Freedom and Feminism in Mugabe's Zimbabwe

Censorship in Zimbabwe affects sites and modes of expression both politically, from above, as well as culturally, from below. In fact, various subjects, places and people are subject to differing kinds of censorships, causing the growth and demise of temporally affected spaces of free speech. These dilemmas are further frustrated not only by Zimbabwean imaginations of history, past and future, but also by ideas about which practices – cultural, political, or imagined – should be revitalized and adhered to. Feminism and women’s issues in particular, are subjected to a unique censorship from below; they are treated not so much as ‘human rights’ as they are considered ‘women’s rights.’ Besides being censored from below, feminism is publicly disassociated from issues generally considered political, and banned to the sphere of the cultural, creating a kind of censorship through not censoring which greatly impacts the experience of Zimbabwean women today. In my paper I show, using interviews, newspaper articles, and other secondary sources, how Zimbabwean women activists, particularly in the performing arts, respond to the imposed idea of ‘woman as prostitute’ by usurping the root of this idea and using it to ultimately liberating ends, augmenting their role within Zimbabwe’s imaginative space today.