Female bodies, agency, real and symbolic violence during the coronavirus pandemic: The experiences of women politicians and activists in Zimbabwe

Mangena, Tendai

doi:10.1080/10130950.2021.1996773

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Those women who dare to leave the confines of their ascribed docile positions to disrupt male political hegemony incur the wrath and violent pushback of state and non-state actors, which includes physical torture, arbitrary arrests, and public humiliation through defamation of character. It is a common trend to have such women labelled as whores, or witches, or gold diggers who are in politics to enrich themselves (Mangena 2021, Ncube 2020, Zigomo, 2022. The physical and online verbal violence and harassment targeted at women politicians aims at enforcing subservience to the patriarchal dominance of political power (Siziba, Mpofu, and Ndlovu 2021).…”

Section: Thokozani Khupe's Contested Political Identity and Mdc-t Str...mentioning

confidence: 99%

#BeatThePot: Strategies and Discourses of Women’s Protests in Zimbabwe

Chipuriro

2024

atlantis

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<p>This paper focuses on strategies deployed by women and discourses of women’s collective action in the #BeatThePot strike which took place alongside popular protests against Mugabe and the failures of ZANU-PF led government in Zimbabwe. Using Judith Butler’s ideas on “bodies in alliance and the politics of the street,” I theorize how women as gendered “bodies congregate, move, speak and strike together as they claim public space into political spaces” (2015, 70). I interrogate women’s use of embodiment as a strategy involving the metaphor of both the “labouring mothering body” and as “bodies that strike,” which demonstrates how women in Zimbabwe confronted violent political, economic, and socio-cultural limits imposed on their bodies. In this strike, women challenged the silencing of women’s public political work and refused to be relegated to the invisible margins of domesticized and undervalued reproductive labour. Thus, through the #BeatThePot protest, I demonstrate how women in Zimbabwe have engaged in body work to a confront violent regime and how they have borne on their bodies violent reprisal through sexual attacks, abductions, incarcerations, torture, and even loss of life. The paper concludes that the feminized body is a site of violent struggle for autonomy and that through collective action women in Zimbabwe have sought to confront and transform the repressive state.</p>

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Section: Thokozani Khupe's Contested Political Identity and Mdc-t Str...mentioning

confidence: 99%

#BeatThePot: Strategies and Discourses of Women’s Protests in Zimbabwe

Chipuriro

2024

atlantis

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“…It then boggles the mind why only these three were arrested, later abducted and sexually assaulted. Mangena (2021) analyses the arrest, abduction and sexual assault of these three young women by the state. She notes how the demonstration itself shows the young women's political agency.…”

Section: The MDC Trio: the Abduction Fakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Throughout their incarceration, the MDC Trio, have gone through various forms of violence including verbal violence (see Mangena, 2021). Mangena (2021:94) argues that this is meant to confine young women in the private space of the home so that they do not become troublesome in the political space.…”

Section: The MDC Trio: the Abduction Fakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The masculinised state wants to remove them from a space which it deems 'masculine'. Scholarship on gender and COVID-19 have noted how the pandemic has been weaponised by the state leading to shrinking democratic space especially for women (see Mangena, 2021;Mohee, 2021;Manyonganise, 2022). The sexual and physical abuse of young women in politics point to the way their bodies become sites of struggle for women's exclusion from politics.…”

Section: The MDC Trio: the Abduction Fakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Daring Patriarchy? A Biblical Engagement with Gender Discourses on Political Participation in Post-colonial Zimbabwe

Manyonganise¹

2023

Bible in Africa Studies

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This volume (coming out from a Humboldt Research-Fellowship) critically engages with gender discourses on political participation in Zimbabwe, focusing on how the Bible has been used to deny women political offices in the land. The study’s reference to political office needs to be understood broadly, that is, to include women participating in decision-making in their homes, religious institutions, local government, political parties to mention but a few. Dominant religio-cultural discourses on political participation have deployed biblical texts in ways that have shaped Zimbabwe’s political terrain to be gendered space. The study uses gender as a category of analyzing political participation in Zimbabwe. The study argues that the challenges women face in their endeavor to participate fully in politics in Zimbabwe are not only embedded in culture, but have also been reinforced by the way biblical interpretation pertaining to women’s public roles has been done. It is against this background that this volume seeks to examine the utilisation of the Bible by church leaders who find support from male politicians in a bid to safeguard the space from women perceived as ‘dangerous’. In other words, the study endeavours to examine how the Bible has been deployed to control gender discourses on political participation in Zimbabwe. To a large extent, this study shows the centrality as well as the influence of the Bible in shaping gender relations, even in those areas that have to a large extent been perceived as non-religious. This volume, therefore, seeks to open up more political space for women by examining how the everyday is suffused with politics, that is, politics as affecting interactions between individuals and groups thereby facilitating women’s participation in politics at all levels. It is envisioned that such a study would contribute greatly to social transformation. Molly Manyonganise holds a PhD in Biblical and Religious Studies from the University of Pretoria. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at the Zimbabwe Open University. She is a research associate of the Department of Religion Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion of the University of Pretoria. 2020-2023 she was a Georg Forster Postdoctoral research fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. Her research interests comprise religion and politics, gender and religion, religion and sexuality, African Indigenous Religion(s) as well as African Christianity.

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Framing notes – COVID-19: The intimacies of pandemics

Mupotsa

Motimele

2021

Agenda

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Female bodies, agency, real and symbolic violence during the coronavirus pandemic: The experiences of women politicians and activists in Zimbabwe

Cited by 6 publications

References 25 publications

#BeatThePot: Strategies and Discourses of Women’s Protests in Zimbabwe

#BeatThePot: Strategies and Discourses of Women’s Protests in Zimbabwe

Daring Patriarchy? A Biblical Engagement with Gender Discourses on Political Participation in Post-colonial Zimbabwe

Framing notes – COVID-19: The intimacies of pandemics

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