Women seek harsher penalties for sexual harassment offenders

BULAWAYO: Women in Zimbabwe are calling for tougher penalties for sexual harassment amid public anger over a highly publicised street attack.

A campaign to crack down on offenders was launched this month after a video of a gang accosting a woman in a mini skirt in the capital Harare and stripping her naked was posted on social media and went viral.

So far only two of the gang have been arrested and their cases have yet to come to court.

The attack late last year came two months after hundreds of women staged “mini skirt marches” against sexual harassment of women and leniency by the courts in dealing with offenders.

The protests are part of a growing outcry from women in Zimbabwe over their treatment in the streets, lack of parliamentary seats and workplace discrimination.

Gender rights activists led by legislator Jessie Majome, the former deputy minister of women’s affairs, gender and community development, have called for minimum mandatory sentences for sex offences.

“This sentencing approach is similar to the effective stock theft approach whereby nine years is the minimum sentence,” Majome said.

Majome, with support of other groups such as Women of Zimbabwe Arise, is pursuing the issue in the national assembly with a motion seeking a review of all genderbased violence sentences by setting minimum mandatory sentences.

She also wants the assembly to recommit to a three-year gender based violence strategy agreed in 2012 that aimed to cut violence against women by 20 percent by this year by increasing protection, service provision, information management and co-ordination for women.

In June last year, then-vice president Joyce Mujuru released figures from the Zimbabwe police showing 11 000 women were raped between 2012 and March last year – 3 571 of them adults and 7 411 aged under 16.

This appeared to be a significant rise in numbers, but activists say accurate statistics are hard to pin down as many women are unwilling to come forward and report rape. – Reuters