WOMEN
In the future we will also see movements of working-class women whose energies up to now have been diverted into party strife and punishment of ZAPU supporters in the East and Midlands.
Working-class and peasant women are used by the leadership to enforce the dictatorship of the party over half-hearted party members and supporters of opposition parties. Mugabe encourages a cult of personality among party women (led by his wife) whose ‘uniform’ is his portrait on bright African print cloth.
The majority of working-class women are forced to be active in the party to protect their homes against political vandalism. They attend party meetings but only give nominal support and are visibly less enthusiastic than in the immediate years after independence.
This unstable base of party loyalty has led to movements against local party leaders flaring up among women, especially in opposition to municipal corruption and lack of consultation on increased municipal rents and charges.
They are bound to explode again and again as the limits of capitalist reform are reached, particularly on the housing question. Women have also led the demand for more schools, as in Warren Park (a Harare township), despite police repression of their meetings.
Although there have been changes in law to spell out the formal equality of women, women suffer harshly the result of capitalist crisis. Fewer and fewer women are able to get jobs as domestic servants, let alone factory work. Their attempts to make a living through petty trading are periodically repressed.
It is noticeable that the higher forms at school have proportionately smaller numbers of girls. Working class and peasant girls are made to feel that their education is an expensive luxury. ln the schools they are grossly subservient often kneeling before the teachers.
Even in townships women suffer many of the traditional tribal disadvantages. Because of family poverty, girls are often compelled by their parents to become the second wife of a man with a reasonable wage. The municipal beerhalls (modelled on the South African system) encourage the men to spend their wages on drink, and frequently wives are denied adequate housekeeping money.
All these factors force women into the political background. But an active sense of grievance is growing, particularly among working-class women, which can be explosive. Some of this discontent is also reflected in the rising divorce rate.
There is great potential for struggle among the women for decent housing, jobs, and full emancipation. While these demands are the same as those of the workers the practical methods of linking up the movement of the women with that of the organised workers will have to be taken up by the socialist opposition.