A year ago, on January 11, 2013, France launched Operation Serval, sending 4000 troops into Mali. At the time, many supported this intervention. According to one poll, as many as 96% of Malians initially supported the French intervention. A year later, the 'world’ has largely moved on. The global media is more interested in Hollande’s sleeping arrangements than in France’s African designs. A survey conducted just before the French intervention found that everyone was distressed by the crises taking place, both in the north and in the government. Malians had long expressed a belief in the importance [a] of 'democratic government’ and [b] of democratically held elections as key to that government. “In 2012, fully 82 percent continued to favor 'choosing leaders through regular, open and honest elections’ rather than some 'other method.’” The survey’s findings concerning the way forward bear citing:

Asked about solutions to 'the current crisis,’ they express ambivalent views. In December 2012, a plurality (38 percent) wanted 'war against the armed groups in the North’ though, within this group, twice as many preferred that any retaliatory strike be led by the Malian army rather than by ECOWAS (the survey did not ask about France). On the other hand, 29 percent preferred 'dialogue’ between combatants. And 12 percent called for a return to 'a strong state.’ A related question asked, 'What is the best way to move beyond a regime that is corrupt and incompetent?’ Clearer answers emerge here. Almost half of all survey respondents (48 percent) opt for elections. And 15 percent want 'respect for the Constitution.’ Only 7 percent recommend a military coup.

According to another survey, in 2012, poverty became the leading issue for Malians. Food security and hunger, access to clean water and to health care, and general instability and insecurity preoccupied Malians in 2012. In a new book, La gloire des imposteurs: lettres sur le Mali et l’Afrique, Malian writer, activist, former member of government Aminata Traoré and renowned Senegalese journalist, screenwriter and novelist Boubacar Boris Diop try to look past the glory and the imposture to articulate what happened in Mali … and in France. In preparation for the book launch, Traoré and Diop gave a three-part interview to Politis, the anti-capitalist French news agency. Traoré and Diop discuss the sense of having been betrayed; the relationship of Mali, and of the Central African Republic, to the 'Arab Spring’; and the progress made by Malians and others, despite the 'protection’ of European and American military forces. The two see the French incursion into Mali as yet another part of the ongoing French 'African adventure’, and, in broader terms, as yet another chapter of European and American imperialism on the continent. In all three interviews, Diop and Traoré decry an exclusively political narrative that forbids any mention of the economic. Where’s the French, and global, concern for massive unemployment and deepening poverty, especially among youth, in Mali? If France, and the world, is so interested in 'promoting democracy’, where was the consultation prior to Operation Serval? Diop and Traoré say it’s time the French thought about their engagement in Africa. As Diop notes, England never sent troops to post-independence Kenya, Nigeria, or Zimbabwe; Portugal never sent troops to any of its former colonies. With Operation Sangaris, in the Central African Republic, France has sent troops five times to intervene in former colonies. Why? As Traoré notes, Sarkozy’s war in Libya destabilized the entire Sahel region, and Mali is only the first to pay the price. For Traoré, the takeaway is that Mali, and Africa more generally, is not apart. It is intimately and integrally part of the world, and that world must stop segregating it, on the rare occasion that it pays attention. Diop has the last word, part of which is, paraphrasing,

Each country has to learn as well to think through its own dynamics and its own reality. For example, Mali and Senegal are like twins, in that they have identical forces and issues, but at the same time, they are extremely different, and must address their own particularities. We must stop thinking that 'Africa’ must either progress together or stagnate. Each country has its own story, its own sovereignty.

Africa is not an island, alone unto itself, nor is it a country.

Heard about Mangaung? No, not the site of the 1912 founding of the ANC nor last year’s ANC Conference. The real Mangaung. The prison. Mangaung Prison, run by G4S, is the world’s second largest private prison in the world. G4S is proud of that. They’re not so proud of last month’s allegations, revealed by Ruth Hopkins of the Wits Justice Project, of gross, brutal and widespread torture, forced anti-psychotics and shock therapy, and general anarchy and chaos on the part of the staff.

In Sudan, the numbers of women political prisoners are rising, largely because the numbers of women protesting the government and the state are rising. Last week, in response to both economic difficulties stemming from South Sudan’s independence (and loss of oil revenues) and World Bank 'advice’, the government of Sudan ended gas subsidies. Good 'economic’ sense? Doubtful. A hardship for working households, and in particular for women? Definitely, thanks to the impact on both transportation and household goods. So, again, the women of Sudan took to the streets. Last year, around this time, women university students protested the astronomical rise in meal and transportation costs. The protests spread like wildfire, and the government remained in place. The struggle continued. Women’s groups and others have continued to organize in the intervening period. When the news of the new price hikes hit, women hit the streets. This time the protests started in rural areas and cities other than Khartoum, places like Madani, where novelist Rania Mamoun engaged in peaceful protest. She, her sister and brother, along with others, were hauled off, beaten, threatened, intimidated. Then the protests moved to the capital. Again, women set the spark. Some ask if the current wave of protests is another 'Arab spring.’ Perhaps. But they are also and more importantly the newest chapter in the continent’s IMF Riots. On Monday, social media activist, and ironically World Bank employee, Dalia El Roubi, was arrested … or at least taken away. Apparently, she had participated in a funeral procession for Salah Sanhouri, gunned down in last week’s protests. And now … she is in the hands of the National Intelligence and Security Services, NISS, which means she could be anywhere. None of this is new. Sudanese women have been organizing and struggling for both their own autonomy and power, and for a progressive nation-State, for decades. In the 1950s, the Sudanese Women’s Union formed and organized publicly through the 1960s. In the 1970s it had to go underground, and continued to organize. From 1985 to 1989, it organized, once again, out in the open, until the Bashir coup, when it was once again relegated to the underground. At the same time, the Republic Brothers was persecuted for their progressive positions on women’s equality and personal status laws. Sudanese women have been organizing for a long time. They have organized against the public order police, women like Amira Osman, Sara, Halima, Amena and others currently on trial, awaiting and contesting punishment. They have organized against various kinds of austerity measures. Dalia El Roubi protested against austerity last year, and again this year. And now, her family, friends, and others wonder where she is. On Monday, students at al-Ahfad women’s university demonstrated, and were assaulted by police. Yesterday, Thursday, women and children protested, outside the NISS offices. Their message was simple: “Freedom for my mum.” Their message is simple. Freedom.

The story of South African farming, especially small hold or small scale, independent, subsistence, emerging or peasant farming is a women’s story, and not peripherally or secondarily. It always has been and continues to be. But you wouldn’t know it from reports on farming. Take the case of Kenalemang Kgoroeadira. In 2009, Kenalemang Kgoroeadira founded the Thojane Organic Farm. Last month, Kgoroeadira was awarded the title of Best Subsistence Producer in South Africa. Congratulations to her! Here’s how the Mail & Guardian covered Kgoroeadira’s accomplishments:

Kenalemang Kgoroeadira combined two passions — empowering women and farming — when she founded Thojane Organic Farm in 2009. This partnership has been a resounding success and has earned Kgoroeadira the title of best female subsistence farmer in South Africa. The 61-year-old started the project on a hectare of land as a cooperative of six members. Just three years later the farm produces tons of green beans, spinach and tomatoes, which is sold to local markets and school feeding schemes around Boekenhout village near Rustenburg, North West. Some of the produce is donated to hospices. The produce is healthy and environmentally sound because it is grown without the aid of chemicals, which can strip the soil of its nutrients. Instead, the farmers use fertilisers that are found naturally, such as chicken manure. This forms part of the co-operative’s commitment to maintaining agricultural systems that are similar to those found in natural ecosystems. The cooperative recently started a herb garden with rosemary, thyme, lemon grass, mint, lavender and garlic. Kgoroeadira says they plan to extract essential oils from these herbs to protect their crops. They also aim to supply retailers that sell organic produce, such as Woolworths. 'Our mission is to train women and young people to become food producers,’ says Kgoroeadira.

It’s a good story. But somehow, when the focus shifts from Kenalemang Kgoroeadira to 'farming’, the empowerment of women drops by the wayside. In fact, women drop by the wayside. That’s what happened in a recent piece focusing on “South Africa’s farming failings”. The multi-media multi-panel exposé of the ways in which the apartheid legacy haunts South African farms and farming opens with a powerful interview of Kenalemang Kgoroeadira being her powerful self, and talking directly about women farming:

I used to go and till the land because that’s where we got food. Our grandmothers and our mothers used to pay school fees with a basket of eggs, and that means farming was very important to them. Because the history of this country, because of migrant labor, our parents, our fathers, were pushed to Johannesburg and all over to come and work, and the women remained in the rural areas and they tilled the land. And they raised their children, and they tended to the cattle, to the sheep, to the goats, to the chickens. They kept the home fires burning. I thought it is time for me to go back home, for me to re-Africanize Phokeng.

And that’s what she did, because it was the right thing to do, because it was time, and because the memories, the spirits, of 'our grandmothers and our mothers’ inspired and compelled her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QkTdZcuPx4 The interview with Kgoroeadira is the longest interview of the six video interviews. It offers the most impassioned and insightful analysis about the State’s failures to support subsistence farmers appropriately. And hers is the single most powerful voice to be heard among the otherwise all male speakers. And it is the first, last and only explicit reference to women. As Govan Mbeki wrote, so many decades ago, the women who engaged in the peasants’ revolt did so partly because they were targeted in particular ways by apartheid policies and practices. As the men were pushed here and there, the women tilled the land. Apartheid haunts the South African subsistence farm. Ask Kenalemang Kgoroeadira. She’ll tell you. The struggle continues.

On Sunday night, Aminata Touré was named Prime Minister of Senegal. True to Touré’s style, she announced the appointment herself. A new Prime Minister forms a new cabinet. It was thought that Touré would have the cabinet by the end of the week. She had it by Monday evening. That’s how Mimi Touré, as she is called, works. Touré is called the Iron Lady. Every woman who rises to a certain level of government becomes an Iron Lady in the press. The men are, well, just guys. Whichever mineral flows through the veins of Aminata Touré, she has spent all of her adult life working as a human rights and women’s rights activist, who has worked in Senegal and around the world on women’s issues and, more generally, at the intersection of social and economic justice struggles. Until Sunday’s appointment, Touré was Senegal’s Minister of Justice. As Minister, Touré became well known, and largely popular, for far-reaching anti-corruption campaigns that reached deep, far, wide and high into the previous government’s ranks. She brought Karim Wade, son of the previous President, to trial and then to prison. She oversaw the arrest of Chad’s former President Hissène Habré and made sure the subsequent trial wouldn’t wait for decades to occur. From her early days, from her adolescence, to the present, Touré has been an activist, a militante, and a footballeuse who played for the Dakar Gazelles. At university, Touré worked with the Communist Workers’ League. Since then, her militancy has turned to family planning, both in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and around the world, working most recently with the United Nations Population Fund. At the UNFPA, Touré was Chief of the Gender, Human Rights and Culture Branch. There, she pushed and pulled to get all sorts of people, agencies, governments to begin to think and act more seriously about "gender mainstreaming". Touré understood that, from the State perspective as well as from an analytical point of view, women’s reproductive rights are part of the governmental budget process, and so the two have to be synthesized. She has argued that women’s empowerment and gender equality are key to any kind of health program. She has argued that access to health is a human right, and that that human right is first and foremost a women’s right. Repeatedly, she has shown the world that, if not another world, then a better world is possible … now. And she has worked to make the now happen … now. And she has often succeeded. In her new cabinet, Touré appointed Sidiki Kaba as the new Minister of Justice. Kaba is the former head of the International Federation of Human Rights. His appointment has already come under attack because of his support for decriminalization of homosexuality. So, he’s got something going in his favor. While Senegalese women’s groups have hailed the appointment of Aminata Touré to Prime Minister, they also note with some dismay the mathematics of her Cabinet: 4 women, 28 men. It’s an important and newsworthy moment for Senegal and beyond, unless of course you rely on the Anglophone press. There, in the land of all the news that fits to print, nothing happened in Senegal. But something is happening. A feminist, women’s rights, reproductive rights, human rights activist with a history of accomplishments has become Prime Minister of Senegal: Aminata Touré.

It’s election season in Zimbabwe, and so, as before, the State has engaged in 'urban renewal’ by 'cleaning the streets.’ Under British rule, today’s Zimbabwean women fought for the right to move about in public. The colonial administration used the “immorality and prostitution of native women” as an alibi for draconian, repressive measures against “native women”, and the women refused to go quiet into that good night: “From the Salisbury women's beer hall boycotts of the 1920s to the rock-throwing of "Anna alias Flora" in 1933, from the relative freedom of mapoto liaisons to the organized accumulation represented by Emma MaGumede and by the Bulawayo property owners, ordinary women constantly wrung whatever gains they could from a range of meager opportunities.” In 1983, three years into independence, the State launched Operation Chinyavada, Operation Scorpion. 3000 or so women were rounded up, essentially for walking down the road. In Mutare, 200 women factory workers, on their way to work, were arrested. They were held in a football stadium until their employer came and effected their release: “The assumption that any unmarried or unemployed women are probably prostitutes seems to have all but gone unchallenged, in a country whose leadership once claimed it hoped to emancipate women from traditional restrictions based on gender hierarchies.” Since those halcyon days, the State has dipped into the 'cleansing’ operation and rhetoric repeatedly. In May 2005, when the State launched Operation Murambatsvina, Operation Drive Out the Trash, prominent among the 'trash’ were sex workers. From the colonial days to the present, women on the move in public have been attacked as sex workers. And from the colonial days to the present, women, individually and collectively, have rejected the attempt. Memory Gumbo rejects it: “You can't go to the shops after 8pm because they assume everyone is a hooker. It's plain harassment, simple.” Tsitsi Dangaremba rejects it as well: “Women were part of the liberation struggle and we have been working with the rest of the nation to build this country and therefore we expect to be treated as equal as full citizens of this country and also enjoy our citizens’ rights.” So, when Al Jazeera tells you “Zimbabwe cracks down on the oldest profession,” don’t believe it. The target is, as it always has been, “ordinary women”. Simple. Photo Credit: woman protesting in Harare against a 2012 spree of arbitrary arrests by local police (Deutsche Welle).

Last Friday, May 3, was World Press Freedom Day. Perhaps you may have missed it? On one hand, the Press Freedom Day parades, or sales, are far and few between. On the other hand, even the press doesn’t seem to care much about its colleagues’ freedom and well-being. Take the case of Ethiopian journalist, Reeyot Alemu. On Friday, Alemu was awarded, in absentia, the UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2013. Due to prior commitments and scheduling conflicts, Alemu couldn’t attend. Reeyot Alemu is a guest of the Ethiopian government, which convicted her, two years ago, of terrorism. The terrorism of writing, of critique, and of asking questions and seeking the truth: it’s the holy trinity of the barrel of the pen. Alemu is an editor and columnist at Feteh, an independent weekly in Ethiopia, that was shut down by the government in 2012. Alemu reported critically on the fundraising methods used for a big dam project. Perhaps it was her scathing analysis, perhaps it was her comparison of Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi to Muammar Gaddafi, and perhaps it was none of these that landed her in jail. She was already a marked woman. Alemu knew this and kept on writing. In June 2011 she was arrested. In January 2012, Alemu was sentenced to 14 years, and sent to the notorious Kaliti Prison, the 'Robben Island’ of Ethiopia. Since then, Alemu has faced constant intimidation, threats of solitary confinement, and deteriorating health. In August 2012, two charges were dropped, and her sentence was 'reduced’ to five years. The intimidation and threats continued, as did the deterioration of her health. In January 2013, her final appeal was denied. In 2012, International Women’s Media Foundation gave Reeyot Alemu the Courage in Journalism Award. At the ceremony, via a smuggled, handwritten note, Alemu explained:

I believe that I must contribute something to bring a better future… I knew that I would pay the price for my courage and I was ready to accept that price. Because journalism is a profession that I am willing to devote myself to. I know for EPRDF, journalists must be only propaganda machines for the ruling party. But for me, journalists are the voices of the voiceless. That’s why I wrote many articles which reveal the truth of the oppressed ones.

In the award ceremony this Friday, Reeyot Alemu again asked, again via note: “Who will expose the unpleasant truths of those in power if not journalists?” So, where have the journalists been in the case of Reeyot Alemu? Largely absent. Bloggers, such as Rosebell Kagumire, have written. Journalist advocacy organizations, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Africa-focused venues, most notably Pambazuka, have followed the case, off and on. Outside of the usual suspects, the mainstream press has been remarkably silent about one of their own. The Daily Beast had a moving piece; Women’s Wear Daily covered Alemu’s 'fearlessness’ in the context of last year’s IWMF awards. The Guardian reprinted a piece from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and even that was a more general piece that only referenced Alemu in passing. What is the threshold here for 'news’? What exactly is all the news that’s fit to print, or read? Clearly international recognition counts for nothing. Clearly courage means nothing. And meanwhile Reeyot Alemu sits in the terrible conditions of Kaliti Prison, while the rest of the world, that trusts the news media to report on 'far-off places’, goes on about its business, listening distractedly to “Freedom’s just another word..."

Malian writer, activist, former member of government Aminata Traoré is unwelcome in France, and, thanks to the 'open borders’ of the Schengen Area, she is persona non grata in pretty much all of Europe. Another dialogue is possible? Not if you irk les autorités. Traoré was invited to speak at a conference last week, in Berlin. From there she was to go on to France, to participate in public forums in Paris and Lille. She had had a four-year Schengen visa, which allows for 'free movement’ around the continent …except, of course, when it doesn’t. Much to her surprise, the German Consulate rejected Traoré’s application. Finally, at the last minute, she was given a three-day safe-conduct for Berlin and only Berlin. Since France wouldn’t allow her to transit through, she had to go through Istanbul and Dakar, which extended her return flight to 26 some hours. Who is Aminata Traoré, and what makes her so 'special’? On one hand, in the general fog at the season’s end of the universal Foreign Service, one almost never discovers the reasons for rejection. You’re in or you’re out. Deal with it. On the other hand, Aminata Traoré is a fairly prominent public figure and activist intellectual. In the late 1990s, she was Mali’s Minister of Culture and Tourism. She’s a writer, perhaps best known for Le Viol de l’imaginaire and L’Afrique humiliée. Both works powerfully address the global, some would say the imperial, aspirations, policies and practices of multinational corporations as well as of former and present colonial national powers. Traoré was one of the lead organizers of the Bamako Social Forum in 2002. At each instance, her work focuses on structures of power, both imposed and resistant, at all levels, including consciousness, and the possibilities of real democracy. Given we’re talking about Mali, not surprisingly France figures prominently. Traoré is a leader of African, and of African women’s, anti- and counter-globalization movements. At the same time, in writings and political engagements and popular education and theater, Traoré has spent the last decades challenging the common sense of expulsion, specifically of French expulsion of Malians back to Mali. Repeatedly, Traoré has challenged the common sense of development that relies on experts and the annihilation of indigenous knowledge, and she has called out development agencies for their acts and programs of violence, always, of course, 'in the name of love.’ In particular, Traoré criticized multinational 'developers’ for the viciousness of their policies and practices when it comes to Malian women, and African women more generally. Most recently, Traoré has been a prominent critic of the French military intervention in northern Mali. Again, she was particularly pointed in her critique of the impact of French military intervention on Malian women’s rights as well as well being. Why has Traoré been denied a visa? I don’t know. But I do know that, outside of the Francophone press, neither do you, if you rely on the English-language media. Where is The New York Times, who once, sixteen years ago, relied on Traoré’s views on democracy to help 'explain’ Mali? Where’s the BBC, who, eleven years ago, featured her work, organizing the 2002 poor people’s summit, where she criticized, and organized against, the G8, NEPAD, and so much more? Where are they all today, when Traoré is denied freedom of movement across the 'borderless’ expanses of Europe? Silent. Let’s hope another world is possible … soon.

A prominent South African, his name is unimportant, has yet again lit up the local blogosphere by trivializing sexual violence. He did so by describing gang rape as a free-for-all picnic and then by claiming to have had sexual relations with minors, and this when he was a teacher. The comments would be 'unfortunate’ anywhere, and the question of sexual relationships with minors would be a matter of criminal inquiry anywhere as well. In South Africa, they carry a particular historical and existential weight and burden. With that in mind, consider a current exhibition at Blank Projects, in the Woodstock section of Cape Town. It’s called “BLOWN”, and it marks the return, of sorts, of Belinda Blignaut to 'the scene’. Blignaut was a prominent conceptual artist in the early to mid 1990s. She exhibited at the 1995 Africus Johannesburg Biennale:

South African artist Belinda Blignaut's work was calculated to evoke a more immediate sense of discomfort for the viewer, through its confrontational exploration of gender and identity. Blignaut scattered posters of herself, half-naked and bound, throughout Johannesburg on bus stops and in public toilets, with no explanation but a local phone-number. Calls were received by an answering machine which was installed in the exhibition space in the 'Museum Africa'.

From her first exhibition, Antibody, in 1994, to the present, Blignaut’s work has been visceral, arresting, and prescient:

Antibody, a bleak and foreboding little square, in which cover boards and interior are marvelously integrated, operates through visual texts and images bleeding upwards between the pages. What are signified through the interplay between transparent and opaque information are deeply imbedded wounds and the passage of time over which damage is done and healing needs to take place.

1994, as the nation began to begin to think of emerging from the apartheid regime, Blignaut’s art insisted on posing the problem of women’s place in a 'rainbow’ built on so much violence against women, and on so much violence period. Her rainbow’s colors emerged both from and with wounds, and the colors bled. Then, for almost twenty years, Blignaut wasn’t much heard from, and now she’s back, with only her second solo exhibition. There’s a lot going on, but for now, consider the "BLOWN" Series itself. Visualize this: a steel slab, 60 cm wide, 130 cm tall, 4 cm thick; perforated and punctuated throughout with “bullet holes from various firearms.” Across the entire surface, in dripping red letters: “CINDERELLA IS PISSED.” Blignaut transforms “life size” into a death-sized frame and syntax that somehow, also, maybe, offers a dark glimmer of hope. Cinderella is pissed. She’s pissed at the sexual violence, she’s pissed at violence against women and girls, she’s pissed at the trivialization, she’s pissed at the Cinderella-fication and the Rainbow-ification of people’s struggles for a decent and joyful life. It’s a barely lit and dimly seen hope -- but it is something. As Blignaut 'says’, in “Why I Make”: In Belinda Blignaut’s South Africa, as in the South Africa of so many women and girls across the country, the fire next time is burning right now. * BLOWN runs until May 5 at Blank Projects, Cape Town, South Africa.

On Sunday, March 17, a day after the Constitutional Referendum, Zimbabwe arrested Beatrice Mtetwa, leading human rights lawyer and Board member of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. Mtetwa had been arrested for the 'crime’ of asking the whereabouts of a client. The State refers to that as “obstructing or defeating the course of justice.” Actually, Beatrice Mtetwa is the course of justice.  On Monday, Beatrice Mtetwa was 'granted’ bail, and now she is 'free’ to walk the streets, work, and do whatever, right? Not really. She joins her client, Jestina Mukoko, and the tens of thousands of others in Zimbabwe, the walking un-free who have been 'released’ from prisons, jails, 'custody’. There aren’t enough scare quotation marks anymore to adequately describe Zimbabwe’s 'justice system'. The presiding judge, High Court Judge Justice Joseph Musakwa, explained, “Mtetwa should not have been denied bail by the lower court and the police should have shed light on the nature and scope of the investigations that remained outstanding and that the court should not have denied liberty to a legal practitioner of repute like Mtetwa.” Mtetwa should not have been imprisoned. While it’s a relief, of sorts, that Mtetwa is on this side of the bars, barely, her imprisonment was and is an outrage. As one Zimbabwean blogger put it, “It’s a relief for her sake that she’s been granted bail. But it’s an insult to justice in Zimbabwe that she was detained in the first place, never mind held in custody for eight nights.” One would say, “Amen,” except the drama does not end there. During the week that Beatrice Mtetwa was in prison, Gabriel Shumba was informed that, finally, the African Human Rights Commission had found the government of Zimbabwe guilty of having tortured him, in 2003, and that Zimbabwe owes Shumba more than an apology. In 2003, Shumba, a lawyer, was “attending to a client”, an opposition Member of Parliament when he was arrested. While in custody, he was subjected to extreme torture and threatened with death. Upon his release, Shumba fled to South Africa, where he became Executive Director of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum. Shumba brought his case to the African Commission on Human and People's Rights in December 2005. The Commission 'deferred’ any decision until May 2012. For most of those more than six years, the Commission basically did nothing. Better put, it actively deferred looking into the matter. Finally, it decided and then waited, again, until January 2013, when the Executive Committee approved. And then, finally, last week, the Commission informed Gabriel Shumba, during the week that Beatrice Mtetwa sat in prison. The State violence is not new, but it is news. Where’s the international media on the ongoing situation of police violence and the torture that passes for rule of law in Zimbabwe? They’re in a drive-by mode. An occasional report, a Constitution here, an election there, suffice. There is hardly ever an attempt to linger, to stay, to get at the contexts, which are both brutally simply and, often worse, brutally complex. As Gabriel Shumba wrote, in 2010: “Zimbabwe has witnessed some of the worst crimes against humanity to be committed on the African continent in recent years… To call for elections when the structures of violence and rigging are still in place is to subject the nation to yet another unnecessary torment… The infrastructure of violence… need to be dismantled.” What is the rule of law in a regime of torment? Ask Jestina Mukoko, Beatrice Mtetwa, Gabriel Shumba and so many others.

This weekend, Zimbabwe held a Constitutional referendum. And so Zimbabwe enjoyed yet another 15 seconds of international press attention. Turnout was reported as low. The public was as apathetic, uninformed, and/or disinterested. And the referendum was described as important, especially for women. According to some reports, 'women' knew that: “Some women’s rights groups have praised the Constitution for cementing gender equality in Zimbabwe.” According to other reports, voting would “change the lives of Zimbabwe’s women.” Reporters fanned out across some of Zimbabwe and interviewed 'women’. The women’s responses were mixed about the Constitution, but not about aspirations. The women wanted more than an end to chaos and violence. They wanted sustained and structured peace and progress. How is one to read the reports on Zimbabwean women?  Weaver Press has just published something that might help, She-murenga: The Zimbabwe Women’s Movement 1995 – 2000 by Shereen Essof. In 2013, when Zimbabwean women talk about ending violence and creating peace, they are participating in a long history of women’s struggle and organization in Zimbabwe; a long and intense history of one step forward, two steps back, in which women organize, make advances, and then are betrayed by both the State and Civil Society. In the context of the coverage of Saturday’s referendum, two salient points emerge in Essof’s account: the original foundation of the Women’s Alliance, and the post 2000 shifts in the women’s movements. In 1999, Zimbabwe was undergoing another Constitutional process. Women recognized that they were being denied any serious voice in the charter processes. For example, women comprise 70% of the rural population, and somehow had nothing worthwhile to say about land rights? In June 1999, women organized the Women’s Alliance, to create an autonomous space and place for women. From the outset, the Women’s Alliance was a major intervention into the business as usual of man-to-man and masculinity-to-masculinity. When the Constitution was actually put to a vote, that intervention escalated. The Women’s Alliance launched a campaign against the Constitution and, remarkably, won. And then were forced back two steps, by a collusion of State and Civil Society. Before the June 2000 Parliamentary elections, the Women’s Coalition had put forth a women’s charter: “It was the first time in the history of Zimbabwe that a women’s agenda had been articulated in this way.” The agenda, as the Coalition, reached across party structures, regional and generational identities, ethnic and religious communities. The agenda, as the Coalition, identified something new, the Zimbabwean citizen-as-woman. This stunning accomplishment was met with stunning violence. One step forward, two steps back. Since 2000, the women’s movements have shifted: “By the mid-1990s one saw the disappearance of the words 'oppression’ and 'exploitation', 'patriarchy’ and 'feminism’ from the movements’ lexicon. It is revealing when one considers the terms that seem to have replaced them: 'gender’ and 'mainstreaming’ (…) Feminism was constructed as too inflammatory.” Essof concludes: “What the Women’s Coalition did was revolutionary: it placed women in a powerful political 'space’, one that traversed organisational interests and boundaries, and one that until then they had always been reluctant to occupy and claim. (…) Now women were forced to confront the state as a political agent. Despite the contestation, the Women’s Coalition allowed women to make the leap and articulate a women’s politics based on women’s interests.” Does a women’s politics based on women interests sound revolutionary? It is. As one of Essof’s 'women conversants’ explains: “The women's movement is very central to crafting a new politics, a postcolonial politics and this is very central to the vibrancy of the women's movement, because we are overturning everything.”