Female photographers shine The photography exhibition in Harare Gardens
The photography exhibition in Harare Gardens

The photography exhibition in Harare Gardens

Stephen Garan’anga Visual Art

Once again Zimbabwe Association of Female Photographers has taken to the glory of green, the Harare Gardens, to showcase their created posters of various social issues in the country.

Ten female photographers of different race and creed tackled the project with each choosing one of five issues which included child rights, women’s rights, environmental rights and equality and non-discrimination.

The ZAFP used their photographers’ images to create posters with captions and some with very disturbing cases of violation that were distributed to various stakeholders for use in their daily defence of the rights.

Most of extreme violation cases concerned the child and women’s rights.

One poster with Davina Jogi’s image had a statement that is deliberately written with grammatical errors to show that the victim could not continue with her education because of her situation.

It read, “I was married at 13, he used to bit me up evaryday. I feel heartbroken because he played with my life and left’’.

This was a story of a 15-year-old with her one-year-old son at a single-room home shared with her parents and siblings.

The country’s legal age of consent currently is 16 years, but our new Constitution stipulates that those who are under the age of 18 years are not capable of founding a family.

This creates ambiguity about the exact position of the law. The reality is that child marriage brings untold suffering to the girl child and is abuse, but most of these cases go unreported.

Statistics show that four percent of girls in Zimbabwe are married before the age of 15 and 30 percent by the age of 18.

The other highlighted issue is on the increase of child labour with posters in bold red over a huge greyscale child portrait stating “Child Labour Does not Pay”.

One faded background poster image has a man swinging his clenched fist, appearing to be battering his female partner. In bold capital letters it reads, “90 percent of Zimbabwean women have been victims of intimate partner violence that includes spouse rape”.

On a related issue another one with a woman wears spectacles with her mouth tapped in blue states that: “37 percent of victims who experience physical or sexual violence seek help”.

Again on the same issue of violence against women another poster portrays a supposed male and her female partner seated side by side in harmony with a message: “47 percent of men in Zimbabwe admit to having committed some gender-based violence”.

Some other issues on the show include the plight of disabled Zimbabweans. One poster by KB Mpofu has in black and white an image of a single-handed native Zimbabwean woman seated comfortably upright in semi-profile on a wheeled office chair behind a desk in an office working space.

Her arm half stretches lain on the desk holding a pen towards a plasma monitor. In bold capital letters the message on it reads: “Disability refers to the gap between what a person can do and what the environment demands” then in smaller and lighter capitals reads, “At some time in our lives, we are all disabled”.

Another KB Mpofu image has a wheelchair-ridden young boy from a distance behind travelling on a concrete pavement towards an open gate of a home.

The black and white poster carries the message that “the world isn’t built with a ramp”, a quote from Walter Balevich, a disabled adventurer who travels in a blue chair.

Zimbabwe’s Constitution mandates that the State has a duty to assist disabled people in allowing them to reach their full potential.

Due to lack of resources and cultural stigma, the care of disabled people to a great extent, continues to be left in the hands of charitable organisations.

On an environmental degradation note, a colour image by Angela Jimu has a muscular topless middle aged man with his red shirt on his left shoulder holding a shovel running along to the left on the edge of a high green marsh fleeing from an oncoming Environmental Management Agency vehicle.

He is an illegal sand miner at Caledonia Farm who says: “We know what we are doing is illegal and that it damages the environment, but we are determined to continue, we can earn money to feed our families.”

These sand miners have left numerous hazardous conditions in the environment as they pockmark the land, leave electrical pylons and other infrastructure falling.

Other participants of the exhibition include K Mukwazhi, M Meadows and H Hakulandaba.

The Zimbabwe Association of Female Photographers was formed after identifying the need for a local network of professional photographers.

They provide information and training for women and their vision is to contribute to the professional development of the country’s photographic industry by producing a legacy of highly qualified and competitive female photographers.

The exhibition came about after an eight-month project initiated and sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Embassy through HIVOS.

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