{"id":500,"date":"2019-09-03T09:55:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T07:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=500"},"modified":"2019-09-03T10:02:04","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T08:02:04","slug":"chapter-seven","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=500","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Seven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Women<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the future we will also see\nmovements of working-class women whose energies up to now have been diverted\ninto party strife and punishment of ZAPU supporters in the East and Midlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working-class and peasant women\nare used by the leadership to enforce the dictatorship of the party over half-hearted\nparty members and supporters of opposition parties. Mugabe encourages a cult of\npersonality among party women (led by his wife) whose \u2018uniform\u2019 is his portrait\non bright African print cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of working-class\nwomen are forced to be active in the party to protect their homes against\npolitical vandalism. They attend party meetings but only give nominal support and\nare visibly less enthusiastic than in the immediate years after independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This unstable base of party\nloyalty has led to movements against local party leaders flaring up among women,\nespecially in opposition to municipal corruption and lack of consultation on\nincreased municipal rents and charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are bound to explode again\nand again as the limits of capitalist reform are reached, particularly on the\nhousing question. Women have also led the demand for more schools, as in Warren\nPark (a Harare township), despite police repression of their meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although there have been changes\nin law to spell out the formal equality of women, women suffer harshly the\nresult of capitalist crisis. Fewer and fewer women are able to get jobs as\ndomestic servants, let alone factory work. Their attempts to make a living\nthrough petty trading are periodically repressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is noticeable that the higher\nforms at school have proportionately smaller numbers of girls. Working class\nand peasant girls are made to feel that their education is an expensive luxury.\nln the schools they are grossly subservient often kneeling before the teachers.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in townships women suffer\nmany of the traditional tribal disadvantages. Because of family poverty, girls\nare often compelled by their parents to become the second wife of a man with a\nreasonable wage. The municipal beerhalls (modelled on the South African system)\nencourage the men to spend their wages on drink, and frequently wives are\ndenied adequate housekeeping money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these factors force women\ninto the political background. But an active sense of grievance is growing,\nparticularly among working-class women, which can be explosive. Some of this\ndiscontent is also reflected in the rising divorce rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is great potential for struggle among the women for decent housing, jobs, and full emancipation. While these demands are the same as those of the workers the practical methods of linking up the movement of the women with that of the organised workers will have to be taken up by the socialist opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue to Chapter Eight<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women In the future we will also see movements of working-class women whose energies up to now have been diverted into party strife and punishment […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":477,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-500","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"_hostinger_reach_plugin_has_subscription_block":false,"_hostinger_reach_plugin_is_elementor":false,"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/500\/revisions\/507"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}