On 24 March the world commemorates the International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. This day allows us to reflect and make visible the gross human rights violations that are faced by specifically African women in mining and extractives impacted communities.
Rape and sexual violence against women are often perpetrated by police, private security companies and armies on plantations, mines and around large development projects. The violent nature of the extractives sector and how that violence plays out on women’s bodies can be traced back to the colonial period. In many ways, colonial history has been written on female bodies that serve as the metaphor for the conquered land, an untamed space that must be regulated. The domination of women stems from the same ideologies that lead to the domination of the environment.
They dragged some of the women into the bush. We were naked, our dresses were torn, our wrappers were being loosened by a man who is not your husband. They tore our pants and began raping us in the bush. The raping wasn’t secret because about two people are raping you there. They are raping you in front of your sister. They are raping your sister in front of your mother. It was like a market.” – Mrs. Kawayorko, Odi, Niger Delta, 1993 invasion by the military
The cases of the women who were raped by the military signifies violence that is rooted in not only a political and economic conquest but also a conquest of African women’s bodies and the role of the police and the military as the state’s main instruments of legitimate violence. These violations tend to be invisibilised because they happen in communities that are highly militarised and often perpetrated by state agents.
In an effort to make visible, remember and celebrate women and men who who have died or faced repression because they say NO to the large-scale extraction of natural resources, WoMin with twenty other partners have come together under the Rise against Repression banner. The platform profiles powerful testimonies from across Africa and shines a spotlight on the violent nature of the extractives sector. Through these shared struggles we bear witness to how this violence is meted particularly on women through the use of sexualised violence, threats and intimidation to assassinations like the untimely loss of women human rights defenders like Berta Carceras in Honduras to Fikile Ntshangase in South Africa. The violence is indiscriminate and not always targeted at women and men who are in the frontlines, but also on ordinary women in communities.
In a recent research report conducted by WoMin and its partners in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, WoMin brings ecofeminist understandings to the exploration of the political economy of extractivism in the three countries. The research reveals how corporations and the political elite manipulate and undermine law and policy and use violence to gain control over mineral wealth. It makes clear that the violence unleashed upon poor women and their communities, and upon the earth’s resources is intrinsic to the current economic system.
The research unearthed sexual violence as being one of the tools that is commonly used to subdue women in extractive affected communities. In Marange, Zimbabwe, following the discovery of diamonds in 2005, the community became securitised and militarised. Between November 2006 and October 2008, police killed, tortured, beat, harassed, and set dogs on artisanal miners in raids intended to drive them from the fields. Police assaulted and arrested local community members and subjected women to sexualised violence. A woman from Marange recounted how a truck of soldiers stopped her and another woman as they were coming from the fields. The women were forced to strip, armed with sticks, and then instructed to fight one another. The soldiers indicated that the loser would be raped by the soldiers in the truck.
The above example is significant in not only showing how violent the extractives sector is but also in shaping how we respond. As we commemorate International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims, we are driven by an ecofeminist understanding that ending violence against women means moving beyond a violent economy shaped by capitalist patriarchy to a nonviolent, sustainable peaceful economy that respects women and the earth. This transition can only be achieved through movements of conscientised people, with clear political analysis and strategy, unified across countries and sectors. We as WoMin hope to influence and shape a different narrative for women in mining impacted communities across Africa.
