“Ordinary women cannot afford sanitary wear. We are using old pieces of cloth or newspapers. Consequently we’re suffering the loss of our dignity and serious infections, in some cases leading to infertility. Many women are facing violence from their husbands who believe these infections to be sexually transmitted.” Thabitha Khumalo, 2006.
Today, when I signed three petitions in support of democracy and human rights for the people of Zimbabwe, I was thinking of the truly remarkable woman I met two years ago. Thabitha Khumalo was in the UK to raise money and support for a campaign to secure safe supplies of sanitary towels for women in Zimbabwe. The economy was so bad – inflation was then a mere 1000% – manufacturers of sanitary products had left the country. An appeal for help produced a generous lorry load of sanitary towels from South Africa but Robert Mugabe refused to let them into the country.
That act has stuck in my mind. It seemed such a twisted abuse of power from the country’s leader, a terrible symbol of male dominance in a land where the life expectancy of women is now 34 years.
The campaign promoted by Thabitha, Dignity Period, continues. Revisiting the ACTSA website tonight I see that last year, in support of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), they successfully delivered 5 million sanitary pads to women and girls who could not otherwise afford that very basic, intimate, personal comfort.
But occasional Google searches for Thabitha do not produce much up to date news and I often wonder how she is: a brave and generous woman who spoke with warmth and good humour to a small meeting of Labour women in Edinburgh City Chambers on a cold spring night in 2006. As a trade union activist (she was then secretary of the Women’s Advisory Council of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions), she was returning to almost certain harrassment if not more of the beatings and imprisonment she had already suffered in her struggle for human rights.
The future for other women and men in the country must be equally uncertain. Who knows whether Morgan Tsvangirai would be more democratic in office (interesting that his trade union affiliation is given as the reason for Tabu Mbeke’s hostility towards the Movement for Democratic Change). I feel almost foolish in trying to do anything to help; adding my name to a petition seems so futile. But doing something seems better than doing nothng.
ACTSA – the successor to the Anti-apartheid movement – says we can send money so ordinary women can continue to receive sanitary supplies.
We can also add our names to petitions to the leaders of neighbouring Tanzania and Zambia. On Friday April 18 ACTSA are mobilising a demonstration outside the Zimbabwean embassy in London in support of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions which is staging a strike from Tuesday 15 April until the full election results are released. I wonder if Thabitha is among them.
The other petition I signed in response to an email from Celina, a Kenyan friend and another remarkable woman, is on the website of Avaaz, “a new global web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people everywhere want. ”
PS. according to the BBC Zimbabwe inflation has just hit 165,000% and ACTSA says sanitary towels cost 50% of a month’s earnings for ordinary women in Zimbabwe. I reckon that would make a packet of tampons around £1,000 in the UK but correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, the trade unions are taking the kind of action that Tabu Mbeke should be taking. What has he got against the MDC in Zimbabwe?
Let’s hear it for the brothers (and sisters?), the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union who blocked the unloading of weapons and ammunition sent from China to Zimbabwe.