HomeFeatureEach people have their own ways

Each people have their own ways

Published on

EACH people have their own way of being at peace with themselves and their God, Africans  have their own ethos, Europeans theirs. 

On July 23 2018, the European Union (EU) announced it had set up a 20 million euro facility to fight all forms of gender-based abuse and violence in Zimbabwe.

The then EU Ambassador to Zimbabwe Philippe van Damme claimed this ‘had been necessitated by the country’s deeply-entrenched patriarchal and sexist perception.’ (Newsday)

The EU Ambassador is said to have cited the abuse of the ZEC Chairperson, Justice Chigumba  by the MDC-T as a case in point.

On May 9 2019, the EU reiterated the same.

We are particularly concerned by the EU’s disrespect of us as a people, to come to our country and tell us there is a problem in us being patriarchal and to accuse us of being sexist. We are patriarchal by choice not accident and we have not appointed Europeans to preside over who we are or who we should be.

To castigate us as sexist is to verbally abuse us that we are incapable of relating to the female sex in our society with love and respect. 

This is not who we are, but what Europeans choose to denigrate us as, in the same way they have always insisted Africans are barbaric, hence Europe’s so-called civilising mission using arms and in the process robbing our mineral rich countries.

The question is who taught the Europeans to define women in their own society and how to relate to them?

If the answer is they taught themselves, what makes them think we lack the same capacity?

Each people have their own way of being at peace with themselves and with their God. 

It is not a mistake or a misfortune that we are African, we are an integral and legitimate part of the human family, but distinct as Africans, our destiny is African, we are not a race in transition to being European. 

We have sufficient socio-cultural means to order our lives, evolved over centuries which our ancestors have handed over to us and Europeans are not part of this ancestry. 

Ninety years of bondage to the British was never correct and we sacrificed too much to end it to ever countenance another form of slavery.

Europeans are not the custodians of Zimbabwe’s womenfolk. 

They dare accuse us of being sexist? What they did to Sarah Baartman reveals European sexual barbarism of unfathomable proportions. 

It is not us who need lessons on how to treat women humanely, it is the Europeans and the Americans. 

The Europeans, surrogate fathers to Ian Smith, sponsored him as he tore babies out of our wombs, massacred little girls and young women, defenceless girls and women. 

Were they in a stupor to perpetrate such violence against young girls and women? 

We were not in a stupor when we suffered so excruciatingly at their hands, we still remember and so we are alarmed when Europeans masquerade as saviours of our women. 

We are on our own journey to build the greatest Zimbabwe ever, and Europeans do not know how, because they are not Africans, only Africans know how to build an African edifice, and Zimbabwe is an African edifice.

The Motive of the EU offering millions to ‘combat’ ‘gender based violence in our society’ is suspect. 

Suspect because their own province (Europe and North America) is reeling from gender based violence, it is out of control, so one wonders what they think they can teach us, never mind that we did not invite them.

European and American society is fraught with gender related problems, divorce is so common it is hardly possible to meet anyone who does not come from a divorced family. 

In the European region one  in five (EU) women are victims of domestic violence (WHO). One in 10 women in the European Union report having experienced cyber-harassment since the age of 15 (including having received unwanted, offensive sexually explicit emails or SMS messages, or offensive, inappropriate advances on social networking sites (UN Women) and, Gender Based Violence is so rampant in EU countries that they are ‘required to provide appropriate access to shelters for domestic violence victims and emergency support for victims of sexual violence … also to establish an individual assessment mechanism to determine if special measures are required to protect particularly vulnerable victims during criminal proceedings (European Commission).

In the UK, in the year ending March 2018, an estimated 2.0 million adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the last year (1,3 million women, 695 000 men). The percentage of convictions secured for domestic abuse-related prosecutions is at its highest level since the year ending March 2010. In the year ending March 2018, 76 percent of prosecutions resulted in a conviction (Crime Survey for England and Wales: Office for National Statistics 2018).

In the US, sexual assault is normalised in early adolescence, intimate partner violence is experienced by nearly a quarter of all women and accounts for about half of women’s homicides (Sameena Mulla:2018). 

Why then should we listen to Europeans pontificating about gender based violence? 

This notwithstanding, your motive is still suspect.

You wish to give us 20 million Euros to combat gender based violence when you turned down our request for funds to acquire land from British farmers in our land. You would not assist although there was every need for you to make amends after you had committed an atrocity, supporting a terrorist regime in its war of attrition to hold on to the land and wealth it had robbed us at gun point. 

You are ‘concerned’ about gender based violence and yet you were prepared to finance and arm a rogue regime and watch it massacre unarmed children, young boys and girls for the purpose of perpetuating a robbery of a land and its wealth which belonged to an African people, Zimbabwe. 

You were at peace to watch children die of starvation and malnutrition while white farmers held on to multiple farms?

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest articles

FOZEU’s call for strike…an attempt at provoking anarchy

By Elizabeth Sitotombe IN an attempt to sow anarch across the country by calling for...

Chitepo’s fight for land

This story was first published on 21/03/2016 By Patience Rusare LAND ranked highest among the grievances...

Winning mindset in post-elections

WE, in the village, are known for our resilience, we never give up and...

Import of US illegal sanctions

By Jonathan N. Moyo TWENTY-ONE years ago, on March 6 2003, US President George W....

More like this

FOZEU’s call for strike…an attempt at provoking anarchy

By Elizabeth Sitotombe IN an attempt to sow anarch across the country by calling for...

Chitepo’s fight for land

This story was first published on 21/03/2016 By Patience Rusare LAND ranked highest among the grievances...

Winning mindset in post-elections

WE, in the village, are known for our resilience, we never give up and...

Discover more from Celebrating Being Zimbabwean

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading