Hambira committed to fight for the rights of farm workers

BY GRACE CHIRUMANZU

47-YEAR-OLD Getrude Hambira who was elected the first woman Secretary General for the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers’ Union at the height of the land reform in 2000, says she will continue fighting for human rights despite the political challenges.
Hambira tells Women Can that her road to this day has not been easy with the brutality the government unleashed, in recent years and she regrets to remember how women and children were badly affected.
“The past ten years have been so difficult for the farm workers, especially women and children. My rise to this post coincided with the infamous, chaotic state endorsed land reform in which there were a lot of human rights abuses. The workers lost their healthy livelihood and accommodation,” she said.
“It was a difficult time for me as a new leader, faced with thousands of workers to represent, at the same time evading the state agents who saw our quest to represent the farm workers as opposition to the land reform.”
Reminiscing of the 2002 parliamentary elections when then the ruling party, ZANU Pf lost 57seats to the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change, Hambira says her Union, GAPWUZ became known for the wrong reasons because of its affiliation to Zimbabwe Congress Of Trade Union, where the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai emerged.
“With such a background, heading GAPWUZ and standing for the rights of the farm workers was no easy task. I had to summon all the courage, determination and commitment to represent the people who had chosen me to stand up for them,” explained Hambira.
She has not been let down by being a woman leader in a male dominated and hostile political environment and tells of her ambitions to see farm workers, especially women and children “standing up for their rights and taking up decision making positions in the community and in the country as a whole.”
“The relationship that we have with workers is driven by our ambitions to bring up change in their lives. It is my dream to see women in the farms taking up leading position because their participation is very vital,” said GAPWUZ secretary general.
“My word to women is that we should not tire and look backwards, we should not lose focus but continue to fight for our rights with determination and courage; that is the only way we can be recognized.”
Hambira, who started her working career as a factory machinist in rural Zimbabwe at the age of 19, a year after Independence, joined the trade union movement in 1987 as an educator with the country’s main labor body, ZCTU, to later join its affiliate, GAPWUZ.
She is also involved in the Coalition Against Child Labor in Zimbabwe, which was formed after GAPWUZ, the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe and African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Labor and Neglect realized that the new farmers recruited children to work in the farms following the creation of many child headed families due to the subsequent decline in the economy and the effects of the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
“We are strongly against child labor and we are encouraging that school is the best practice,” she said.

Rushwaya scoffs at ‘malicious allegations’ as she encourages women

BY GRACE CHIRUMANZU


CONTROVERSY is her middle name and she loves making it, but Zimbabwe Football Association Chief Executive Officer, Henrietta Rushwaya denies all the allegations surrounding it to be true as she declared, “women are the future and the future are women.”
She was designated the first woman C.E.O of Zimbabwe football’s mother board in 2007 and Rushwaya have since been one of the only two African women –the other woman coming from Comoros- to head such a big decision-making position in a male dominated football environment.
She has managed to put the house in order, submitting a 2008 financial audit commended by the world football governing body, FIFA under their Aiding Programme as “the first pleasing report the Zimbabwe Football Association has submitted in a long time.”
Rushwaya takes pride in the changes she had made with ZIFA telling Women Can she believes, “I have the potential to do more and this is just the beginning.”
“When I came here in 2007, this place (ZIFA House) was just a dilapidated number 43 Livingstone Avenue; the workers here did not really know their purpose of coming to work and their job descriptions because there wasn’t much to do. There was not even an accounts department, marketing and technical but I have since managed to come up with a set up that improves that,”
Rushwaya grew up in Shurugwi in a colonial Zimbabwe. She has been an athlete since primary school and she recalls impressing Ian Smith, with her high jumping.
“I was a student at Charles Wraits; it was only for the blacks while a nearby school, Ian Douglas Smith was for the coloreds. Then one day I was watching the students from Ian Douglas doing their high jump and it was really bad, I went to Ian Smith and in my broken English I told him “Mr Smith I can jump that,” she reminisce.
“Once I proved it, I became a representative of that school in athletics and ever since then I became a person of scholarships up to university level.”
Rushwaya holds a Masters’ degree in Physical Education and her critics will not agree she is the right person to heard ZIFA, some arguing that “politicians can never run sports well.”
She has a political background with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU Ff party, contesting against Shuvai Mahofa for the Gutu South prior to the 2008 harmonized elections. Since her rise to her post as ZIFA C.E.O, Rushwaya’s critics have been of the feeling that “she has failed in politics and has been compensated by her sympathetic ZANU Pf colleagues with a big position in football, which she will eventually ruin.”
But as she agreed politics and football “are totally different altogether,” she emphasized that “there are rules and regulations in football unlike in politics, once you make the rules your bible, nothing goes wrong.”
“I have a sporting background and sport is sport, one doesn’t need a class four driver’s license to be a C.E.O at ZUPCO, he may not even know how to drive a bus. One doesn’t necessarily need to have kicked a ball to be a ZIFA C.E.O. The challenge is that when you are a woman you just have to go an extra mile and running popular sports like football is a challenge in itself because even a person in the streets believes he has a say in everything, it is also run by a layman,” she argues.
“But I have since learnt that when one is a leader, he or she needs to be strong; I admire (Morgan) Tsvangirai for his courage and I thank the government for realizing the potential in women such as Mai Mujuru and Thokozani Khupe. By contesting against Mai Mahofa, I wanted to show that women can do it and having grown up amongst boys, I have always liked where it is hot and I enjoy the heat.”
As ZIFA C.E.O, Rushwaya may not have made history as yet but she has set the pace for women in the fight for women empowerment. Her courage and firm will inspire many in continuing to stand strong despite the criticism and scandalous media reports, which have poured on her in recent years.
“Success comes with criticism and it is always entangled with scandals, one can never be successful without being scandalized. It comes with a prize, one pays somehow,” said a down to earth Rushwaya.
She scoffed at her alleged sexual-affair with the former Warriors captain and Manchester City striker, Benjani Mwaruwari, and the Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono, saying “it is because I’m a woman and I found it to be jealousy from men who have envied me for achieving something they failed.”
“Benjy and I are related, his uncle married my aunt, and I help him manage his finances here like when he recently bought his mother a house in Bulawayo. I have always looked at Gideon as a very committed and hard-working brother,” she said.
“I encourage women out there to stand firm and strong in whatever position they hold, there is need for a little degree of insanity to outdo men in different sectors. Remain steadfast in your decisions and above all be loyal… to God (she smiles). Women are the future and the future is women,” she declared.