This theoretical article analyses the impact of gender imbalances in land redistribution in Zimbabwe’s Third Chimurenga. The article argues that if land is a womb, why is that women who are the mothers are sidelined and undermined in land redistribution in postcolonial Zimbabwe. The article also highlights the importance of land which led to a group of 90 women scaling the highest mountain in protest of land imbalances on the basis of gender. History has it that many people were displaced, uprooted and some even killed because of land issues. In this struggle for land, there is always a section of society which is undermined and pushed to the periphery when it comes to the use and ownership of this valuable resource. Land is the centre of reproduction and production in Zimbabwe. It gives people their sense of belonging and identity. Women in the Third Chimurenga sang, danced and gave moral support but the land tenure systems prohibit them to own land outside male or patriarchal dominance. In this article, I demonstrated the impact of gender imbalances on land redistribution in the Third Chimurenga by highlighting the power of a group of women who scaled the highest mountain in Zimbabwe, Mount Nyangani, to challenge the land tenure systems that oppress women so far as land ownership is concerned. The article engages the black liberation theological paradigm to show the irruption of women into the sacred space dominated by the male.
This article is interdisciplinary in the sense that it cuts across disciplines as it addresses issues of land, gender, patriarchy and a liberation theology which reflect the need for human emancipation, especially the oppressed groups.
This article looks at the discourse of women empowerment that has grown swiftly in the past two decades as women move up in various ways within different domains of life. Gender equality has been at the centre of debate in Zimbabwe, Africa and globally for many years, with women attacking gender prejudice. This gender prejudice has made a negative impact on women as they are left out of development and other critical social economic enhancement because they are women. This kind of stereotype has made women inferior to men, including their own sons, thus impacting negatively land tenure system in Zimbabwe. The male-dominated society has facilitated a serious gender imbalance on land.
Gender imbalance continues to cast its dark shadow on how land was redistributed during the Fast Track Land Reformation. This article gives insights into how women are challenging the redistribution of land in Zimbabwe during the Fast Track Land Redistribution (
Sifuniso et al. (
Scholars and philosophers of different disciplines have invested much time and thought on efforts to understand and explain the differences between men and women worldwide. Various theories have been constructed and, amongst them, most central ones are the gender constructionist theory and the biological determinism/essentialism theory. This article will focus on the social construction of gender which has been used by the society to oppress and subjugate women.
The social construction theory argues that gender behaviour is not innate but is socially constructed. It is based on the concept of gender socialisation, which ‘refers to the means whereby social expectations regarding gender appropriate characteristics are conveyed. These expectations are often based on stereotyped beliefs’ (Dekker & Lemmer
The social construction theory of gender stresses that boys and girls are not born men and women but learn to be masculine and feminine in conformity with social values and practices. Young boys and girls learn the appropriate behaviour for their sex during primary socialisation in the family and secondary socialisation at school, at church and amongst their peers.
Dube (
Butler (
The social construction of gender is therefore the social making of gender through the process of gender socialisation. The social institutions that are responsible for gender construction are called socialisation forces like the family, school, media, language, music and religion, amongst others (Haralambos & Holborn
The theory of gender socialisation is criticised for denying individual choice or free will by portraying individuals as over-socialised and passively conforming to predetermined social roles. Individuals cannot dare to actively amend, recreate or redefine social roles in a reflective and purposeful way. It is therefore a deficit model, where difference is seen as deviance or abnormality. It emphasises role modelling to provide messages about gender behaviours, which are allegedly passively soaked up by boys and girls.
Some scholars like Connell (
The categories of man and woman have no universal explanatory force that goes much beyond strictly physiological. Gender roles are culturally produced. Whatever the biological differences between men and women, it is the culture of society that exerts most influence on the creation of masculinity and femininity behaviour. Gender is socially constructed in the sense that the behaviour of men and women is learnt rather than being an inevitable result of biology (Haralambos et al.
In Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs failed to incorporate former women combatants and guerrilla as most of them lacked advanced formal education qualifications. As a result, their militancy and devotion to revolution change were not harnessed. Many of these women combatants faced serious challenges in being reabsorbed into society. Their experience as guerrillas was not readily welcomed by the society and some parents vetoed the idea of their sons marrying these former guerrillas who were seen as wild and stubborn largely because of their self-assertion (Maloba
A woman is understood as a creature that has been made, fabricated and moulded to social purpose. For example, in marriage, the social structuring of marriage necessitates appropriate training for those who are to fill its requirements. It must be obvious then that acquirement of certain characteristics had been rendered inevitable for women in general. What is significant in this development is that such a social construction is purported to be based on the real nature of women, a nature that is claimed to be remarkably consistent even in the presence of very difficult circumstances but that women are compelled to conform. Prevailing social standards in society present morally accepted behaviour of a woman which is not actually according to the woman herself, but a code of manners formulated in the interest of her master (Cleveland, Stokdale, Murphy & Gutek
As women continue to fall victims of moral construction by others, especially male dominance, they are rendered incapable of true morality. Women live therefore by second-hand virtues, a situation made even more demeaning by the reduction of all of these to one virtue of honour. The women’s attempts to conform freely and rationally to standards set by others should be further distilled into a statement about the physical state of her body, which is the final insult and contradiction. The woman is rendered powerless in her personal and social life by this reduction. The life of a woman is thus determined by the requirements of social institutions which she had no part in formulating and the virtue of life is judged accordingly (Cleveland et al.
The majority of religions in the world subordinate women. In an Islamic tradition, it is argued that a devout Muslim would cease to pray when a strange woman or a donkey appears (Acker 1997). A prayer by a devout Jew reads, I thank God that I am a Jew and not a gentile, am a man and not a woman. In Christianity, the creation story shows that the woman was not formed from the dust of the earth but was taken from the rib of Adam. Adam was given dominion over creation and a man is the head of the family as Christ is also the head of the church. In traditional religion, women do not speak to the ancestral spirit [
The
Chitando (
Issues of class and gender discrimination are very controversial and it seems that the church has aligned itself with the forces of gender oppression. The church sometimes finds ways of justifying the oppression of women and other minorities. The church in Africa must come of age and stop discharging finished products of Eurocentric theology packaged well in European ecclesiology (Oduyoye
Our contemporary language has created a mindset in which men and women are rigidly opposed to each other and our religious myths show a bias towards rigid limits for women and mobility for men. The portraits of women in African mythology serve as models for women’s being that is what any woman or all women ought to be. A woman is simply a human being and she does not have to prove that her way being is as human as that of a man and her destiny as a mother is not derived from a man’s destiny (Oduyoye
Acceptance to Christianity demands not only a break with the traditional religious system but also an abandonment of the African cultural background. The harvest amongst older people was discouraging. Richard Sykes, the Jesuit missionary, said in this regard, ‘the man who had plurality of wives is practically hopeless as a prospective Christian convert. The hope lies with the children’ (Chitando
Mukonyora (
In Zimbabwe, the most famous woman in the struggle against colonialism was Nehanda Nyakasikana, a spirit medium who took a leading role in channelling resistance to the settlers. The settlers, military and administrators, who were coming from England where the domestication of women particularly amongst the bourgeoisie was advanced were dumbfounded by the unexpected role Nehanda played in the resistance. They explained it by saying that she was a witch with some kind of power over men of her nation, and hence her bizarre behaviour and the men’s cooperation with her. Nehanda’s involvement in the anti-colonial struggles is an indication of the space which existed for women in pre-colonial Shona society in the religious-political ream at a time when the distinctions between politics, religion and production were not pronounced. Nehanda was not a maternal symbol and as the medium of a powerful spirit, her spiritual political identity overshadowed her identity as a woman.
Many people suffered and died during Zimbabwe’s war of liberation and many accounts of that struggle have been written; however, the story of women, the wives and mothers who remained behind this struggle has not yet been told. The stories reveal courage, endurance, humour and wisdom. These women, the mothers, are both victims and actors. Throughout the war, and over again they fed and protected the freedom fighters and they risked their lives to do so. The men were around but used to command these mothers to hurry with food before they were beaten up by the freedom fighters. Without these women, the war could not have been won (Staunton
Land has always been the source of life in Africa. African history shows that the African life is based on land. It is the land that produces which is needed for human consumption. The value and importance of land in Africa are demonstrated by the fact that from ancient to modern history, land always caused wars and political and social disturbances whenever it was not equally distributed amongst people.
The common practice in Africa has been that land has always been entrusted to the chief as the main distributor. The chiefs also had the mandate to address conflicts over land although favouritism could not be ruled out. In pre-colonial Africa, the chiefs made sure that every person in the tribe or nation and clan had some land to produce food which is the basic human need, except in matrilineal societies where property such as land is handed down from mother to daughter. With the impact of colonialism, the concept of land and its distribution changed drastically. Colonialism basically became more pronounced in Africa in the 19th century. By this time, life in Europe and the rest of the western world had drastically changed from the feudal system where land was a source of life to many people in the rural areas for developing towns and cities. The majority of the people were completely isolated from land ownership. The decline in land ownership became the new custom of the western people.
This is the situation and attitude which many westerners brought to Africa under the sphere of colonialism. Africa was divided between major European countries and the major aim was to take away land from the majority of the people to be accumulated in the hands of some few white people. This was characterised by driving away of indigenous people off their lands and creating big farms owned by white settlers. This marked the beginning of poverty in Africa. It is unfortunate that even Christian missionaries who claimed to have brought the Good News also took part in this accumulation of land.
In traditional African thought, land was perceived as a communal property and largely each tribal group enjoyed an exclusive ownership of the same land. Within these tribal groups, parents would automatically pass the same land rights to their children and to their children’s children. For traditional Africans, land was not only t a commercial commodity but also a sociocultural and spiritual asset that was shared and controlled within communities. Land was inextricably intertwined with the ontological beliefs of Africans.
Amanze (
There are serious gender imbalances with regard to land. As argued by Chitando (
For the VaKaranga people, the access to land was mostly guaranteed to women upon bearing male children. Male children are perceived as an extension of lineage [
One of the most obvious structural features of the biblical patriarchal family is its location of woman within the role of motherhood. A woman is a child bearer. This role is marked out as primary if not the only legitimate place of women. It is the place where a man can risk a woman having some freedom, power even but still within the formal constraints of male authority. Not surprisingly, despite many dimensions of women’s lives that could frame their stories, the narrow focus on women as mothers far and away predominates. But despite attempts to monopolise power systematically, the ability to effect change does not wholly lie within the grasp of men (Sawyer
If land is a womb or mother, its cultural symbol is very important for the Vakaranga, which also means that its ownership and use must be a perquisite for all people regardless of gender (Bakare
Any strategy to achieve greater power must be accompanied by voicing for if women do not deliberately attempt to break their silence about their situations, others will continue to maintain it. Dealing justly with African women must begin with taking seriously women’s questions and concerns about their status. Trivialising women’s concerns do far more harm than good. Women’s voices should be listened to when they speak about the God-ordained dignity of every human person or the consequent need of each person for respect. To expect women to uphold all that is humanising in African culture and yet deny their participation in the politics of family and nation is like asking them to make bricks without straw (Oduyoye
There has always been a patriarchal construction of land in Zimbabwe. Possession and land ownership of land are traditionally a symbol of a man and his wealth. Women in the rural areas have no access to land because it is believed that they do not belong to the family they are married to, they remain outsiders. Even when one is not yet married as a daughter, sister or an aunt, they did not own land but rather the land belonged to their brothers, uncles and fathers. Even under the third Chimurenga, it is argued that women were not prioritised in terms of land allocation which was distributed to male households.
Goebel (
Women were thus left absolutely landless, yet were the ones who mostly needed land to provide for the family. The allocation of land to men left women with little access or no space for them to provide for the family without access to land. Many civic and human rights organisations in Zimbabwe are fighting for the rights of women in all spheres of life, of which land is one of them. But there are still a great numbers obstacles at the community level, hindering women from having full access and ownership of land. Moreover, the legal framework is also shifting towards accommodating women but it is just on paper, whilst on the ground a different story is presented and portrayed. Even under the government resettlement policies, women have been left vulnerable. One can rightly argue that gender analysis of the land in Zimbabwe shows the inability of the general law to ensure women’s rights to land when such laws are not socially legitimate and enforceable.
The lack of land pushed women to urban areas where they hoped they would make a living much better than the communal life. This resulted in many women finding the situation in town and cities difficult and unsustainable. Some were forced in commercial sex work, whilst others embarked on cross-border trading.
The gender imbalances in terms of land allocation and ownership in the Third Chimurenga resulted in women scaling the highest mountain in Zimbabwe, Mount Nyangani, which is located in the Manicaland province about 275 km north-west Mutare (
The scaling of Mount Nyangani can be equated to what Tamez (
Women’s agency is of course exerted within particular structures of power. Certain institutions and opportunities enable women to challenge and transform repressive gender norms, whilst others constrain what women can do. National courts in both colonial and contemporary Zimbabwe provided an important venue for demanding change in betrothal, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and property rights (Hodgson & McCurdy
Chief Samhembere confirmed that it was possible for the traditional leadership to give equal opportunities to both men and women. The traditional leadership through Chief Samhembere pledged its support to the women’s complaints and alluded to the fact that it was high time that Zimbabweans appreciate the important role played by women in the community and that they deserve better treatment in as far as land was concerned. There was no problem with women owning land in the community (Zvayi
In groups, women have challenged the injustices perpetuated by the colonial and postcolonial states, and created new economic and social space for themselves. They have fought sexist barriers to employment, established formal political association and pursued financial autonomy in the face of mounting hostility. Women have slightly succeeded in reconfiguring the gendered order in which they live (Hodgson & McCurdy
An analysis of the above incident of women scaling the highest mountain pick in Zimbabwe shows how these women were prepared to transform land imbalances that were created by the
The
Following the theory that for the liberation of all, the most oppressed subject needs to be liberated, and Aquino & Thau (
Women also argued that land was the reason some of them had to be involved in the liberation struggle alongside their male counterparts. They argued that during the liberation struggle, there was no gender classification, hence the same policy should be observed in land redistribution (
Statistics reveal that of the 70% of the women population in rural areas, only 18% of women benefited on the small-scale farms called A1 and 12% under the large-scale commercial farms known as A2. This shows the extent to which women trail in land ownership. The protests by women were validated by the constitution which supports equality on all frontiers (
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This section of the constitution has proved to be just an inscription which does not have great impact on the country as is reflected by the land imbalances in the distribution of land in the Third Chimurenga.
The scaling of Mount Nyangani by women shows the importance of land for sustainability and how women are challenging patriarchal ownership of land. This radical view by women has left men who are the custodian of patriarchal systems challenged, whilst at the same time it has also challenged other women who have for a very long time remained willing participants in patriarchal systems of land ownership. It was a
The legal framework on access and utilisation of land by women does not guarantee them security of tenure. Women in most cases have to access land through male heads of household, such as husbands, brothers or fathers. This dependence on men makes possible the abuse of women as their use of land depends on the continuation of their relationship with these men (
For single women who never married, the failure to allocate them land in their own right in communal areas means putting them at the mercy of their fathers, brothers and other male figures with power and influence. Moreover, divorced women are also another class of women who find it difficult to access land on the premise that land is accessed through marriage. It is a
The scaling of the highest mountain by women in order for their voices to be heard shows the importance of land as a source of social, economic and political power in Zimbabwe. It also entails that the centre can be challenged and this centre is patriarchy which gives more latitude to men in land ownership. This article also unearthed the close and fluid relationship between patriarchy and empire in that the two seem to be borrowed concepts for
The above percentage which is below the expectations of women made them realise that without protesting the system of patriarchy, they will remain disempowered. Women have demonstrated that they are agents of social change as the scaling of Mount Nyangani sent shock waves to patriarchy not only in the social ordering of the society but also to the church which is also an embodiment of patriarchy through inherited Standing Orders and Books of Discipline.
Black theology must reflect critically on itself, assisting itself to rethink, reimagine and reconstruct itself in ways that could address not only issues of race and class but also issues of gender oppression. The stance taken by women is a challenge to black liberation theology from any possible complacency there might be or any self-congratulatory possibility and face its complicity in gender oppression. Black liberation theology is not only limited to issues of oppression of men but it must embrace a holistic approach to issues of oppression.
The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
I declare that I am the sole author of this research article.
This article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author.