WLSA applauds media´s role in fighting SGBV

 

By Annie Zulu

THE Women in Law Southern Africa (WLSA) Zambia has commended the Zambian media for its efforts in the fight against Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV).

WLSA Zambia National Director Maureen Tresha said  the media had done well in the last few years in exposing and creating awareness against SGBV in the country.

Ms Tresha also observed that there had been a lot of improvement  in the manner that SGBV stories were been presented by the media, especially regarding victims.

Ms Tresha said this during a media training in framing stories on SGBV hosted by WLSA in partnership with equality Now at Lusaka´s Asmara Hotel on Tuesday.

Freelance Journalist Annie Zulu receiving an award for reporting on SGBV

“The role of the media is crucial to the issue of SGBV, both in terms of how the media cover the issue, and how the media may be used as a tool to help activists, organisations and government raise awareness and implement programs on this issues. As WLSA we are very impressed with Journalists understanding of SGBV, their work has been so amazing,”  Ms Tresha said.

She further reiterated that her organisation would continue engaging the media in its programs as a key partner in the fight against SGBV.

Meanwhile, WLSA has awarded some Zambian Journalists for their been consistency in reporting on SGBV.

Among the notable recipients of the awards are Freelance Journalist Annie Zulu, 5fm´s Christopher Chisi, ZNBC´s Constance Matongo, Times of Zambia´s Dorothy Chisi, Millennium Radio´s Juliet Makwama and Zambia Daily Mail´s Nomsa Nkana.

WLSA is a regional organisation with offices in seven countries in Southern Africa, whose aim is to respond to the social-legal needs of women in the region and to develop women´s rights methodologies.

#Of 16Days of Activism Against GBV....

Teach your underage daughter that an older man showing love interest in her does not mean well for her. Let her understand that such a man is a prey who wants to take advantage of her.

Let her understand that an older man has no business declaring love to a minor or asking her for sex.

Parents, make out time to have real talks with your girls-as often as possible. Teach them age-appropriate sex education or strangers will teach them the wrong way.

Help them understand the physical and hormonal changes their body is going through. Teach them to recognize when they are being preyed on.

Teach them to speak up and stand up for themselves. Make them comfortable with you enough to confide in you. Talk to them about the consequences of sex, especially unprotected sex.

They have to be taught that sex with boys in their age bracket is still going to leave them at a disadvantage when shit hits the fan.

Be careful who you allow around your young impressionable girls.

Most girls were defiled, raped, or lured into sex by people they know, see often or even trust. People, you the parent know and

greet.

The men who prey on your baby girls and teen daughters are usually not strangers.

They live in your neighbourhood, they attend the same place of worship with you, they work for you, you buy things from them, they are your friends or relatives, you see them around and talk to them, you even house some of them under the same roof with your daughters. They are right there, under your nose

Teach your underage daughter that an older man showing love interest in her does not mean well for her. Let her understand that such a man is a prey who wants to take advantage of her.

Let her understand that an older man has no business declaring love to a minor or asking her for sex.

Parents, make out time to have real talks with your girls-as often as possible. Teach them age-appropriate sex education or strangers will teach them the wrong way.

Help them understand the physical and hormonal changes their body is going through. Teach them to recognize when they are being preyed on.

Teach them to speak up and stand up for themselves. Make them comfortable with you enough to confide in you. Talk to them about the consequences of sex, especially unprotected sex.

They have to be taught that sex with boys in their age bracket is still going to leave them at a disadvantage when shit hits the fan.

Be careful who you allow around your young impressionable girls.

Most girls were defiled, raped, or lured into sex by people they know, see often or even trust. People, you the parent know and

greet.

The men who prey on your baby girls and teen daughters are usually not strangers.

They live in your neighbourhood, they attend the same place of worship with you, they work for you, you buy things from them, they are your friends or relatives, you see them around and talk to them, you even house some of them under the same roof with your daughters. They are right there, under your nose.

CHISHALA KATEKA, Zambia´s potential first female President.

 INSPIRATION......

Former ABSA Bank Zambia Chairperson Chishala Kateka recently announced her Presidential Candidature for the 2021 polls, and has launched her party, the New Heritage Party.

She is so far the only woman who has declared her participation in the Presidential race. I have sadly observed the hateful comments like "She'll just splint votes" "Aba nabo" "She should just concentrate on home economics" "She is just wasting her time" " Oh she is just wasting resources" blablablabla.

So a woman in Zambia can not compete at Presidential level? Is the Presidential position a privilege for male candidates only?

Ms Kateka is Zambian citizen, who is fully qualified and has the right to stand as President and compete with her male counterparts.

Lets normalise participation of women at Presidential level please!!!!!

Go mama Go!!!!

Freelance Journalist Annie Zulu wins SADC Award

 By ZAMBIAN FEMININE REPORTER

FREELANCE Journalist Annie Zulu has bagged her second International Gender Award at the 30th November  – 2nd December  2020 SADC Protocal at Work Summits and Awards.

 The event held under the theme “Voice and Choice: Local Action for a Strong 2030 A-gender in Southern Africa” was hosted by Gender Links (GL) and the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance alongside other partners at Lusaka’s Cresta  Golfview Hotel.

Ms Zulu (in yellow) after receiving the award with Gender Activist and Former NGOCC Chairperson Sara Longwe.

 The summits serve as a springboard to call on Governments to account for gender equality commitments made in the SADC Gender Protocol and the Sustainable Development Goals.

 Ms. Zulu together with Zambia Daily Mail’s Margret Chisanga were awarded runner-up to 5FM journalist Christopher Chisi, who grabbed the first position out of four other competitors.

 In October 2020, Ms. Zulu was among few African and Arabic Journalists who were awarded the Social Impact Reporting Initiative (SIRI) awards.

 After receiving the award, Ms. Zulu expressed delight following the regional recognition for her exploits as a determined Zambian journalist.

 “It is a great honour to receive this award. The award has boosted my passion to report more on issues of gender, which mostly affects women and girls. I feel I have a responsibility as an experienced SADC Journalist to create a platform for women and girls’ voices to be heard,” She said.

Ms Zulu, alongside the two other Journalists will be among the Zambian delegation that would represent the country at the upcoming regional summit to be held in South Africa.

 And officially opening the summit, Gender Minister Elizabeth Phiri assured protection from violence to Zambian women who wish to stand in next year’s elections.

“As I have repeatedly said in the last few weeks, I challenge every woman out there and those gathered here to think about standing as members of parliament and councillors,” Mrs Phiri said.

 Gender Links country coordinator Albert Ngosa reaffirmed that his organisation would continue to provide a platform for different stakeholders to share best practices in gender mainstreaming.

Plight of street children during COVID-19

 

By ANNIE ZULU

LIVING as a street child is  already a situation of misery and the outbreak of COVID-19 has brought even greater distress to these vulnerable group of children.

On a good day, street children in Zambia survive by begging  and doing manual jobs such as carrying people’s luggage and cleaning car windows.

These children have not been spared from the devastating  impact of the COVID-19 from the time the country recorded its first case of the pandemic  in March 2020.

According to SOS Children’s Village statistics, Zambia has over 13,000 street children.

Some children living on the streets of Lusaka

The economic activities of street children have severely been affected due to some policies put in place to contain the disease and one can only imagine, but never understand the agony that these children have to endure as a result of  the pandemic.

Wearing a torn yellow t-shirt and blue dirty jeans, with a bottle of brown liquid in his hand, 15-year-old Jackson  narrated to me the plight of children on the street during the outbreak of COVID-19.

“Life has always not been easy on the streets of Lusaka, but this time around, things are much worse. People rarely give us food and we don’t get jobs as we used to because people don’t want to come to contact with us. Mostly they scream at us not to come close, when we approach them to assist with their bags in exchange for money,” he said.

Jackson’s narration is an indicator that precautionary measures taken by people to keep safe from COVID-19 have worsen the poverty of street children.

 As if that is not enough, the pandemic has also exposed these children to unhealthy environmental conditions that threaten their health.

 Some of them pick used facemasks in trying to protect themselves, while many of them are without masks, yet they meet and interact with different people, including other street children, who are just as vulnerable as they are.

As a matter of fact, they share the same space to sleep at night without  maintaining  any social distancing. This not only threaten their own health, but also put that of other people in society at risk.

Another street child Chanda (male,16) told me: “We just hear people talking about the corona disease, but nobody explains to us what it is. We see them wearing masks too and some shops don’t attend to us when we are not wearing one, so we just pick used ones and wear them in order to have access to some places.”

Chanda´s explanation tells a story of how some vulnerable groups have no clue about the coronavirus and how to prevent it, as they have no access to traditional and social media where information is mostly disseminated.

Lusaka Based Child Rights Activist Jacob Mwelwa is therefore calling for a quick response to the plight of street children with regards to COVID-19.

Mr Mwelwa said in an interview that street children were one of the few vulnerable groups that had been left out on the country's response plan to the pandemic.

According to him, there was need to provide them with welfare packages and protective materials and conduct COVID tests to ascertain their statuses.

“Street children have totally been left out on the response plan and they are on their own. Imagine if a person in employment can complain about the impact of COVID-19, how about the child on the street who has no one to take care of him? Let the Government, organisations that deals with children’s welfare and other stakeholders look into this issue.

“The other thing, these children do not put only their health at risk, but everyone else they come into contact with as well. Some of them might even have contracted the virus without knowing because the symptoms such as fever and tiredness is something they are used to living on the street and to them its normal,” Mr Mwelwa said.

Most of the children that roam the streets in Zambia are orphans but have families that have left them to fend for themselves, while others run away from their guardians due to maltreatment.  Another reason is poverty, as some of them work on the streets during the day and return home in the evening.

COVID-19 threatens people with disabilities

 

By ANNIE ZULU

INABILITY to access necessary medical services during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has led to deaths of some people with disabilities in Zambia.

Some people living with disabilities who needed regular therapy for survival could not access medical services because of health restrictions put in place to contain the virus.

It became very difficult especially for this vulnerable group of people to access medical services and consequently some lost their lives in the process.

According to the United Nations (UN), persons with disabilities are among the hardest hit by COVID-19. Even under normal circumstances, the 1 billion persons with disabilities worldwide are less likely to access health care.

Belinda Kabaso of Lusaka´s Matero Township lost her mother who was not only visually impaired, but diabetic too in April 2020 because she could not access medical help on time.

She explains, “When mom complained of not feeling too well, we immediately took her to Matero Level One Hospital. But since she was also diabetic she was not properly checked as health personnel were more concerned with COVID-19 so they sent us back home.

“Two days later her condition worsened and she died while we were taking her to the hospital,” Belinda said.

Mwanida Banda, another Lusaka resident, told this reporter how her brother who was physically impaired and had contracted COVID-19 died in June as a result of the trauma of been in isolation centre with strangers.

Mwanida’s brother used to get nervous and develop convulsions around strangers so the family had asked the management at Levy Mwanawasa Hospital where he was isolated to allow a relative to stay besides him but the request was turned down considering the nature of the disease.

“My brother was conscious when they evacuated him from the house in an ambulance and taken to Levy Mwanawasa Hospital.  Later when he regained conscious, he found himself in a place with strangers, there was no support system that he is used to and he started convulsing.

“As a family, we became concerned because we knew that when my brother is exposed to strangers, he goes into convulsions. We informed the hospital about this and asked them to allow at least a close relative to be part of health personnel caring for him but they refused.

“They also refused to allow us to give him his highly specialised wheelchair, so this situation contributed to the death of my brother,” she claimed.

But besides the health implications, COVID-19 has also inflicted serious social and economic consequences, especially on vulnerable people.

Majority of people with disabilities are said to be poor and the outbreak of the pandemic has just worsened their situation.

The Zambia Agency for Persons with Disabilities (ZAPD) Director General Julien Mwape explained how COVID-19 was adversely affecting her members.

ZAPD Director General Julien Mwape 

“People with disabilities are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19. Many are poor and the lockdown few months ago saw livelihoods being disrupted as most of them are on the streets and not in formal employment.

“The lockdown entailed people staying home and this caused poverty levels to increase and some have not recovered up to now,” Ms Mwape said.

She called for a strategic intervention plan, stressing there was no disability protocol in the response towards COVID-19 at many levels.

“The general response mechanism that was put out did not really cater for persons with disability and did not take all the disability aspects into focus.

“People with disabilities are not consulted before COVID-19 messages are conceptualised, and the channels of dissemination are not accessible to them. Many don’t own radio or television sets some of them are visually impaired and can’t read or write,” she said.

However, Ms Mwape believes not all is not lost even in these challenging times, provided Government puts in more efforts to establish and strengthen interventions.

“Generally what can help is a proper social protection response strategy that should help us bring back people to livelihood.  Our Government should do what every country is doing out there, plan for shock responsive social protection.

“Putting in place a shock responsive social protection strategy, something that can help reduce shock but still enable those in authority to reach the vulnerable.

“Times like this require careful planning such as knowing proper statistics and data. So Government needs to plan in such a way that people are not left on their own health wise and in any other aspects of life,” she said.

The 2017 report by the Zambia Federation of Disability Organisation (ZAFOD) indicates that Zambia has about 2 million persons living with disabilities. Visual, hearing, physical, communication and intellectual impairments are the prevalent forms of disability in country.

 

Rape ordeals blamed on covid-19 school closure

 By ANNIE ZULU

THE COVID-19 outbreak is considered as among the worst pandemics in human history but for 14-year-old Mapalo (not real name), the virus remains the greatest nightmare that will forever remain engraved in her mind.

Mapalo, who is in her ninth grade and is scheduled to write her junior secondary school examinations in December, was raped by two men in her neighbourhood in Kafue District of Lusaka Province three weeks after Government indefinitely closed all schools, colleges and universities on March 20, 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak.

With teary eyes, she told me how the unfortunate incident happened.

She was on her way back home from escorting her study mate and friend when she was attacked and dragged to a deserted unfinished structure, a few metres from her house during midday, and raped.

“My friend and I used to study from my place. On that particular day we had finished studying and as usual escorted her, but on my way back home around 2 pm two men who were both tall and dark in complexion stopped me, claiming that they wanted to ask me something.

“I cannot remember what happened to me next, the only thing I remember is I was laying on the floor in unfinished house alone and I had no underwear on me.

“When I stood up I felt pain all over my body and I had bruises on my private parts. I knew I had just been raped, I was so scared and I didn´t know what to do,” she narrated.

Image by UNICEF Zambia

Even though it has been almost seven months since the whole ordeal happened, Mapalo is still traumatised and does not seem get over it.

She has not been herself since the incident, as she is always feeling nervous and her performance at school has been largely affected.

She blames her predicament on the COVID-19 outbreak.

According to her, if there was no outbreak of the pandemic, the rape incident wouldn´t have happened as she was going to be at school at that particular time.

“Sometimes I feel if things were normal, if there was no COVID-19 and schools were not closed, none of that would have happened to me because I was going to be at school with my friends,” Mapalo said.

Mapalo’s aunt who preferred to be identified as Rachael narrated that she only came to know about what happened to her niece two weeks after the incident through a family friend who she (Mapalo) had told.

“I noticed some changes in her behaviour, she was lost in thoughts, which was so unusual of her. There was just something strange about her, I asked her several times if she was sick but she refused. It never crossed my mind that she could have been raped, because she was always home, considering the fact that COVID-19 was at its peak that time and everyone was adhering to the stay-home directive.

“I only knew about the incident, when a neighbour and family friend she had confided in came to talk to me and that was two weeks later. This whole thing has left me devastated too, I feel like I have failed my niece,” Rachael said.

She stressed that even though the matter was reported to the police, nothing much had been done to find the culprits.

Rachael only hopes that one day her niece would get the justice she deserves, adding that the incident had left her shattered.

“She still looks confused and traumatised. I have tried talking to her, but it has not helped that much. I would like to see the culprits brought to book, because this is wickedness. How can human beings do this to an innocent girl? This is totally wrong, ” she said.

Another woman of Lusaka who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, also narrated to me to how her 8-year-old daughter was molested by her 16 -year-old nephew during the prolonged closure of schools.

The woman, who is a single mother of three used to leave her two sons aged 4 and 6 and her 8-year-old daughter with their cousin, while she went to sell vegetables at a nearby junction.

She said it was during these few hours that she was away from home that her daughter was sexually abused by her teenage nephew.

“When schools were closed following the outbreak of COVID-19, I left my children under the care of my 16-year -old nephew who is in his 10^thgrade. I am a single mother and I had gone out to sell vegetables and look for money to feed my family even at the peak of the pandemic. However, I was only aware from home for approximately 5 hours everyday. ”

“I would leave home for the junction at 9am and come back around 14:00hrs, little did I know that during this short period of time I was away my daughter was being sexually abused by her cousin, ” she said.

According to her, she knew about her daughter´s rape scenario when she complained to her about her stomach and private part hurting one evening.

“When I asked my daughter why she was experiencing this kind of pain, she told me her cousin has been removing her pant and touching her private parts each time I was out. I interrogated the boy and he admitted. This really shocked me because I trusted him and he never looked like someone who could do such a thing. I treated him like my own child and he was like a big brother to my children,” she said.

These two stories are among the many stories of children, especially girls who have been defiled and sexually abused during the prolonged closure of schools as a result of COVID-19.

Zambia recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 18, 2020 and Government immediately ordered the indefinite closure of all schools, colleges and universities, as one of the containment measures.

Although examination classes were allowed to reopen later in July, the Government only ordered the rest of the classes to reopen on September 14, 2020.

During this prolonged school closure, a day hardly passed without stories of child defilement in the country.

The Zambia Police Gender Based Violence first quarter statistics report of 2020 indicates that a total number 633 cases of child defilement were reported, while the second quarter report shows that 554 cases were recorded countrywide totalling 1 187 cases in the two quarters.

These were just cases recorded by the Zambia police, however, there are more cases of child defilement which might have been swept under the carpet and not reported.

Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA) Zambia an organisation which responds to the socio-legal needs of women in the region and to develop women’s rights methodologies, notes that the closure of schools during lockdown created room for child abuse, especially sexual abuse.

WLSA Zambia Programme Manager Besa Mwansa said in an interview that this was because children spent much time at home and in their neighbourhood which exposed them to perpetrators.

"The closure of schools itself became the trigger in the sense that children who ordinarily go to school in the morning and come back in the afternoon were being locked down with abusers in  their homes and communities," Ms Mwansa said.

She stressed that the outbreak of COVID-19 proved that there was still a lot that needs to be done to protect children from defilement in an event of a pandemic and also how to quickly respond to defilement cases.

"There is need to strengthen our community response, especially on the issue of shelters and safe spaces where would the children be taken to in an event there is need to remove them from their homes,” she wondered.

Defilement has both physiological and psychological effects on children which include distress, fear, shame, stigmatisation and discrimination

Victims face additional challenges with the lack of structural social service systems in place in Zambia, access to hotlines and shelters. Also, civil society groups and nongovernment organisations specialised in providing support and legal expertise are few.