Opinion

Yesterday my younger sister shared her experience about being harassed by a Kombi conductor and I thought oh this should be a blog post. The conductor refused to let her out until she gave him her phone number. I know many, if not all, women will relate to this post which is sad because no one should feel entitled to another human being ever and having your personal boundaries invaded like that is so awful especially in public spaces we frequent daily.

Men and women, how do you deal with sexual harassment on public transport? I FREEZE/ burst into tears & I’m trying to find my inner hell beast and bring it forth. I’ve always opposed the concept of living in fear/ or paranoia but I find myself doing just that. It’s so degrading

— heytherekitkat 🍫 (@akna_sam) May 24, 2022

​When it comes to the issue of harassment in public transportation, it is so severe that even if you own your own car, you aren’t safe. This is because even just walking past a terminus can get you harassed. My heart breaks when I think about it because I imagine my mother, grandmother, sisters and daughter and I’m like oh WOW this is what society has been doing and will continue to do which is a dang shame. I know some men think that cat-calling and groping at women is a “compliment” but it is not! Please cease and desist. It’s unsettling and downright nasty. No sir, I do not want you touching my arm or any part of me eeew and I’ve seen men pee in public places and not wash their hands and you think it’s OK to touch someone else with those hands ? Not me abeg. Not only do they get you with sticks and stones but the words they spew at you will also hurt you. If they deem your outfit inappropriate, they will whistle, shout and call you all sorts of nasty names.

Also, ladies have you experienced how uncomfortable it is to stand in a ZUPCO bus and have a man breathe on your neck and rub himself against you as a standing passenger? It’s like when you’re out with the girls and you’re on the dance floor and someone helps himself to your body and just stands behind you while you’re just trying to enjoy the night and de-stress. Men need to stop this intrusive behaviour. It’s not cute, it’s really not. There was an article online about how cross-border Delta bus drivers were allegedly raping girls and women. They call it “Vula vala” read the article below #TriggerWarning.

People who have had to hitchhike at the Showgrounds in Harare have probably witnessed or been harassed by touts. This group of men will approach you and start pulling your luggage, yelling, shouting and shoving each other in order to scare you into getting into a bus so that it fills up quickly. The police are very much aware of this rouse. They will be standing in your line of sight and will do nothing. This experience is traumatising. You are forced into a bus you didn’t plan on taking. For the next couple of nights, you will go to bed hearing the voices of those men as they terrorise you into a bus. This happens to both men and women. If you can avoid it, avoid hitchhiking from the Showgrounds or that spot for Mutare buses (Roadport.)

Retweet if you have been a victim of harassment by touts on Harare road in Bulawayo, Showgrounds or behind Roadport✋🏽I remember how at one point they took my bag and roughly shoved me into a bus, I cried😭Somehow I was let go, but how many more are forced into cars unwillingly? pic.twitter.com/UXhrsjlvXj

— Mantate Mlotshwa (@MantateQueeneth) September 12, 2018

​In a perfect world, I think that ZUPCO should introduce female buses, buses strictly for women and children because we are not safe. There was an image circulating online of a woman being helped into a ZUPCO with people propping her up by her buttocks. That’s what the transport crisis had pushed people into. The buses are unsafe, not just as passengers but also for the female conductors as well. There is a story that was published about female conductors being assaulted due to the early and late hours at which they commute to work.

#WeInvestigate: Zupco female conductors decry tough working conditions
PRUDENCE Moyo* dreamt of landing a high-flying office job after completing her university studies however, proved tougher than she had envisaged as she struggled to find a job. #Asakhehttps://t.co/Hux8hku4hH pic.twitter.com/TqFbG8wMEC

— CITE (@citezw) June 8, 2021

The late @zupcobus conductor who was shot & killed in cold blood will be buried tomorrow in Buhera. ZUPCO will foot the entire funeral bill. May Her Dear Soul Rest In Eternal Peace😭😭😭#Zimbabwe @MinistryofTID @PoliceZimbabwe @zccinzim @czvinokwazvo2 @begottensun @killerzivhu1 pic.twitter.com/N6LrLw6eSC

— Knowledge Matare (@KnowledgeMatar1) September 16, 2021

For as long as men feel like they own women and that they can get away with anything, it’s us versus them and they have the upper hand. Ladies, get a rape whistle, if you’re in Zimbabwe. You can get them at your local China shops. Buy two in case you misplace the other one, travel in groups or at least try move in pairs if you can for your safety. Pepper spray and tasers are available at the Security Shop. There’s not much else you can do because most of us don’t have the luxury to avoid public transportation altogether.

1 in 3 women experience harassment on public transport. 55% won’t use public transport at night. Depressing stats – do they correlate with the number of arrests for harassment? https://t.co/lSBguouYlu #WTF how is this acceptable. pic.twitter.com/30YCeb84oc

— Sandra Healy (@SanHealy) July 2, 2021

It has come to my attention that when most activists speak about violence against women and women empowerment they hardly or never mention the patriarchal system which is still one of the most prominent societal norms in Zimbabwe. I find this very disappointing because the patriarchal system is deeply rooted in the causes of violence against women and girls and has been used for many centuries as a tool to put women ”back in their place” and to silence them against any resistance. We need to start drawing our attention towards putting an end to this system if we plan on winning the fight against gender-based violence.

Patriarchal systems have been described as “the world historical defeat of the female sex,” and as systems that “distribute power unequally between men and women to the detriment of women.” Patriarchy is therefore orchestrated by gendered roles whereby males are dominant and have authority over women. As a result women are oppressed and become powerless to rescue themselves from the risk of violence.

Looking at the typical Zimbabwean example; in a household, the father is the head of the house, the decision- maker and what he says goes. If the wife attempts to challenge him he silences her either emotionally abusing her with harsh degrading words or by physically abusing her by beating her up.  Another typical example is that the patriarchal system gives men the role of being a “breadwinner” and the women as being the one that does that day to day household duties including cleaning, taking care of the children and cooking. There are many households where because of the “breadwinning” role given to men, the father of the house prohibits the wife to get a job leaving the wife solely financially dependent on the husband resulting in the wife being in a vulnerable position because she has to ask the husband for everything including for money to buy her own underwear- mind you this is a form of economic abuse. My next example is more common in the rural areas where many people are living in extreme poverty, because of poverty a household is unable to send all the children to school, automatically the system disqualifies the girl child and favours the boy child to be the chosen one that goes to school without even considering both children’s intellectual capacity. The girl child is then seen as a burden and the father marries her off as a way of getting money via lobola and to also get rid of the “burden”- mind you this is child marriage and is a form of abuse towards young girls.

Believe me, I can go on and on with examples that you will find very familiar, because these are the things that have been normalised in our society, the same society that cries out for the violence against women and girls to end.  For many years society has acknowledged this dehumanizing tool called patriarchy and behaves as if men are entitled to treat women in a degrading manner. It’s a cycle that boys learn from the time they are born. Have you noticed the reactions from the extended family when a male child is born? Everyone is excited and some even start to call the male baby by the “mutupo,” this baby grows up being praised and even at times referred to as the head of the house from that age. We have normalised this system to the extent that even though we cry against the violence against women on one hand, on the other hand we teach our boys to dominate and maintain a “boys will be boys” mentality, whilst teaching our girls to tolerate male aggression or change their behaviour to avoid it. Boys then grow up feeling entitled to women such that they inflict violence on our bodies in order to assert themselves. Patriarchy is our major obstacle to free ourselves from the violence and the discrimination we face as women. GBV is entrenched in the strong patriarchal ideologies of control, subversion and subordination of women and girls and we have to start focusing on ending this system for us to be free. Enough is enough!! We have carried this burden for many centuries and like anything that has a beginning; it can also have an end.

Gone are the days when a private affair remained behind closed doors. Private parts have now become public viewing. Pokello Nare’s sextape went viral whilst she was on the Big Brother reality show in South Africa and just as the dust was starting to settle, Tinoponda Katsande’s sextape also leaked. What is this world coming to and what example is this setting to young girls?

In Zimbabwe, the people are highly conservative and sex is a taboo topic which has posed as a threat to sexual health education. Resultantly, when Nare’s sextape was made available on the internet, people took to social networks to blast her behavior. Pokello was branded ‘un-Zimbabwean’ and a petition was created on a Facebook page to advocate for her eviction from the Big Brother house.

In America, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian both shot to fame after the leakage of their sexual ‘home videos’ and this has further aggravated the stereotype that for a woman to make a name for herself she must be naked. Coincidentally, Halle Berry was the first black woman to win an Oscar award after getting bare-naked in a movie. This is a clear sign of moral degradation and sheer desperation for attention.

Dealing in pornographic material in Zimbabwe is against the law. This further emphasizes how conservative we are in Zimbabwe and yet there was no legal retribution for the two ladies. Allow me to highlight the loophole I personally identified. According to the Oxford dictionary, pornography is, “printed or visual material intended to stimulate sexual excitement.” Based on this definition, the sextapes by the two ladies were firstly, intended to be a documentation of their ‘good times’ and secondly, their videos were neither stimulating nor sexually exciting. They were simply disgusting.

These sextapes are hindering the cause spear-headed by the feminists. It is worthy to note that these sextapes are never named after the male participant. This resembles the story in the bible about the adulteress who was brought to Jesus for stoning whilst her married male counterpart was not mentioned.

B-Metro once covered a story about school children that were recorded having sex by their peers through an open window. Clearly the situation is already out of control and now they have contraception from as young as ten years of age. Zimbabweans need a resurgence of role models that did not have to undress to be addressed by the titles they earned through honest hard work. Women play an important role in society as mothers and nurturers. They instil values into children and reprimand them to make respectable individuals. It used to take a village to raise a child but nowadays the global village has assumed that role in the form of the internet and Western media television programmes. Mothers are the best weapon to counter moral degradation and they must play their role viciously and instil values of self-worth in young girls to be somebodies not somebody’s.