

He said the FDLR were not forcing the children into its ranks, but conducting “sensitisation” at schools in the village “telling them the FDLR is good”, and about 20 volunteered for the armed group between November and December 2013.

He said the boys returned after a few weeks to Tongo with AK-47 assault rifles. He saw one of the child soldiers “showing other children [in the village] how to use his gun and an FARDC soldier walked by them and said ‘So you are a soldier too.'”

Zeka Kabongo* (13) has the body size of a seven-year-old. During the interview he constantly brushes the wooden arm of a chair, his legs curled beneath him.

Abducted with three other boys at noon in Lubero by four gunmen he spent two years as a bodyguard to Kise, the secretary to General Kakule Sikula Lafontaine’s Union des Patriotes Congolais pour la Paix (UPCP).

Kabongo said Lafontaine “told us we were fighting for our part of the country, which the government was refusing to give us”.

He says he “only killed one person” during his time with the armed group and that was during a raid on a homestead by five of the UPCP’s children in search of food.

“We entered the home and asked the wife where her husband was. But the wife would not say. So we got together and decided to kill her [with knives]. When we got back to the group we told Lafontaine what we had done. He told us we ‘had done a good thing’.”

*Not their real names

10 years ago

Zimbabwe: State paternalism and the policing of women’s bodies

Recently, a Kenyan friend and I had a long conversation about the objectification of women’s bodies in our respective countries, and the role of popular culture therein. As with all cultural industries, there are many avenues for such sexist expressions. But we eventually got stuck on the music sector, and two offerings in particular.

Hers was a song, Fundamentals, by a Kenyan musician known as Ken wa Maria. In the song, he points at the woman he is cuddling up to – even pointing to her nether regions at some point – and states quite authoritatively:

“These are the things,

These are my things,

These are your things,

These are the fundamentals.”

Apparently her body and its composite elements are “the things”, and these things are his before they are hers, or anyone else’s. These are the fundamentals!

In turn, I shared a Zimbabwean song from the late 90s. Called Special Meat (need I really say more?!), the singer engages in Job-like wailing as he exhorts the listener to help him with locating some ‘special meat’. Yes, special meat, like the kind you go into a butchery to buy.

There is a hilarity about these songs. As we watched and shared them online, we couldn’t help but laugh; the sort of laugh that finds these artefacts ridiculous and incomprehensible, and yet pervasively and dangerously catchy.

I am thinking of this interaction for a few reasons. Chief among them being an equally ridiculous and incomprehensible public notice featured in one of Zimbabwe’s main newspapers last week.

Nestled on the last page of the business section of The Herald of Wednesday March 26 is a notice – from the Registrar General – which advises that there are “… some foreigners particularly Asians who masquerade as Zimbabweans whilst holding fraudulently acquired Zimbabwean documents…” and that “Some of them contract marriages with our local women.” Members of the public are therefore duly advised to “thoroughly scrutinize documents of all foreigners who are intending to marry Zimbabwean women”. Chiefs and village heads are also called upon to be “extremely vigilant”.

(Pic: Fungai Machirori)

The xenophobic sentiment is enough to rile one up. But the authority of possession in referring to Zimbabwe’s women as a commodity of the state is disparaging and infuriating, to say the least.

The same Registrar General’s office, with Tobaiwa Mudede at its helm, has been the cause of much consternation to Zimbabwean mothers. The Guardianship of Minors Act, a piece of legislation granting guardianship rights and decision-making authority to a child’s father, has seen many mothers struggle to get basic documentation, such as passports, for their children owing to the fact that the Registrar General and his office have been known to make demands that the child’s father be physically present to sign accompanying forms on behalf of the child. A mother’s authority has not been deemed adequate.

The adoption of Zimbabwe’s new Constitution, however, now prohibits discrimination between men and women in terms of guardianship of children. Ironically, voting in this constitutional process took place a year ago in March. And yet a year later, we have notices from the same Registrar’s office reminding us that women are incapable of decision-making of any sort and are in desperate need of monitoring and surveillance; for our own good, of course.

This is not new, however. Zimbabwe’s Legal Age of Majority Act, passed into law in 1982, meant that for two years after Zimbabwe’s independence, women over the age of 18 were regarded as minors in issues such voting and ownership of property. In the same era, an operation to clear the streets of the capital city, Harare, of sex workers and vagrants was brought into force by the state. During this period, the government invoked emergency powers to detain women deemed to be ‘suspicious’’ At that time, over 6 000 women, many of whom were not part of the target group (for example, teachers, nurses and domestic workers), are thought to have been detained and/or arrested.

Walking in the suburb of the Avenues, sometimes nicknamed the red light district of Harare, after dark often still earns a woman an encounter with the police. And walking through town in a mini skirt – or any other form of clothing deemed inappropriate – still leads to women being publicly undressed and heckled.

State control is still set to full volume regardless of the raft of laws that seem to suggest otherwise.

Landmark ruling
The second reason I think of my interaction with my Kenyan friend is Mildred Mapingure who, in a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe last week, has had her appeal for compensation for a 2006 rape – that resulted in the birth of a child – partially allowed.

Mapingure is said to have sought emergency contraception within 72 hours of the rape to prevent pregnancy. The police, however, delayed her application. Furthermore, the doctor overseeing the rape case is reported to have been unclear about the difference between a termination of pregnancy and emergency contraception.

While Mapingure’s pregnancy could have been avoided altogether, continual mishandling of her case meant that she was unable to have a medical abortion which is supposed to be provided for victims of rape as per the nation’s Termination of Pregnancy Act.

Indeed, Mapingure’s case is a watershed in the fight for justice, but it is also a chilling reminder of how the state continues to fail women. Whatever peace Mapingure may have made with the ordeal she has had to endure, the fact remains that the state’s lack of urgency and professionalism deprived this women governance over her body, and her future.

With international women’s month coming to an end yesterday, I am angered by the state’s continuing inability to handle women’s issues with the respect and fairness that they deserve.

These instances show a lack of confidence in women’s abilities to make reasoned decisions about their lives and aspirations, orienting our role in society to that of children. From the state and its paternalism to the sexist but body-jolting music we listen to, women are continually relegated to being viewed as objects and subjects.

April dawns today. On April 18, Zimbabwe clocks another year of independence.

Whose independence it is not, though, remains quite clear.

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabwe, and is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter.