Algerian women's movement. H OW has the population reacted to the war? Samira Fellah: The war has shocked Algerian society. In the days just before the ultimatum, noone could sleep. People listened to the news until four or five in the morning. The whole country was on edge. After the war began, there were spontaneous demonstrations, especially of young people — the unemployed and school students. In Constantine for example it was school students who started the first mobilization, which was joined by unemployed youth who went to the city's French consulate and cultural centre. Subsequently, rather more organized demonstrations took place.
But almost every day marches would form spontaneously — for example at the end of the school day - in support of the Iraqi people. The youth carried portraits of Saddam Hussein as a symbol of Arab resistance to the United States.
At the start the feeling on these demonstrations was strongly anti-American and anti-Western. But the movement slowly became politicized and more obviously anti-imperialist positions came out. The issue of oil as the instrument of Western domination in the region recurred in every conversation.
From the very first the antiwar movement was divided into two camps: that of the democratic parties on the one hand and that of the fundamentalists on the other. The former called for demonstrations early on the morning of Friday, January 18, immediately after the outbreak of the war. The fundamentalists, for their part, called a protest for that afternoon, after Friday prayers.
Until the war began, they had been very vague about Iraq, and avoided taking any position either on Saddam Hussein or on Saudi Arabia. There was a good reason - the Saudis are their main source of funds. The participation of that country in the Western camp was a big problem for them at that stage, and it was the pressure of popular feeling, above all from the youth, that compelled them to take clear positions.
Today, the FIS is publicly taking its disthe reward, appearing as the most radical opponents of the government. • Has the women's movement adopted any position?
Nawal Zien: Some women have been on the big demonstrations - but they have been in the minority. At Setif, however, there was about equal participation by women on a demonstration of high school students. There are also women in the Committees in Support of the Iraqi People. This is true in Algiers. Within the women's movement we uphold the position that women must take part in all political struggles.
SF: We believe that women who are fighting for their rights as citizens in Algeria are strongly implicated in a political problem of this size. We say that the dignity of women is connected to the dignity of peoples, in this case the Iraqi people. We know what happens to women in wars, what their living conditions are and what they have to do. Iraqi women today need our support as women.
But some of the movement's militants, above all the intellectuals, were very reticent at the start, owing to the situation of women in Iraq. In particular there is the law adopted there in March 1990, which 5 permits any man to kill a women accused
ALGERIA of adultery. This issue created a backlash in the movement in support of the Iraqi people.
NZ: In the Association for Woman's Emancipation, there was a debate around slogans. Some women wanted only to call for peace. But for us and for others that was insufficient. It was necessary to address the issue of what kind of peace and to whose profit? we finally reached a consensus in favour of denouncing the imperialist aggression against Iraq.
In Algiers, the Mujahidates (former women fighters in the national liberation struggle) took the initiative in calling a women's march. Other women's groups supported their appeal. This demonstration, on January 24, brought out some 6,000 women. This was an important event, given that a few days before, the fundamentalist women only brought out a few hundred.
The January 24 was the first by women that won the sympathy of the youth. On previous occasions, such as March 8, we had been aware of considerable hostility towards us. However, this time there was a certain complicity. • Has the antiwar mobilization led to the formation of a coordination of women's associations for common actions? What is planned for March 8 this year?
NZ: There is already a national coordination. It is this that made the preparations for January 24. This year on March 8 a national women's meeting is planned for the morning, a march in the afternoon and a meeting no doubt in the evening. This will be a very important day, since the fundamentalists have called for changing the date of international women's day, and they will without doubt try to prevent our demonstrations. We are still discussing the main theme. Very probably it will be the slogan of solidarity between all Arab women against the war. • Have you any information on the situation of women in other countries involved in the war — Saudi Arabia for example?
SF: The only information that we have is the demonstration by Saudi women against the ban on them driving. It seems that it was the arrival of women refugees from Kuwait that provoked this reaction. These two countries are both under the sharia — Islamic law — and Saudi women were able for the first time to discover that this law is not everywhere the same. In Kuwait women can drive, but not in Saudi Arabia.
All of those who demonstrated are now threatened with stoning, some of them have lost their jobs, and the husband of one, who supported the women, has also lost his job. These women sent us a letter appealing desperately for our support. 6 Arabian em bassisag They want messages sent to the Saudi
• Do you think that the relative sympathy for the women's action against the war signals a change in the way that the women's movement is perceived?
SF: There will be some impact, but I do not think that the perception of the organized movement among Algerian society will be fundamentally changed. In particular the movement's leadership is perceived as being pro-Western. • How have women reacted to the rise of the FIS, and what have the Islamic municipal councillors done?
NZ: After the June 12, 1990, elections, many women were gripped with fear and demoralization. Even among the activists a certain resignation was apparent. But fear also spurred some to act. A short time after, for example, our association organized a gala in Algiers, which drew about 700 women. This is less than would have turned out previously, but everyone there wanted to join up and do something.
SF: The middle class women, including the militants, were shattered by the FIS' victory. They talked of "Iranization" The meeting of the coordination of associations at the end of June was a real psychodrama. There was an air of generalized panic. The debate and the discussion reinstilled some calm and a more realistic appreciation of the balance of forces.
It needs to be understood that not all Algerian women have the same appreciation of the fundamentalist danger. Among the intellectuals and the middle class, who fear the threat to their right to work and study, to mix with men, to do sport, the rise of fundamentalism is experienced in a dramatic fashion.
For women in the home however, there is a much less strong perception of the danger. The fundamentalists promise housing for all, and equal sharing of water — in many towns, water distribution is quite uncertain - perhaps once every two weeks.
They also promise wages for women who stay at home. Many women see benefits in such ideas. For the first time there is a party which is showing an interest in their living conditions. Women who do not go out of the home and who are economically dependent on their husbands will respond to an organization that offers to restore their dignity in the framework of Islam. The idea of a wage for housework is a recognition of their existence.
International Viewpoint #202 • March 18, 1991
In Algeria, where the labour saving devices and comfort of the West do not exist, domestic tasks are much more of a burden.
Of course, in the municipalities which they control, the FIS have not lived up to their promises. The problems of water, housing, youth unemployment have not even begun to be resolved, and inequalities remain untouched. Many of those who voted for the FIS are now very disappointed. But this disappointment will not necessarily come through in the voting. • The fundamentalists have also to some extent benefited from the way in which the elections were conducted, which favoured electoral fraud. SF: There certainly was electoral fraud from which the FIS benefited. But it is the law devised by the ruling FLN which allowed the abuses. It gives each elector the right to vote on behalf of three other people. Besides, on the eve of the elections, the Interior Minister stated on the television that there would be no identity checks at the voting booths. Thus there were no effective controls: sometimes dead people voted, or people who no longer lived in that particular place. These frauds were denounced. But I do not believe that the results would have been any different without the fraud. After the elections, the women's associations decided to launch a joint campaign against the electoral law and against the proxy voting. Before the local elections, it was only women who raised this problem.
After these elections many of the democratic parties expressed their support for us, thus giving our campaign a bigger resonance. The FLN announced that the electoral law would be changed. Women won the right to take part in the commission dealing with revision of the electoral law. However, since then the discussion has been constantly postponed, and the electoral law has in fact remained undiscussed.
The women's associations have drawn up a text which is to be the basis for negotiations with the government. The latter has come out in favour of the suppression of the proxy laws. The idea of allowing only one per person, and only in exceptional conditions, has been accepted. The government has accepted our slogan: "one man, one woman, one vote." Or rather: "One presence, one voting slip, one vote."
But for us there is another point in the law that needs to be debated. Today, a
husband has the right to vote on his wife's behalf simply by presenting his family record book. This is an extremely insidious law; no reference is made to "husband", , only to "spouse" . But in the Algerian social reality, and when voting in elections, given the single party system, has never counted for much, it is above all men who go to vote. Why should women bother?
We have two objectives. Firstly the revision of the electoral law on the basis of the amendments that we have proposed, on the other a campaign for an effective vote for women, notably during the forthcoming legislative elections (the date of which is yet to be set). It is necessary to explain to women that all the difficulties of their daily life, their health problems, the problems of their children, problems of getting necessities and so on, depend on the policies decided by the National People's Assembly. Thus it is important for them to take part in the elections themselves. We are trying to show the connection between daily lived experience and legislative elections. I believe that our campaign has had an impact and has to an extent shaken the fundamentalists.
NZ: We are not calling for a vote for this or that party, but we are calling on women to take responsibility, to feel themselves concerned and to use their own conscience to choose the programmes which best represent their interests. At the same time, as feminists, we fight against the fundamentalist programme, but that is another campaign. • Have you noticed any difference in the attitude of younger women towards the elections and the FIS?
SF: Young women seem more interested in the elections, but it is also true that they are the ones who are being recruited by the fundamentalists.
There is a serious effort underway to build a fundamentalist women's organization. Another fundamentalist organization, directly linked to the interational movement of the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to bring women together on such issues as the right to work, the right to education and the right to go out. But all this is to take place in the framework of the Sharia!
At the same time the Islamic labour union formed in July is calling on women to become unionized and struggle for the recognition of their specificity as women, always in the framework of Islamic law.
NZ: Fifteen years ago, any woman who wore a headscarf in the street would have been looked at askance. Today the opposite is true. In Arabic, an unveiled woman is translated as a "naked woman". Even . Even so the vision presented by the Western media is often false. Despite the rise of fundamentalism, there are many women in the street; some are even found leading strikes. *
ALGERIA / ZIMBABWE Women's oppression in Zimbabwe IT is now 11 years since independence came to Zimbabwe following a bitter liberation struggle in which women played no small role. Besides joining the ranks of the guerillas in the latter years of the war, young women and girls also acted as chimbwidos (messengers and look-outs). But it was the women in the villages who played the most vital role in sustaining a protracted and very bitter conflict. It was they, the "mothers", who, at great personal risk, grew extra crops, cooked, fed, sheltered, smuggled food and guns and hid ammunition for "the boys" (as the guerillas were called, regardless of sex).
Their story is largely unsung, and today their situation, while it has improved since the dark days of colonialism, still leaves much to be desired. SOPHIE HAWES A NY analysis of the situation of women in Zimbabwe must begin with a reference back to the terrible legacy of colonialism and the penetration of capitalism. In typical deeply racist and sexist style, successive white settler regimes had treated black women as "perpetual minors". . Not only did they not have the vote (along with their menfolk) but their status was further demeaned by "Customary Law" which put a woman under the jurisdiction of a man (her father, husband or son) for the whole of her life.
Thus all important social and economic relationships for women were mediated through men; marriage, divorce, custody of children, access to land, ownership of property, even place of abode. "Custo mary Law" was a perversion and distortion of prevailing cultural tradition and was specifically designed to facilitate the development of racial capitalism in the country. Settlers demanded cheap male labour to work in the mines and on the farms and later in the emerging manufacturing sector (poll taxes were imposed to force erstwhile subsistence farmers to seek cash earning opportunities). Female labour was not required, except for domestic work in the latter period of colonial rule.
The migrant labour system and super-exploitation of black male labour which was the cornerstone of the booming Rhodesian economy in the 1950s and 1960s specifically excluded the costs of a social wage. Migrant labourers were housed in single sex hostels and compounds and were paid a pittance. There were no facilities for wives or children. Men would be allowed "home" once a year (farms were a slightly different case where cheap female and child labour was required for peak season casual work like weeding or picking cotton, and where the families of farmworkers would eke out their meagre wages by growing a small plot of maize and vegetables. But living conditions were still appalling).
In all cases, the end result was often the same. A married woman was forced to stay in the countryside with the children, in the village of her husband (where he had traditional land use rights), growing crops (which she was not allowed to sell) and with little access to agricultural advisors (who were all men). She was largely prevented from visiting her husband because of lack of cash for bus fares as
7 March 18, 1991 • #202 International Viewpoint
ZIMBABWE well as the notorious "vagrancy" laws which prevented people without jobs — mainly women - from entering towns, or staying longer than two days.
The other side of the coin for the men was that traditions of male responsibility for families and men's roles in the extended family broke down. This fragmentation also encouraged prostitution, promiscuity
(with a sharp increase in sexually transmitted diseases) and dual families (with the rural family often being forgotten and abandoned over time).
At the same time, the countryside itself was changing. The traditional farming, grazing and hunting areas of Zimbabwe, which had been used for centuries by the various peoples of the fertile central plateau, were systematically expropriated by settler farmers especially during the
1930s, 40s and 50s. The country was divided into "commercial farming areas"
(where bourgeois laws of property ownership applied - to whites only) and "native reserves" (where "customary law"
was meted out by hated white District
Commissioners backed up by a stooge police force).
These "reserves" were the preserve of women, children and old people. Traditional shifting systems of agriculture and the seasonal pasturing of large cattle herds were impossible. The result was accelerated land degradation, poor yields and frequent crop failure leading to increasing mass impoverishment.
Women seek gains from independence
All of this fuelled support for the liberation struggle. And it was women in particular who saw that they had most to gain by breaking the multiple bonds of their oppression. But having succeeded in getting rid of the illegal, racist state of Rhodesia, the situation today is that the government of Robert Mugabe (with the parties of ZANU and ZAPU united) has shown itself politically unwilling to tackle the fundamental causes of poverty and inequality. Not only that, but the patterns of social fragmentation and degradation, patriarchal oppression and gender subordination are still deeply imprinted in the social fabric today.
The coming of independence saw at least some of women's grievances addressed. Besides all the important gains which accrued to both women and men from the new constitution which prohibited discrimination on the basis of color and creed, a series of laws relating specifically to women have been passed. The most important of these was the 1982 "Legal Age of Majority Act". This provided for formal equality between men and women at the age of 18, enabling women to own property, contract a marriage without anybody's consent, become guardians of their 8 own children and sue and be sued as individuals.
This law coupled with the Customary
Law and Primary Courts Act, the Matrimonial Causes Act and other legislation like the Labour Relations Act bestowed basic bourgeois democratic rights on women.
In a country like Zimbabwe, such reforms are fundamentally important for women and should not be underestimated.
Although judging from the bitter and often vitriolic contestation which continues over each bit of legislation concerning women both before and after entry onto the statute books, most men consider that this is taking the meaning of the liberation struggle too far!
For example, the outcry from the "traditionalist" lobby at the passing of the Legal
Age of Majority Act predicted that families would fall apart, women would immediately indulge in an orgy of unbridled promiscuity and children would be abandoned if the act were passed.
Interestingly, the core of the issue (who controls women, their bodies and their sexuality) was revealed in the first major test case to which the law was applied,
"Katekwe vs. Muchabaiwa". This concerned a young woman (aged 20) who had a willing sexual relationship with her boyfriend who subsequently left her. Her father (using widely upheld traditional practice) wished to sue the boyfriend for "seduction damages" (meaning that because his daughter was no longer a virgin, she would be worth much less on the marriage market in terms of the payment of lobola or bridewealth, which would accrue to him).
Under Customary Law, the father's claim would have no doubt been upheld, and indeed, this was how the law was applied in the lower courts in this case too. Eventually, the boyfriend's appeal against the judgement of the lower courts reached the appeal court and the judgement was handled by the Chief Justice, Judge Dumbutshena who applied the new law. He ruled that the woman's father could not sue for damages, but that the woman could sue for damages in her own right if she chose since she had now reached the legal age of majority. She never took the opportunity.
This simple judgement threw the whole issue of women's oppression into stark relief, revealing, uncomfortably, that women's oppression did not start with the coming of the settlers, but has long roots reaching into the very heart of African "traditional" (patriarchal) culture and values. To its credit, despite the male backlash, the Mugabe government has so far resisted the repeal of this fundamental reform or others which establish minimum civil rights for women.
But despite certain advances, at the level of legal reforms, the problems of socioeconomic development in Zimbabwe have remained unresolved. Despite some limited new investment in agriculture, mining and manufacturing, this has tend-
International Viewpoint #202 • March 18, 1991 ed to be capital rather than labour intensive. Looked at overall, and taking into account population growth, the economy has not grown in any substantial way since independence, although the government sector has tripled in size and is grinding to a standstill under the burgeoning bureaucracy. The result is that there has not been any substantial increase in formal employment opportunities for the majority of the population since independence, which means women's prospects for formal employment are almost nil (in
1985, women's employment made up only 12% of the total, a decline from 14% in 1981).
The change that has come about is that in the few jobs available for women (most in the public sector where previously these had been done by white women (in
1981, white women comprised 54% of the female workforce, black women 46%), these roles have now been reversed with black women comprising 83% of the female workforce in 1985.
Eking out a living from the soil
In the countryside the "mothers" of the liberation struggle still struggle to eke out a living from a small plot of land. There have been some concessions as women can now get access to agricultural advice, small loans and marketing channels in their own right. There has also been a degree of price incentives for key crops like maize and cotton, almost 50% of which are grown by small producers (who, unlike the large scale commercial farmers, are still prepared to engage in the production of these labour intensive crops).
But at the macro level, the government has a poor record of development policy for small producers or cooperatives. Despite the fact that almost two thirds of the whites (200,000) left Zimbabwe in the years following independence, they are still very much in control of the economy. For example, in the agricultural sector, commercial farmers (that is, large-scale capitalist farmers) account for approximately 92% of marketed output. Meanwhile, three quarters of the country's population still resides in rural areas, many of whom are women and children.
It was a woman, Rosa Luxemburg, who argued nearly 100 years ago that social democrats could (under certain circumstances) pass laws which could improve the situation of the working class but could never abolish the operation of the market or the exploitation of wage labour which lies at the core of capitalism. This is the experience of Zimbabwean women today - limited reforms which have done little to improve their living conditions or fundamentally alter their prospects for regaining the wealth of the society they risked their lives for. *