Zimbabwe: Securing the female electorate

Sue Mbaya, October 2005

Extracted from: "Zimbabwe's Land Politics and the 2005 Elections", Journal of African Elections 4(2), October 2005, 54-55.
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In spite of its much publicised failures and controversies the FTP has been acknowledged as having had some successes. Key among these has been the transfer of large amounts of land to the formerly landless. This success has been tainted by the failure to ensure gender equity in the redistribution process. Gender inequality in Zimbabwe, as in other countries in the Southern Africa region, must be viewed within the context of race and class and the resulting multiplicity of challenges. The FTP was not designed to meet the prevailing challenges. Between 12 per cent and 24 per cent of the land distributed under the A1 model is said to have been received by women. Under the A2 model the figures were lower, in the region of 5 per cent to 21 per cent (Moyo 2004). These poor figures reflect the gendered social forces and the resettlement process. They also reflect the continued existence of practices and norms and institutions that are gender conscious.

The poor performance of the land reform process in delivering to women secure access to land was thus a source of a concern to civil society and, in particular, to gender equality advocates. The 2003 Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands, Water Development, Rural Resources and Resettlement report on the assessment/audit of the country's ongoing land reform programme confirmed these concerns, indicating that only two of the eight administrative provinces (Mashonaland Central and Matabeleland South) had even attempted to given a breakdown of FTP beneficiaries by gender and special interest groups. In both provinces the allocations were shown to have been heavily skewed in favour of males. As indicated in Table 3 about 87 per cent of allocations were made to men despite the fact that women have always represented a significant proportion of the electorate and, in particular, of the Zanu popularity base. The persistent marginalisation of women was therefore not in the interest of the ruling party as the 2005 elections approached. This might well have been one of the motivating factors in the appointment on the eve of the elections of Joyce Mujuru as Zimbabwe's first female vice-president. The fact that the Zanu leadership proceeded with this move in spite of internal opposition from much of the party's 'old guard' indicates the value it attached to the female vote. With the female electorate appeased, a Zanu win became increasingly likely.

Table 3: Gender Desegregation of Beneficiaries

	Mashonaland Central		Matebeleland South
	A1	A2	A1	A2
Men	86,6	91	86,9	81
Women	13,4	9	13,1	19

Source: PARLIAMENT OF ZIMBABWE 2003

Reference

MOYO, S 2004 'The Land and Agrarian Question in Zimbabwe', Addis Ababa, Conference on 'The Agrarian Constraint and Poverty Reduction: Macroeconomic Lessons for Africa'.