F. The Zimbabwe Republic Police Women Network: From Theoretical
Exhortations to Practical Measures (Lesson #2627)
Observation.
In ever-changing values of gender justice and altering contexts of state decay and economic decline, the
Zimbabwe Republic Police Women Network (ZRP WN) has been able to shift police preoccupation from
“what is routinely important” to “what works” in an effort to tackle Sexual and Gender Based Violence
(SGBV) enforced by patriarchal customs. The key insight is that patriarchy is the problem, and
that change in gender justice can best be achieved by practical measures and not by theoretical
exhortation, and evidently, police women are making a difference by showing that their reformist
plans, including both carrot and stick, are of practical use.
Discussion.
The ZRP WN is discharging its duties in extraordinary circumstances where one out of three women lives
with Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Zimbabwe. This equals about 30% of 7.4 million
women out of 14 million Zimbabweans. Research findings further show that 47% of married women have
"experienced either physical or sexual violence at some point in their life, 1 in 3 girls experience sexual
violence before they turn 18 and a majority of these girls are adolescents aged between 14 and 17 years;
and less than 3% of these girls received professional help" (Mushonga, 2015). It is also amply documented
by the UN Women Zimbabwe (2015), that “Zimbabwe has one of the highest rates of child marriage in
the world with up to 50 percent of young girls under the age of consent in rural areas.”
The SGBV has been happening in a context of poverty, state decay, precipitous economic decline, and
illiteracy which all combine to trap rural women into a social identity of victimhood and marginalization.
This is attributed by patriarchal practices of power which objectify women, as sadly evidenced by upsurges
in child marriages and rape cases. More importantly, issues of cultural customs that govern the behavioural
pattern of social organisations make it extremely difficult to tell which practice is criminal or is not. In
Zimbabwe, the ZRP WN has been confronted by three complex but culturally and economically embedded
patriarchal forces which perpetuate violence against women. These include (1) Patrilocal Residence: The
Zimbabwean culture compels women, upon marriage, to settle in the husband's home, village or tribe. (2)
Patriarchal Household: Here, the husband is the supreme authority, and most importantly, the children,
earnings, buildings and land belong to the husband and his clan. Also, (3) Patrilineal Inheritance: After
the death of the husband, preference is given to the son to succeed – neither the wife nor daughter can.
Not only have all these conspired to limit potential spaces for rural women to assume primary decision-
making roles in controlling and managing earnings, owning land, buildings, or machinery, such entitlements
have given sufficient legroom for men to criminalise and objectify women as exemplified by increasing
incidences of sexual harassment, murder, brutal torture, and crimes of passion. However, there is tension
on how crime is understood differently between the police members and the conservative patriarchs. While
ZRP WN conceives some patriarchal practices as public order offences, patriarchs view them as mere
social problems which require societal resolve. As such the common behavioural pattern of rural women
who experience violence is that they rarely seek help from alternative formal institutions such as the police
for legal recourse; instead, they turn to the same patriarchal family and tribal mechanisms for assistance.
This clearly goes around in a circle.
Despite the pervasiveness of SGBV against rural women, the Zimbabwe Republic Police barely came up
with robust preventive measures to tackle this historical oppression as a source of crime until the advent
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