Protecting and Empowering Zimbabwe's Girls

Lucia Mbofana - Zimbabwe

Nov. 30, 2007—When Lucia Mbofana grew up, she was determined not only to protect herself, but the girls who survived abuse like she did. She wanted to protect the girls who are subjected to cultural practices for avenging spirits or “ridding” a man of AIDS, girls who are forced by tradition to have sex with men they barely know, girls who are given away, trafficked, beaten, raped.

Women and girls are often subjected to violence in Zimbabwe, Lucia says. As a result, they are disproportionately burdened by the country’s high rate of AIDS.

More than one-fifth of Zimbabweans are living with HIV and AIDS, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a statistic that helps explain why life expectancy there is less than 40 years. In 2005, 1.7 million people in the small African nation were living with HIV/AIDS, more than in the United States, a country about 25 times its size. Nearly 60 percent of those infected with HIV were women.

Lucia and her organization, Zimbabwe’s Girl Child Network, are trying to change that, to lessen the abuse and discrimination by chipping away at societal traditions and by empowering women and girls. It’s a tough battle in one of the world’s most impoverished countries, one that has a strong patriarchal social system in which some religious sects condone the routine subjugation of women and girls.

A teacher by profession, Lucia started her work with girls by creating a number of HIV/AIDS groups in schools around the country. “I wanted to teach girls to stand up for themselves,” she says.

At the time, Lucia was married to a hotelier, and the couple moved a lot. “It actually gave me a good platform. I saw the same problems everywhere,” she recalls. Having grown up in a high-density suburb near the Mozambique border, Lucia moved to towns large and small. “I know what it is like to live in a rural area with no electricity,” she says. Then, in 2004, her husband died suddenly of food poisoning, leaving her alone with their two children.

Under the traditional practice of wife inheritance, Lucia was supposed to marry her husband’s brother or another relative. But Lucia bucked tradition. She sought guidance from her aunt, and to avoid having to marry one of her husband’s relatives she designated her son, then 13, to be her official “husband.”

Wife inheritance is just one of the customs that increases the spread of HIV, Lucia says.

“We have men who are HIV-positive who think if you sleep with a virgin, you pass on the AIDS virus and don’t have it anymore yourself,” she says. If women fail virginity tests – which sometimes are rigged – they are given to the men to marry, she explains.

“Girls are used as payment for avenging spirits,” Lucia continues. “If their grandfather or great-grandfather committed murder, a girl could be given to a family of the deceased. They’re taken as wives. These are some of the issues we are trying to address.”

As community development and empowerment program officer for Girl Child Network, Lucia and her colleagues are changing these practices. She meets with chiefs and community leaders on issues related to AIDS and children’s rights. “Some are open to this,” she says. Some of the leaders have worked with the network to prevent fathers from giving their daughters away.

Girl Child Network also tries to rescue girls whose families give them away – often because they no longer can afford to care for them. The network pays for their food, schools, uniforms and books, and sometimes places them in boarding schools. “Last year, we had to rescue 15 girls who had been given to one person,” Lucia says. They reported the violations to the police, who arrested the girls’ fathers for giving away their daughters and the woman who took them to give to her sons.

The network also helps girls who are abused by their fathers, orphaned or trafficked. Girls who are trafficked and forced into prostitution almost always are living with HIV, she says. Girls who are orphaned – 1.1 million Zimbabwean children have been orphaned by AIDS, the Kaiser Foundation reported – often have to quit school, get jobs and care for their siblings. Frequently, Lucia says, they are forced to provide sex in exchange for food. The Girl Child Network provides them monthly food allowances and works to keep them in school.

At the 2007 Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action workshop, Lucia says she feels more empowered, a message she intends to take home. She says she wants to spend more time advocating on behalf of girls and lobbying for policies that will protect and empower them.

“As a leader, I believe women should stand for what they believe in and say it loud and clear,” she says.

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Lucia participated in Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action, an initiative to equip and empower a cadre of women from around the world with the knowledge and skills to strengthen and lead the global response to AIDS.

You can read more about the initiative here.

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