Mbuya Nehanda must be turning in her grave
MILLIONS of people across the political divide today will cast their votes at different polling stations across the country in harmonised elections that will start at 7am and end at 7pm today.
With all things being equal, a total of 5 695 706 registered voters - 52 percent of them female -are expected to cast their votes in this decisive election to elect a new government following the November 2017 Operation Restore Legacy which ushered a new political dispensation under the stewardship of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
While there is so much anticipation on which political party between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC- Alliance - the two major contenders - on who will get a majority in Parliament, this election will go down in history as the worst election in terms of female canidates.
Sadly, despite massive advocacy from the civic society, and a much-publicised meeting by women from all walks of life with President Mnangagwa in May, women’s representation in Parliament and local government will at best remain the same, at worst decline.
According to an analysis by the Women in Politics Support Unit (WiPSU), neither the ruling Zanu-PF , that has a 30 percent quota provision for women, nor the main opposition MDC-Alliance, that promised 50 percent quota for women, lived up to their promises.
Out of the 210 seats to be contested for in the House of Assembly, only 19 women will represent Zanu-PF, which translates to nine percent, while the figures are more or less in the MDC-Alliance camp. There are four female presidential candidates out of 23.
According to WiPSU, in the National Assembly 47 political candidates fielded candidates; 20 of these did not field any women candidates at all and two parties fielded only one woman each.
Simple calculations point to a 15 percent female representation of the nearly 1 600 aspiring parliamentary candidates in today’s elections, a figure which is an indictment to women’s contribution to the country’s political landscape from the time Mbuya Nehanda laid the groundwork for engendered leadership more than 120 years ago.
Mbuya Nehanda must be turning in her grave, for the maligning of the female population, yet the late gallant fighter inspired two revolutions that were part of the political upheaval that ushered in the independence struggle.
One of the reasons she fiercely fought was to ensure that leadership would be assumed by capable individuals and not based on gender, race or creed.
The fact that she took her fight across the country shows that she was never concerned about regionalism, neither was she so petty to let gender cloud her judgment on matters of national importance.
Suffice to say, misogyny, sexual vilification and objectification of women have over the years clouded matters of national importance in Zimbabwe, at a time the country should be gravitating towards engendered leadership across the board.
Even the unprecedented candidature of four women for president has been met with sexist backlash, lampooning and mudslinging - a reminder of the underlying patriarchal norms that have continued to take centre stage in Zimbabwe’s political landscape.
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