The Sunday Mail
Disability Issues
Dr Christine Peta
THE purpose of this article is to raise awareness on the increased exposure of women and girls with disabilities to Gender-Based Violence (GBV), as we commemorate the 16 days of Activism against GBV that started on November 25 and will end on December 10.
Why women and girls with disabilities? In the spirit of the National Disability Policy which was launched by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe on June 9, 2021 and the principle of the SDGs-Agenda 2030 of leaving no one behind, there is a need to take an inclusive approach to addressing issues of GBV.
In any case disability adds a rung to the ladder of exposure to GBV. For example, deaf women cannot scream for help and blind women cannot see the perpetrator.
Furthermore, prescriptions that are offered by some traditional healers and some religious prophets increase the exposure of women and girls with disabilities to GBV.
For example, Mayita, who has mental disability said:
“My parents took me to traditional healers, and I saw that healers tell men that if they have epilepsy or HIV, they should sleep with a disabled woman to get healed, or if the men want to get rich they should do the same, so many men come to sleep with me because they want to get these things that traditional healers promise.”
Research has indicated that it is the presumed permanent virginity of women and girls with disabilities that result in them being targeted by perpetrators, alongside a belief that sexual intimacy with a virgin cleanses men of HIV or is a cure for epilepsy or a conduit to getting rich.
Women and girls with disabilities are regarded as asexual beings who are innocent of sexual thoughts, feelings and experiences.
In the case of HIV, it is believed that through the sexual method prescribed by traditional healers, the virus is then transferred from the infected person to the woman or girl with disability and the same goes for epilepsy.
Such an understanding of disability, considers some bodies to be less important than others, in a context where disability becomes a system which looks down upon bodies of women and girls with disabilities.
Human bodily differences are thus entangled with social meanings that justify practices of GBV which characterise the lives of women and girls with disabilities.
Bodies of women and girls with disabilities are generally regarded as being valuable only for their sexual consumption which bring benefits to men. We, therefore, need to interrogate the social model of disability for taking a male dominated focus and neglecting the concerns of women and girls and disabling social relations in sexuality, thus silencing the voice of women and girls with disabilities and increasing their invisibility in disability theory and practice.
Having spent long periods of time with religious prophets whilst seeking miraculous healing for mental disability, Mayita says: “I was required to spend days at the homesteads of “maporofita” (prophets) for treatment.
“A male prophet slept with me for four months before I went back home. Some prophets demand sex in exchange for healing.
“They say if you want the avenging spirit to go away so that you can be well, you have to have sex with me.
Mayita gave an explicit example of a treatment procedure that she experienced at a religious prophet’s homestead:
“He said the ‘holy oil’ he uses to heal can only work if it is applied to his “thing” and then put in my body through my ‘thing’, because the oil has to go kumuromo wechibereko (to the mouth of the uterus) and he can only do it through his ‘thing’. I told my parents about the treatment method I was getting and they said I have to do it if I want to get well because the prophet takes instructions from God.”
There is a dearth of literature which explains the role that is played by religious prophets in the national healthcare delivery system with regards to persons with disabilities.
However, in most families if the cure for disability is deemed to be taking long via modern health care or traditional healing practices, the situation is seen as being very difficult to the extent that it goes beyond the resolution of humanity.
As such it is given to Mwari (a supernatural God), under whose “constituency” religious prophets claim to fall.
Among other things, religious prophets claim that they can use the same powers that Jesus Christ used, as depicted in the Bible, to make the blind see, the deaf hear and enable those with physical disability to realise complete and miraculous bodily recovery.
One can therefore question the wisdom of those who try to solve the “problem” of disability through abusive treatment practices that seek to “normalise” bodies, instead of just embracing difference.
So what is the way forward? We need to address the underlying attitudes, myths, discrimination and marginalisation that give rise to various forms of GBV that is perpetrated against women and girls with disabilities.
The National Disability Policy [2021] provides useful guidelines.
Dr Christine Peta is a Disability, Policy, International Development and Research expert who is the National Director of Disability Affairs in Zimbabwe — she can be contacted on: [email protected]
