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Talent Chimutambgi Herald Reporter

The Government has made significant strides in addressing gender disparities that were disproportionately relegating women during  colonial rule.

In an interview to mark independence celebrations, Defence Minister and the ruling Zanu PF party National Chairman, Cde Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, said their demands, as women who participated in the liberation struggle, began from the convening of a high-level discourse at Shai Shai aimed at giving women voices.

The celebrations that will be held in Murambinda are running under the theme: “Zim@44: Unity, Peace and Development towards Vision 2030”. The choice of Murambinda to host this year’s celebration aligns with President Mnangagwa’s devolution thrust and the mantra of leaving no place and no one behind, as part of decentralising development to all communities.

Buhera has a rich liberation struggle history and has been accorded an opportunity to host the 44th anniversary as it houses Dzapasi Assembly Point, which was a major assembly point for the liberation war fighters.

Cde Muchinguri said the formation of a ministry responsible for Women’s Affairs and the promulgation of legislation to support them were giant steps towards addressing gender disparities. She said women were going through a myriad of challenges, which deprived them of their capabilities, adding that the Second Republic under President Mnangagwa was upholding and doing more to support women.

“I want to thank the leadership then, including His Excellency the current President, who came up with a vision that women should come together with those that were outside Mozambique, especially in Zambia or any other country, to come together at a conference in Shai Shai, where the discussions were held concerning the challenges they faced then during the colonial era.

“They were treated as children, they were not allowed to own any property or to inherit,” said Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri.

“We were not exposed to education, we had only 25 percent of literate women. We came up with a strong recommendation that upon the attainment of independence, it was necessary to have our own ministry of women’s affairs, come with a piece of legislation that will address those issues, including women empowerment, and I want to point to one of the legislations, which is the legal age of majority, which liberated us as women because upon the attainment of age of 18 then you became a major.”

Cde Muchinguri urged women to defy their age, adding that she joined the liberation struggle at a tender age. She chronicled the bitter situations associated with the liberation war, chief among them the inhuman massacre at Nyadzonia that the Rhodesian army perpetrated using information supplied by an instructor named Nyathi, who betrayed fellow comrades and rejoined the colonial army.

She said 5 000 cadres perished at the hands of the Rhodesian soldiers.

“I joined the liberation struggle at a tender age of 16. It gives me bitter memories and this year I will be 66 years old. It was not all rosy and many lives were lost. Our gallant sons and daughters of Zimbabwe paid the supreme sacrifice to liberate our country, lest we forget. The independence that we are celebrating means a lot to some of us and the general populace of Zimbabweans,” said Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri.

“The 44th year anniversary that we are celebrating highlights a long journey that comes through the selflessness of the Zimbabweans,” she said.

“I was at Nyadzonia five days before the attack and ended up at Chimoio when I learnt that my colleagues had died, 5 000 of them as a result of Nyathi,” said Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri.

“He was one of our commanders whom we respected, not all of us were committed to the struggle and he took advantage of being deployed at the front and using that opportunity to rejoin the Rhodesian Forces, and we lost a lot of our cadres.

“The other experience was at Chimoio. We had just been trained, I had undergone some training on Marxism and Leninism to understand and grasp the brutality and evil of the regime that we were fighting, and we became more determined,” she added.

Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri said she suffered the horrors of the colonial regime, which she decided to challenge by joining the struggle, carrying out secretarial duties of keeping critical documents.

“It was very sad that I was one of the commanders at the Headquarters and the fact that I was a woman doing secretarial work, responsible for safekeeping the vital secret documents which would prove our history, and it was very critical to maintain those documents. It was not easy given that it was a war situation,” she said.

She said President Mnangagwa was walking his talk through the decentralisation of national events to encompass all provinces in respect of their participation in the struggle for independence.

“Now in the Second Republic, His Excellency President Mnangagwa states, in his vision, that he is not going to leave any individual or community behind for that matter. We really want to appreciate, as you know our motto as Zanu PF rests on unity, peace and development.

“This phenomenon is meant to appreciate the supreme sacrifice that every province and individual paid during the struggle and that alone unites us,” said Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri.

She highlighted that at least 35 000 villages were targeted under the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), leading to the attainment of an upper-middle income economy by 2030.

“We want to thank the President because people now relate to the past and they now know where we are going as a country. The President is saying Vision 2030, we must have a middle-income economy without leaving anyone behind. We can see under NDS1 that programmes are focusing on every village of Zimbabwe, with at least 35 000 villages targeted to have a borehole and a village company, which everyone quite appreciates,” said Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri.

She outlined the mandate of her ministry and the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, indicating that they were targeting various projects as part of resource mobilisation for the military.

“Our mandate as the Zimbabwe Defence Forces is very clear, it is to defend our territorial integrity, our independence, the people of Zimbabwe and the resources. The other mandate is to ensure that we also participate under civilian authority in all walks of life. We do have threats in the country, among them climate change, where we are subjected to floods and cyclones.

“When there is no war we participate in construction and infrastructure development. We are also moving like other countries where all the cities, railways and road networks were built by the army,” she said.

“We are in the process of coming up with our own construction company so that we can participate. We participate in the economy. We have also signed an MoU with Egypt because they are leading in fisheries and we will soon be rolling out. We want to mobilise enough resources for defence,” said Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri.