Zimbabwe - Elections 2000 - Sustainable Democracy

Zimbabwean women attempt to boost their numbers in the parliamentary elections on June 24 and 25 with 55 of them from the ruling and opposition parties seeking seats, the largest number of female candidates in the country’s 20-year history.

The last parliament, dissolved on the 11 April, had 21 women members, one of whom was from the opposition, the outspoken Margaret Dongo, president of the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats (ZUD).

The ruling party ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front) is fielding the largest number of women candidates this election with 20 running.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which was formed nine months ago, is fielding 11 women out of its 120 candidates. Women’s pressure groups are far from impressed with the numbers, though a significant feature in party manifestos are elaborate provisions for empowering women at the grassroots.

The MDC pledges to promote a “grassroots process” towards gender equality in economic, social and political life, saying it would ensure that women were not unfairly prejudiced by their childbearing and reproductive role in relation to employment or economic opportunity.

ZANU-PF has resolved that a minimum quota of 50 seats in its central committee must be allocated to women. At the party’s congress held at the end of last year, another resolution was passed that for every three positions, a woman must occupy one. But the resolutions are yet to be implemented.

Said Shadreck Beta, provincial chairperson of ZANU-PF in Manicaland, “We have been talking about a quota for women but this has not been implemented for this year’s parliamentary elections.”

His party is fielding two women out of the 14 constituencies in his province and he said they have had to fight their way up through a largely male-dominated contest.

ZANU-PF says following the world conference on women held in Beijing, China in 1995, the government of Zimbabwe identified five priorities out of the 12 critical areas that emerged from the conference’s platform of action: setting up institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women in power and decision-making, education, training and the economy.

Soon after independence, the government led by ZANU-PF set up a ministry of community development and women’s affairs in 1981 to facilitate the integration of women in all development initiatives to mobilize, organize, coordinate and monitor women’s advancement programmes and projects in the public and private sectors and the NGO community.

In 1994, gender focal persons were established in all ministries to ensure gender mainstreaming in all governmental departments. In 1997 a gender issues department was set up in the Office of the President and cabinet to monitor the implementation of the national gender policy and the Beijing platform. Oppah Muchinguri, the Minister of State responsible for Gender Issues, heads the department.

With women constituting 52 percent of the population and representation not quite above the half-way mark of the set SADC target, women’s movements are pressing for more concrete action.

The country does not match up with the rest of southern Africa’s leaders in gender balance. South Africa and Mozambique, both of which are close to fulfilling the 30 percent quota provided for in the declaration signed in 1997 by the heads of state of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which each of the 14 member countries must reach by the year 2005.

South Africa currently has the highest representation of women in parliament and cabinet in the region. Their 400-member parliament has 119 women or 29.8 percent, a mark very close to the minimum required by the 1997 declaration.

Mozambique ranks second at 28.4 percent of the 250-member parliament, 71 of whom are women but the cabinet of 37 has only one woman. Both the African National Congress, the South African ruling party and FRELIMO, Mozambique’s ruling party, have a 30 percent quota system for women in their party structures which has helped increase their participation in decision-making positions.

Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho are the lowest in terms of women’s representation in parliament in the SADC region, all of them standing below the 11 percent mark (SARDC).