The Sunday Mail
Book Review
Edmore Zvinonzwa
IN about a month’s time, Zimbabwe will join the rest of the world in marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Commemorated on November 25, the day will mark the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
The campaign — started by activists at the inaugural Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991 — continues to be co-ordinated annually by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership.
It calls for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.
The world over, there are increasing calls for global action to increase awareness, galvanise advocacy efforts and share knowledge and innovations on the campaign, together with the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence Against Women campaign.
The global theme for this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence is “Orange the World: End Violence Against Women Now!” The campaign comes at a time when GBV cases have surged around the world, as different countries implemented lockdown measures to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
In her own small way, award-winning United Kingdom-based Zimbabwean, Advocate Tendai Immanuel, a specialist on Sustainable Development Goals, has published a poetry collection titled “Speak”, which focus on gender-based violence.
In an interview with The Sunday Mail Society, Immanuel said: “We are asking for substantial funding that will ensure that the minimum package of essential services in the country at community and national level includes gender-based violence prevention and also funding for organisations that support survivors of GBV, prioritising both prevention and adequate response initiatives. A zero-tolerance approach towards GBV is the one that we should employ in order to see an end to GBV in our communities and nations.
“We must continue, particularly in the light of the obtaining global Covid-19 pandemic, to drive change in our social mores through social mobilisation campaigns, ensuring that essential services for survivors of GBV must be maintained during lockdowns and they must be visible and accessible to survivors. We must be in the forefront in challenging, exposing and displaying some of the ills that have become a part of our social fabric.”
The poetry is downright candid and powerful in the way it explores love-related themes, namely love, failed love and secret love while also interrogating gender-based violence.
Immanuel also has a comment on extra-marital affairs, colloquially known as small houses, a topic which the poet takes on unapologetically in her anthology.
It evokes emotions from the viewpoint of both the woman who is having the affair and the woman who is being cheated on, graphically exploring the emotional anguish associated with both views.
“If we are talking about ending GBV in Zimbabwe, this is a topic we cannot ignore. What this anthology seeks to do is to raise those thought-provoking questions, highlighting that this is not an area we should ignore as we pave the way forward in ending GBV and abuse against women and girls,” said the poet.
Immanuel also looks at places of worship as a possible refuge survivors can turn to, stressing that religious leaders must be held accountable for the things that may take place at places of worship.
“For a child or woman who is fleeing violence, our places of worship – the places they can turn to confidently without fear of scorn, being ostracised, marginalised and further victimised because of their plight . . . — must offer them refuge and not further abuse,” she writes.
The anthology also seeks to celebrate Zimbabwean writers – living and departed – with the late, exceptionally gifted Zimbabwean novelist and poet Dambudzo Marechera having some poems dedicated to him.
Perhaps one refreshing thing is that Immanuel acknowledges and celebrates writers like the late Mordecai Hamutyinei, whose major works – both prose and poetry – are in the mother language.
Without doubt, the late Charles Mungoshi and Chenjerai Hove remain some of the few writers who published in both Shona and English.
Marechera died on August 18, 1987 while Hove and Mungoshi died on July 12, 2015 and February 16, 2019, respectively.
A poet and author who has a taste for music and art, Immanuel is also founder and chief executive officer of Triumph Africa.
She has also graced international fora such as the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings, European Commission, and United Nations General Assembly side events, among others, as a guest speaker.
