Bulawayo - United States President Barack Obama honoured a group of women on Monday who have confronted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and said they had defied a dictator.
"They often don't get far before being confronted by President Mugabe's riot police," Obama said at a ceremony for Magodonga Mahlangu and the organisation she helps lead - Woza, the acronym of Women of Zimbabwe Arise. In the local Ndebele vernacular language, Woza means come forward.
"By her example, Magodonga has shown the women of Woza nd the people of Zimbabwe that they can undermine their oppressors' power with their own power - that they can sap a dictator's strength with their own," he said, presenting the annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
With a countrywide membership of over 70,000 women and men, WOZA which was formed in 2003 as a women’s civic movement aimed at providing women, from all walks of life, with a united voice to speak out on issues affecting their day-to-day lives; empowering female leadership that will lead community involvement in pressing for solutions to the current crisis; encouraging women to stand up for their rights and freedoms; lobbying and advocating on those issues affecting women and their families.
Woza's nonviolence principles are premised on the believe that the power of love can conquer the love of power.In that respect WOZA has conducted hundreds of protests since 2003 and over 3,000 women and men have spent time in police custody, many more than once and most for 48 hours or more. Woza says as the frontline human rights defenders, they are willing to suffer beatings and unbearable conditions in prison cells to exercise their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms.
WOZA was formed to be a litmus test ‘Tough Love’ is our secret weapon of mass mobilisation. ‘Tough Love’ is the disciplining love of a parent; women practice it to press for and to bring dignity back to Zimbabweans. Tough Love is a ‘people power’ tool that any community can use to press for better governance and social justice, especially for Zimbabweans. Political leaders in Zimbabwe need some discipline; who better to dish it out than mothers!
The United States wants Mugabe to halt political arrests and media censorship and to honour a power-sharing agreement signed in September 2008 with his political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mugabe is a pariah in the West, blamed by critics for plunging his southern African country into poverty through his authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement. He has led Zimbabwe since the country's independence from Britain in 1980.
Mugabe has often blamed Western foes for ruining his country via sanctions, which he says are in retaliation for the seizing of white-owned farms on behalf of landless blacks. Critics say the policy is used as a tool to intimidate political opponents and to give land to Mugabe's Zanu-PF party loyalists.
After long negotiations, Zanu-PF formed a unity government in February with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by Tsvangirai, who is now Zimbabwe's prime minister.
- Reuters and Simba Nembaware
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