A road show- promoting a human rights based toolkit for stakeholder engagement and issue based advocacy for communities, enables women to speak with bolder voices on diamond extraction, reports 263Chat’s Mutare based writer Donald Nyarota
“At the forum we help each other gather wild fruits commonly known as nyi (a sweetened wild fruit found in Eastern Zimbabwe),” says Pamela as she gave testimony at a road show organised to celebrate International Women’s Day.
She is representative of Goko village, Women’s Forum (WF), 30 member group facilitated by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) Women’s Forums are groups of villagers in maximum thirty members created to champion gender equality in a rights-based approach.
Pamela said through this forum she has managed to subsidize her income by picking nyi, bean sized local fruits- for resale amid declining food security issues gripping Zimbabwe from the devastating El Nino induced drought.
On March 10, Pamela joined women from diamond mining communities of Chipinge, Chimanimani and Buhera, in a belated road show for ZELA’s International Women’s Day commemoration.
Pamela has benefitted from joining a group which has broadened into a network for economic activity, saving clubs, income generating projects- in the mean time as well as picking nyi for resale.
“It would take me one week to fill one 20kg bucket of nyi which has a market value of $3-$5. A bucket of maize costs $8 so it would take me two weeks to buy one bucket of maize which is not enough to feed my family for a week,” she said.
Whereas as elsewhere women celebrated strides towards ending Gender Based Violence (GBV) and an increase in maternal health services, women from diamond mining areas in Zimbabwe lamented sexual violence and rights abuses of young women and adolescent girls.
While women were participating in an international ritual, they also had a campaign ‘to step it up for gender equality across the mining value chain’, their clarion call was for a gender balanced board for the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Corporation.
They said discovery of diamonds has seen an influx of magweja (illegal diamond miners) and diamond mine workers who splashed money to lure young local girls.
According to ZELA, gender sensitive corporate social responsibility and local enterprise development policies are as indispensible to mining companies as well as revenue transparency and gender responsive service delivery.
Nyaradzo Mutonhori, researcher with ZELA, says there is need to redress the status quo to ensure involvement of women in the mining value chain.
“There are too few women who occupy decision making positions in the mining sector and too few mining companies have gender responsive local enterprise development policies.
“In the Women’s Forum, these women have done work aimed at changing all realms of their life by claiming their rights and transforming violence into power and action,” she said.
Women’s Forum identified that initially women did not take up unskilled jobs at diamond mining companies because they believed that working in the mines was a man’s job.
“A few men in our village got employed as security guards but no women got jobs”.
“After being trained on our rights at the women’s forum meetings, as women we started to go seeking for employment at the mines but we found that there were male managers only and some of them would ask for sexual favors in exchange for a job,” said Josephine.
Mutonhori called for gender parity in the mining sector labour force.
“Given that there are fewer women employed in the mines especially in managerial positions, women will continue shying away from seeking for employment in the mines for fear of sexual harassment.
“Ultimately this means that there will remain fewer women being employed in the mines until and unless companies are prepared to take aggressive steps towards redressing this challenge which would include policies to promote employment of women especially in decision making positions,” she said.
Josephine said women’s forums have assisted the sidelined women to recognize that they have rights which should be respected.
“Although we found it hard to get employed in the diamond mines, as a member of the forum, my knowledge on human rights issues and awareness of my rights has increased.”
“The women’s forum has given us a voice- voice to speak even at household level, we didn’t have power to influence decisions at community level at the chief’s meeting, taakuendawo kumatare nhunha dzedu vakutinzwawo (now we can go to the chief’s court and air out our problems and have them considered).”
Members of the Hotsprings Women’s Forum engaged with traditional leaders and the paramount Chief Mutambara called for a special ward assembly meeting to discuss the issue of sexual and reproductive health rights of adolescent girls.
“The forum noted that school drop-out rates had reached alarming rates at Hotsprings secondary due to girls falling pregnant to male mine workers and “magweja,” (illegal miners).
“Diamond companies were not alive to such disproportionate risks women (especially young adolescent girls) face in their interaction with the mining industry operations and as such they did not initiate any gender sensitive and responsive Corporate Social responsibility initiatives and Corporate Social Accountability tools,” states ZELA.
While the commemorations captured well that mining is a gender equality issue, everyday concerns for women in Chiadzwa villagers still bear heavy on their shoulders.
Pamela remains hopeful that despite challenges she can still rely on the Women’s Forums for improvement of her family livelihoods.
“Picking the wild fruits with my sisters as members of the forum has ensured my family won’t starve as we can buy a bucket of maize weekly. My children can learn better in class as they get regular meals whilst some children have stopped attending school because of hunger”
