Marie is a member of the War Studies Department at King’s College, London. She wrote this piece as part of her internship with Arts4Refugees. Her motivation was to help her peer group understand the unique experiences of post-conflict communities. This article was edited by Cassia Jefferson, a fellow student journalist from Oxford University. Bernadett from Swinburne University interviewed Marie for the podcast as well.
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Stepping Outside the Bounds: Women Ex-Combatants’ Experiences of Stigmatisation and Marginalisation Following the Zimbabwean Liberation War
During tumultuous times women have always been participants in conflict (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015, p. 2), with the violence that ensued in the Zimbabwean Liberation war being no exception. However, despite fighting alongside men during wartime, at peacetime many female ex-combatants had to bear the brunt of stigmatisation, simply for being women. Indeed, what happened to Zimbabwean women is not a one-off instance, but part of a larger pattern where women in military forces are criticised for deviating from traditional gender roles, such as by choosing to pick up arms instead of being a mother (Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015, pp. 6-7). As will be shown, some Zimbabwean ex-combatant women were in various ways subjected to this criticism, which in turn hurt their post-war opportunities and sense of selves.
Contextualising the conflict and the role of female combatants
The Zimbabwean Liberation War is traced back to when Great Britain colonised the part of Zimbabwe formerly known as Rhodesia. In 1970, the white minority government there declared independence from the UK and tried to establish Rhodesia as a Republic (Ndhlovu and Wielenga, 2021, p. 4). Fighting against the Rhodesians and their decision were the ZANU, known as the Zimbabwe African National Union, and the ZAPU, known as the Zimbabwe African People’s Union. Both groups had military wings, known respectively as the ZANLA and the ZIPRA (Ndhlovu and Wielenga, 2021, p. 4). In 1979, following years of fighting, Zimbabwe’s independence was secured through the Lancaster House Peace Agreement (Ndhlovu and Wielenga, 2021, p. 5). During the fight for liberation, women combatants held a multitude of roles. These ranged from cooking and childcare (Ndhlovu and Wielenga, 2021, p. 5), to carrying out political education, transporting war materials to the frontlines, and actively fighting (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 53). Although these women were important during the war (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 51), their voices were underrepresented during the peace negotiations (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 55). This decision had significant effects felt throughout post-war Zimbabwe.
When left out of the negotiations, many ex-combatant women were unable to advocate for demobilisation and reintegration efforts that kept gender-differences in mind (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 55). For example, in 1980 the Zimbabwean government set out to merge the Rhodesian security forces, the ZANLA and the ZIPRA. However, some of the women were integrated at a lower rank than male counterparts who had previously held the same position as them (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, pp. 55-56). To add insult to injury, political leaders and other participants in the war (who were mostly men) tended to present themselves as those who had suffered the most. To ease their suffering, some awarded themselves both money and properties. Women who had fought were mostly left out of discussions pertaining to compensation for war losses. So, while some female combatants had experienced assaults and exploitation (Muwati, Mheta and Gambahaya, 2010, p. 175), their experiences were downplayed and they did not have the same opportunities to claim compensation. While having one’s own suffering minimised is bad enough, it was only one of the many problems that female ex-combatants faced in the post-war period.
Though these women worked hard to ensure the country’s liberation, their sense of pride was severely hampered by misperceptions held by some civilians. Women who fought in the Zimbabwean liberation war were not regarded as highly as men, with their contributions at times merely seen as those of prostitutes (Chipuriro and Batisai, 2018, p. 55). Alongside this, many women also experienced stigmatisation from civilian men who did not appreciate the roles they had held. In an interview, one man deemed them too unfeminine and argued they needed to learn how to walk and dress appropriately (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 57). Such instances of defamation caused many women to experience feelings of despair, alongside the inability to gain confidence from their identity as a combatant and the contributions they had made to their country’s liberation. Evidently, this hurt their self-esteem. (Ndhlovu and Wielenga, 2021, p. 9). One ex-combatant has spoken on how the lack of respect she received meant she did not feel like a hero after the war (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 59). These women felt hindered from celebrating the freedom that they too had worked hard for (Chipuriro and Batisai, 2018, p. 55). Thus, public opinion robbed them of what should have been a point of self-esteem and self-confidence and turned it into a source of shame.
Additionally, after the war some women faced issues surrounding caring for a child. Some returned home from the conflict carrying children, some conceived against their own will (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 57). In a society which looked down upon single mothers, often those that returned with children were not received warmly by their communities. For some, this “cool welcome” even entailed being disowned by their own family (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 57). The second problem came in relation to parentage. Some women struggled with finding their child’s father because they either did not know who he was or because he had died while fighting. Some men outright denied their parentage . One female ex-combatant observed in an interview how some of the men that denied their own children have since gone on to take important jobs as ministers and government officials (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 57). Furthermore, for some of these women, having a child also stopped them from finding a place in post-war society. As single mothers, not all of them had the same opportunities as other combatants to be re-educated or rehabilitated because they also had to dedicate time to childcare (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 57). Facing significant pressures and a lacking assistance from the government, many of these women turned to drugs and alcohol to cope (Sadomba and Dzinesa, 2004, p. 59). Between this, negative public opinions and being underrepresented at the peace negotiations, the post-war experiences of ex-combatant were undeniably shaped by their gender. Although they fought for the same cause as their male counterparts, they did not get their fair share of glory. Working for this glory meant they had to step outside of the bounds society had set for acceptable behaviour for women, and they have suffered because of this.
Without doubt, the number of different post-war experiences ranges far beyond those described here. While not an exhaustive list of the troubles that Zimbabwean ex-combatant women endured after the liberation war, this article does bring to the fore some of the problems they faced. This is not to say that life was easy for male ex-combatants, or that they did not also face problems and hardships. Rather, it is an attempt to highlight gender-based hardships many women experienced, which robbed them of the acceptance, understanding, self-esteem and safety that they should have been guaranteed after the conflict.
Resources:
Chipuriro, R.M. and Batisai, K. (2018) ‘Unsung heroines and violence for the land: Narratives of elderly women farmers’ experiences in South Africa and Zimbabwe’, Agenda, 32(4), pp. 54–64. doi:10.1080/10130950.2018.1535081.
Gentry, CE, & Sjoberg, L 2015, Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores :
Thinking about Women's Violence in Global Politics, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, London. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central.
Muwati, I., Mheta, G. and Gambahaya, Z. (2010) ‘Contesting “patriotic history”: Zimbabwe’s Liberation War History and the Democratization Agenda’, South African Journal of African Languages, 30(2), pp. 170–179. doi:10.1080/02572117.2010.10587344.
Ndhlovu, N. and Wielenga, C. (2021) ‘Unequal access to redress for women ex-combatants in Zimbabwe: An intersectional analysis’, African Identities, pp. 1–16. doi:10.1080/14725843.2021.1976105.
Sadomba, F. and Dzinesa, G.A. (2004) ‘Identity and Exclusion in the Post–War Era: Zimbabwe’s Women Former Freedom Fighters’, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 2(1), pp. 51–63. doi:10.1080/15423166.2004.565623507173.
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