Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:12:58.528Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sisters under the Skin: Women and the Women's League in Zambia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Gisela Geisler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In March 1985 the Second National Women's Rights Conference was held on the Copperbelt. Although Betty Kaunda, wife of the President, addressed the 135 participants in her opening speech as if they were representing the Women's League of the United National Independence Party (U.N.I.P.), surprisingly only two of them, apart from the invited guests of honour, claimed to be associated with this organisation. Hardly any of the issues raised by the League entered the discussions during the three-day conference, and the recommendations were far form being a reflection of its stated aims.1

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 43 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 43 note 1 Women's Rights in Zambia. Proceedings of the Second National Women's Rights Conference Held at Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation, Kitwe, 22–24 03, 1985 (Lusaka, 1985).Google Scholar

Page 43 note 2 Quoted in Schuster, Ilsa, New Women of Lusaka (Palo Alto, 1979), p. 174.Google Scholar

Page 43 note 3 Women's Rights in Zambia, pp. 24ff.

Page 43 note 4 Zambia Daily Mail (Lusaka), 30 04 1985.Google Scholar

Page 44 note 1 Note, for example, the following court case, reported in Times of Zambia (Lusaka), 13 06 1984. A husband was stated to have found his wife in the house of another man, and thereafter beat her till she was dead. The Judge was said to have commented: ‘It is unfortunate that your wife decided to be unfaithful to you when you were out to fend for the family. I agree that you acted under extreme provocation when you found your wife making love with another man and you are therefore entitled to lenience.’Google Scholar

Page 45 note 1 Ibid. 12 JAnuary and 2 August 1984. Last year the Supreme Court in Lusaka dismissed an appeal against the death sentence, although the facts of the investigations revealed that the woman ‘was a victim of her own marriage’. Ibid. 26 February 1986

Page 46 note 1 See Women's League of the Republic of Zambia, Zambia's Report to the World Conference of the UN Decade for Women: equality, development and peace (Lusaka, 1985), pp. 65ff.;Google ScholarUnited National Independence Party, Women's League, Constitution; and Mrs B.C. Kankasa, ‘Report on the Development of the Status of Zambian Women’, Lusaka, n.d.Google Scholar

Page 46 note 2 In the colonial period, the movement of women to the towns was severely restricted by both the colonial authorities and the rural elders. Only those with a valid marriage certificate were legally allowed to live in the townships. See Parpart, Jane, ‘Class and Gender on the Copperbelt: women in Northern Rhodesian coppermining communities, 1926–64’, in Berger, I. and Robertson, Claire (eds.), Women and Class in Africa (London, 1984),Google Scholar and Obbo, Christine, African Women: their struggle for economic independence (London, 1980), for a similar case in Uganda.Google Scholar

Page 46 note 3 Kapelwa Musonda, Times of Zambia, 26 November 1985.

Page 46 note 4 E.g. Aron Mubanga, Eastern Province Political Secretary, told the members of the Provincial Women's League Conference in August 1984 that they, being mainly marketeers, could play an effective rôle ‘in educating the marketeers to avoid exploitation’; Zambia Daily Mail, 7 August 1984. See also Times of Zambia, 27 August 1985, and Zambia Daily Mail, 18 December 1985.

Page 46 note 5 Times of Zambia, 23 February 1985.

Page 47 note 1 Ibid. 23 May 1985.

Page 47 note 2 Zambia Daily Mail, 1 July 1985.Google ScholarThe Zambian Woman (Lusaka), 2, 1985, the publication of the Women's League, reported under the heading ‘Anti-Profiteering Drive Coming’ that the League ‘is geared to mount an educational campaign aimed especially at women marketeers’. The article noted that most marketeers are League members, and Miss Zeniah Ndhlovu, the current executive secretary, is quoted on p. 28 as having said that ‘people will be justified to associate the Women's League with tendencies of profiteering marketeers who are League militants’.Google Scholar

Page 47 note 3 Zambia of Daily Mail, 21 May 1985.

Page 47 note 4 Times of Zambia, 14 MAy 1985.

Page 47 note 5 According to the Zambia Daily Mail, 13 August 1985, the League in the Copperbelt Province then had a membership of 30,000 amongst an estimated total of 600,000 women. A more recent report in Times of Zambia, 6 January 1986, indicated that membership of the League has dropped from 39,259 to an all-time low of 1,598, i.e. to a mere 0.23 per cent of old members, while 16,392 newly recruited women make up a total of nearly 18,000 members. This is not more than 3 per cent of the total female population in the Province. The figures are at the same time astonishing and indicative, since the Copperbelt has a large urban and peri-urban population. It was once, in the early 1960s, a stronghold of the Women's League, whose members according to Jane Parpart, ‘Working Class Wives and Collective Labour Action on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, 1926–64’, Dalhousie University, pp. 30 ff., ‘proved more radical than their husbands, who refrained from large-scale involvement with the national struggle’.

Page 47 note 6 Zambia Daily Mail, 25 May 1985.

Page 47 note 7 Ibid. 15 April 1985.

Page 48 note 1 Quoted in Schuster, op. cit. p. 160.

Page 48 note 2 A recent example shows quite clearly the actual non-involvement of the Women's League in Political decision-making. Following the ratification of the U.N. Convention on Discrimination Against Women, the League called for the establishment of a special women's commission to work with the law development commission in order to identify sex discriminatory legislation. The League was reported to have been told by the Minister of Legal Affairs, Attorney-General Gibson Chigaga, that this ‘was not necessary because the Commission had its own programmes’. Times of Zambia, 17 June 1985.

Page 48 note 3 The Southern Province Political Secretary was, for instance, reported in the Zambia Daily Mail, 30 April 1985, to have warned women not to accept money and strong drinks in bars from ‘unknown characters under the pretext of love’. This, he explained, was not only dangerous for the individual but for the nation as a whole. Many similar examples could be quoted.

Page 48 note 4 ‘End Social Evils’, in ibid. 25 May 1985; ‘Help Stop the Rot, Women Told’, in ibid. 26 September 1985. Under the above headings, President Kaunda was reported to have ‘challenged women to assist the Government in its fight against prostitution, crime, drug-peddling and other social evils' when he opened the 9th National Women's League Conference. He further expressed the hope that the women would become an active part of the vigilante policing system once this would be introduced, since security forces alone could not succeed.

Page 49 note 1 Schuster, op. cit. p. 160.

Page 50 note 1 Zambia Daily Mail, 27 August 1985.

Page 50 note 2 Times of Zambia, 16 July 1985.

Page 50 note 3 Zambia Daily Mail, 5 January 1985.

Page 50 note 4 Oral contraceptives are usually available in Zambia only against the prescription of a physician, who will ask for the written permission of the husband or the guardian of a woman, a requirement that has no foundation in the law. There were reports, however, in the Times of Zambia, 22 and 24 April 1985, that some chemists were willing to sell contraceptives to women without a prescription, and female students were said to be able to obtain contraceptives at the University's own clinic. Generally the restrictions on the availability of contraceptives seem to be less strict. The general secretary of the Planned Parenthood Association, Mrs Margaret Mutambo, was reported by the Zambia Daily Mail, 5 January 1985, to have said at a meeting in Livingstone, in answer to Mrs Kankasa, that while her organisation does not encourage young women to ‘be on the pill’, ‘the girls who have died from illegal abortions would not have died had they been on some sort of contraceptive’.

Page 50 note 5 Quoted in Schuster, op. cit. p. 163.

Page 50 note 6 The Zambia Daily Mail, 18 June 1984, reported that the Lusaka Urban Women's League Conference had called not only for the initiation of girls, but also for the ‘revival of cultural ceremonies, such as the initiation for boys to curb deterioration of moral standards’, in one of their major resolutions.

Page 50 note 7 Unlike other ‘customs’, the initiation of girls is still a common practice in rural and peri-urban areas in Zambia. Girls who attend secondary boarding-schools often reject the custom, but are forced to undergo it when home for their holidays. The initiation involves a seclusion of from one week up to 2–3 months, during which period the girls see no men or boys, being taught by elder women how to stay with a husband and behave as a married woman.

Page 51 note 1 Times of Zambia, 28 May 1985.

Page 51 note 2 The ‘kitchen party’ was so described by the Lusaka Provincial Political Secretary for the League, Mrs Monica Chintu, in the Zambia Daily Mail, 30 May 1985.

Page 52 note 1 Kapulanga, Miriam, ‘Kitchen Parties Turned Into Beer Dens’, in Times of Zambia 5 12 1985.Google Scholar

Page 52 note 2 ‘Adolescents Should Not Attend Kitchen Parties’, in ibid. 27 November 1984.

Page 52 note 3 The Southern Province Provincial Secretary, Wachuku Mwelwa, when speaking in Living-stone at the end of the Women's Week 1985, further explained: ‘These kitchen parties if not properly monitored could become the breeding ground for broken marriages, low productivity, negligence of families, and many more social evils would result from them.’ Zambia Daily Mail, 9 March 1985.

Page 52 note 4 ibid. 5 September 1985.

Page 52 note 5 Times of Zambia 1 February 1985.

Page 52 note 6 When 6,000 women were arrested in November 1983 in neighbouring Zimbabwe on suspicion of being prostitutes there is evidence that this was initiated in response to some female members of Parliament. They were said to have called for the abolition of prostitution in order to stop husbands from spending money on other women. Unlike in Zambia, however, public opposition to ‘Operation Clean-Up’ was strong. A Women's Action Group was formed, which examined the legal basis of the action, and a national debate on the reactionary nature of the campaign was opened in the press. Ruth Weiss, Die Frauen von Zimbabwe (Munich, 1983), p. 8; Stephanie Leland, Joyce Mutasa, and Fran Willard, Women of Southern Africa: struggles and achievements (London, 1985), U.N. Decade of Women Diary.

Page 52 note 7 Zambia Daily Mail 5 September 1985.

Page 53 note 1 The resolution calling for stiffer penalties of up to six months was passed by the Lusaka Urban Women's Conference in June 1984. In an editorial in the Zambia Daily Mail, 18 June 1984, the call of the participants was highly praised, it being argued that loitering alone is an offence which only carries a maximum fine of less than K20, a small sum that would not deter prostitutes, who are driven by ‘sheer greed for easy money’. These women, so readers were informed, are a security risk for the ‘country as a whole…not every foreigner who comes here is innocent; some are in fact spies and saboteurs bent on using prostitutes to obtain certain information about the country’.

Page 53 note 2 8 Miss Ndhlovu was reported by the Times of Zambia, 16 August 1985, to have told a gathering of League women in Lusaka that the ‘prevention of women from entering places such as hotels was outright discrimination on the grounds of sex and should not be allowed’. This attitude, however, did not prevent her from condemning prostitution and demanding that a war be waged ‘against the scourge’; Sunday Times of Zambia (Lusaka), 9 March 1986.

Page 53 note 3 Zambia Daily Mail 5 September 1985.

Page 53 note 4 ibid. 27 July 1982.

Page 53 note 5 Schuster, op. cit. p. 161.

Page 53 note 6 Zambia Daily Mail 11 January 1985.

Page 54 note 1 Times of Zambia, 11 February 1985, and Zambia Daily Mail, 13 August 1985.

Page 54 note 2 Times of Zambia, 12 May 1985.

Page 54 note 3 Chapter VIII of the constitution of the Women's League states that the League has to fund itself through members' contributions, donations, money-raising activities, projects, and other enterprises.

Page 54 note 4 According to Miss Ndhlovu, the full-time salaried employment of District Women's League chairpersons would not be justified if these failed to mobilise women; Zambia Daily Mail, 7 August 1984. Such was the case with 32 league ward officials in Northern Province, who were sacked in 1983 by the ‘Mama Provincial’ because of inactivity; Times of Zambia, 30 April 1983.

Page 54 note 5 Zambian Woman, 2, 1985, p. 7.

Page 54 note 6 International Labour Office/JASPA, Basic Needs in an Economy under Pressure (Addis Ababa, 1981), pp. xxxiii and 61.Google Scholar

Page 55 note 1 Miss Ndhlovu, quoted in the Times of Zambia, 18 February 1985. In a recent appeal reported in the Sunday Times of Zambia, 3 March 1986, she advised prostitutes to go back to the land, since Zambian women were quite capable of feeding the nation and should do that.

Page 55 note 2 Zambian Women, 2, 1985, p. 28.

Page 55 note 3 Zambia Daily Mail, 23 January 1986. It is interesting to note that Mrs Simukwai's attack was in response to a complaint by the women about economic hardships. She reminded them that as the ‘sugar daddies’ who had previously catered for their wants could not do so any more, they had therefore better find a husband. She seems to know what she is talking about, having intimated previously, according to the Zambia Daily Mail, 18 February 1982, that it was common knowledge that young working women could have up to three sugar daddies, ‘one to pay rent, another to buy a fridge, and another to buy clothes’.

Page 56 note 1 Times of Zambia, 29 January 1986.

Page 56 note 2 Zambia Daily Mail, 4 December 1984, and 7 and 19 June 1985.

Page 56 note 3 These associations include: Catholic Women's League, Young Women's Christian Association, Zambia Alliance for Women, Zambia Association for Research and Development, International Federation of Business and Professional Women and Media, and Women's Development Network. All registered women's groups have to be ‘cleared’ by the League, and nearly all non-governmental groups are formally affiliated.Google Scholar See Keller, Bonnie B., The Integration of Zambian Women in Development (Lusaka, 1984), pp. 12ff. According to her estimate, not more than 100 women are active members in the major women's groups.Google Scholar

Page 57 note 1 Quoted in Zambian Woman, 2, 1985, p. 12.

Page 57 note 2 Times of Zambia, 12 May 1984.

Page 57 note 3 Quoted in Obbo, op. cit. p. 159. The attitude that women politicians are immoral is very blatantly expressed in the following letter to the Zambia Daily Mail, 21 February 1985: ‘Spinsters are to blame.’ The two male authors conclude that the high divorce rate in Zambia is due to the fact that ‘most women are given high posts in the government’, and that they all end up being prostitutes.

Page 57 note 4 Judge Irene Mumba, quoted in an article by Terence Musuku, ‘Is UNIP for Elite Women?’, in Sunday Times of Zambia, 28 July 1985.

Page 58 note 1 Ibid.

Page 58 note 2 Maria Nzomo, ‘Women, Democracy and Development in Africa’, Centre for African Studies Series, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, n.d. pp. 16 ff.

Page 58 note 3 Ibid. pp. 17 ff.

Page 58 note 4 Obbo, op cit. p. 158.

Page 58 note 5 Ibid. p. 16.

Page 58 note 6 Miss Ndhlovu, executive secretary of the Women's League, explains the problem, no doubt fairly accurately: ‘When it comes to promotions they [women] are set against each other, and some are easily flattered that they can do better than the others – even when they know their capabilities are limited. Some women also amazingly believe that if they offer themselves as instruments of pleasure they can be promoted.’ Quoted in Zambian Woman, 2, 1985, p. 3.

Page 58 note 7 Times of Zambia, 1 May 1985.

Page 58 note 8 President Kaunda, quoted in ibid. 22 June 1985.

Page 58 note 9 Ibid.

Page 59 note 1 President Kaunda, quoted in Zambia's Report to the World Conference of UN Decade of Women, pp. 2–3. Some of the members of the Kenyan Government, just to offer one other example, show a similar attitude towards female politicians.Google Scholar A Minister warned his women colleagues ‘to avoid statements and demands that could create problems for them’; The Daily Nation (Nairobi), 1984, quoted in Nzomo, op. cit. p. 20.Google Scholar

Page 59 note 2 Zambia Daily Mail, 29 December 1983.

Page 59 note 3 The new Matrimonial Causes Act is outstanding in two aspects. First of all, maintenance after divorce is granted to the spouse who is in need, irrespective of who filed the divorce. This is significant for women, because a majority of divorces are initiated by those who have either no or a substantially lower income than their husbands. Secondly, in the division of assets after divorce, the indirect contribution to the family wealth of wives is taken into account – i.e. unpaid domestic and agricultural labour. The Herald (Harare), 13–1412 1985.Google Scholar

Page 59 note 4 Times of Zambia, 18 February 1986.Google Scholar

Page 59 note 5 Mrs Kankasa about women at ‘leadership level’, quoted in the Zambia Daily Mail, 11 April 1983.

Page 59 note 6 Women's Rights in Zambia, pp. 23 ff. Mrs Kankasa was unusually firm as reported in the Zambia Daily Mail, 11 April 1983: ‘we want a 50:50 representation this year in Parliament and those men who just wait for tea-breaks should go’.

Page 60 note 1 During 1984–5 four women were members of the Central Committee (compared to 21 men), two were Ministers of State, and two were Members of Parliament. Zambia's Report to the World Conference of UN Decade of Women, p. 6, According to Nzomo, op. cit. p. 16, Zambia has never yet had a woman cabinet minister, a university professor, or a director of a big company.

Page 60 note 2 Schuster, Ilsa, ‘Political Women: the Zambian experience’, in M., Safir, P., Izraeli, J., Bernard, and M., Mednick (eds), Women's Words: the new scholarship (New York, forthcoming).Google Scholar

Page 60 note 3 Roberts, Pepe, ‘Feminism in Africa, Feminism and Africa’, in Review of African Political Economy (Sheffield), 27/28, 1984.Google Scholar

Page 60 note 4 Zimbabwe is an example where such development is currently underway. In January 1986 the formation was proposed of a National Women's Council to act as an umbrella for all non-governmental organisations. Amongst other tasks it should function as a clearing house for all external funds, and ‘to ensure that member organisations’ programmes and actions are in harmony wih government aspirations and ambitions’. What this effectively means was spelt out by Mrs Tenrai Nhongo, Minister of Community Development and Women's Affairs: ‘As a nation which is moving towards a one party state, I must emphasise on the supremacy of the Women's League [of Z.A.N.U. P.F.]… The National Women's Council translates the policy directions provided by the Women's League into action.’ 25 January 1986 at Belvedere Teachers College, Harare, reported in The Sunday Mail, 26 January 1986.

Page 60 note 5 Zambia Daily Mail, 5 January 1984.

Page 61 note 1 Cf. Zambia's Report to the World Conference of UN Decade of Women, and Women's Rights in Zambia.

Page 61 note 2 The following letter by Boyd K. Sakala to the Zambia Daily Mail, 23 November 1984, may be an example of this attitude: ‘We employ women at the expense of men. It is not a fact that men are by nature bread winners? I'm sure we need not be reminded of the women's rightful place because it is a well known fact that her place is in the kitchen so to say’. He suggested that men be placed ‘in all positions held by women’ and that their employment should cease ‘from now onwards’, Even some women support this view – e.g. Mrs Cecilia Mundia, wife of the former Prime Minister. Under the heading ‘Hubby Always Tops’, Zambia Daily Mail, 1 December 1982, reported her as saying that ‘even though a man may be a loafer who depended on his wife's earnings, the dominant rōle of a man should as traditional head of the household be respected’.

Page 61 note 3 According to the 1980 census, only 19.1 per cent of Zmbian women in urban areas were counted as being employed, as compared to 80.9 per cent of males; quoted in Zambia's Report to the World Conference, pp. 38 ff. These data do not account for the work performed by women in the informal sector, including the sale of vegetables. Cf. Raj Bardouille, ‘Men and Women's Work Opportunities in the Urban Informal Sector: the cases of some urban areas in Lusaka’, Manpower Research Report No. 10, Lusaka, 1982.

Page 62 note 1 See Constanantina Safinios-Rothschild, ‘The Policy Implications of the Roles of Women in Agriculture in Zambia’, Lusaka 1985, pp. 16–20.

Page 62 note 2 See Keller, Bonnie B., ‘Marriage and Medicine: women's search for love and luck’, in African Social Research (Lusaka), 26, 1978.Google Scholar

Page 63 note 1 According to the 1980 census, 28 per cent of all Zambian households are considered to be female-headed. The average 33 percentage for rural areas is much higher than the comparable figure of 18 for the urban centres. The number of rural households headed by women is possibly even higher if those are counted where husbands have migrated without any longer supporting their families or where women are not de jure but de facto the decision-making heads. See Safilios-Rothschild, op. cit. p. 5ff. for further details.

Page 63 note 2 See, for example, Alifeyo Chilivumbo and Joyce Kanyangwa, ‘The Case of the SIDA Lima Programme’, University of Zambia, R.D.S.B. Occasional Paper No. 22. In their evaluation of woman's participation in a rural development programme they come to the conclusion that unmarried women, who were also heads of households, were more likely to grow cash-crops for themselves than married women. The participation rate of 20 per cent of female household heads in the credit and extension scheme being studied indicated their potential.

Page 64 note 1 Schuster, op. cit. pp. 115 and 127, concludes from her urban interviews that ‘Some women were deeply afraid of their husbands. They feared loosing them and they feared staying with them.’ But ‘a woman waits till she can no longer bear the abuse’ before she decides to start divorce proceedings.

Page 64 note 2 ‘Married Life Can Be Tough’, in the Zambia Daily Mail, 8 November 1985.

Page 64 note 3 Miriam Mapulanga, loc. cit.

Page 64 note 4 The plight of married ‘progressive’ women was explained by G. Banda in the Zambia Daily Mail, 22 February 1985: the husband cuts the education of his wife short or forbids her to work, accuses her of having affairs with every other man, beats and insults her in public (as well as in private), watches her closely if he rarely takes her to a party, invents dirty stories to discredit her male and female friends, etcetera. After five years of ‘continuous harassment and abject loneliness’, when the wife is ready for mental treatment, he will leave her for a younger woman.

Page 65 note 1 Obbo, op. cit. pp. 160 ff.

Page 65 note 2 See, for instance, Gisela Geisler, Bonnie Keller, and Pia Chuzo, ‘The Needs of Rural Women in Northern Province: analyses and recommendations’, Lusaka, 1985, pp. 47 ff.

Page 65 note 3 Parpart, ‘Class and Gender on the Copperbelt’.