Women at greater risk
LOCKDOWN: AFRICAN GENDER ACTIVISTS FIGHT INCREASE IN VIOLENCE
Teen pregnancies, child marriage surge across Africa during health crisis.
As a young girl growing up in northern Zimbabwe’s mining community of Mashonaland, Beatrice Savadye watched as her friends were forced into child marriages and early motherhood, while many became sick with HIV.
Wanting a different life for herself and other girls, Savadye started the Zimbabwean women’s movement, Roots Africa, seven years ago fighting for, among many things, legislation change to protect women’s rights in the region.
Under the lockdown, Savadye is one of a band of female activists in Africa pushing for stronger laws to protect women trapped indoors with abusers from a surge in violence and a spike in HIV infections.
“I don’t like seeing injustice. We work to build resilience among young girls, to say that even if you are poor, you can have a better life,” said Savadye, 33.
The United Nations in June warned of a surge in domestic violence under coronavirus lockdowns, with calls to helplines doubling or tripling in some countries, as restrictions on movement made it impossible for many women to flee abusers.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and Aids highlighted the risk of domestic violence and HIV infection for women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, who already accounted for 59% of new HIV infections in the region last year.
While providing training, rescuing women from abusive homes in her own car, sheltering 30 women and their children and assisting them with antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to prevent full-blown
Aids developing, Savadye is also pushing for legal changes.
“It is painful to become an adult at a young age. Young girls need role models to look up to, safe spaces to run to, and laws to protect them,” said Savadye.
In 2016, Roots Africa helped push for a constitutional court judgment that led to a ban on child marriage in Zimbabwe. Savadye meets regularly with traditional leaders to ensure this legal protection translates into reality.
“We have seen an increase in child marriages during the lockdown as economic meltdown is one of the key drivers of child marriage and exploitation,” Savadye said.
She is now pushing for a review of the Zimbabwean Termination of Pregnancy Act to fully legalise abortion. Currently, it is only legal if the mother or child’s health is at risk, or the mother can prove she was raped.
“We are fighting against backstreet abortions,” she said, adding that she also has to help women access ARV medication secretly so that controlling partners in denial of their status won’t ban them from taking the pills.
Across the border, Roots Africa’s efforts are echoed by the South African women’s rights charity, Ilitha Labantu, that means “bringing a sunbeam of hope to the people” in isiXhosa.
“Violence against women has been a pandemic for a long time,” said the charity’s director, Ella Mangisa, 37. “We fight against the normalisation of gender-based violence,” she said from her office in Gugulethu.
During the lockdown, the organisation saw a spike in women fleeing abusive partners. “The Domestic Violence Act says a women should be offered a place of safety if she is abused. But why must she run around like a headless chicken looking for this safety?” Mangisa asked.
In Malawi, 25-year-old Malawian activist Grace Ngulube has used her experience of being born with HIV to educate and help women at risk of getting the virus. Her organisation, the National
Association of Young People Living with HIV, organised support groups before the pandemic hit for youths living with HIV. But when schools closed and movement was restricted, Ngulube heard of a rise in sexual violence against women and girls and teenage pregnancies.
Using WhatsApp to stay in touch with as many girls as she could, Ngulube also began meeting community leaders to ensure child marriages did not occur, even though they are illegal.
“There are laws, but we are pushing for them to be enforced,” she said, adding that young girls with HIV were stigmatised for having compromised immune systems and labelled as potential coronavirus carriers. “This is why we need civic education.”
Savadye in Zimbabwe was concerned education campaigns ran the risk of being drowned out by Covid-19. “With all efforts focused on fighting the coronavirus, we cannot forget about HIV, malaria, child marriages and gender-based violence.” –