LAUNCHING THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT OF SWAZILAND

The difficulties that women face in Swaziland are many. Among these are poverty, domestic violence, child support and HIV/AIDS. It has come to my notice that we need to create a space where we can discuss ways towards getting women to come together and share ideas on how to go about fighting these evils. I grew up in Swaziland and saw a lot of poverty. Somehow hearing about the women of Ebuseleni made me think about future prospects of encouraging women to keep up the good work. Lisa Grossman has been working with these women. When we started talking we realized that more needs to be done to help women to stand up and fight even harder. I want to bring to the attention of Swazis the name of Make Nomsa Masuku of Ebuseleni, who has worked hard to start a care-point for children whose parents have passed away. It is Lisa Grossman who told me about this brave Swazi woman. It is women who stand up that are helping us see the prospects of a revolution of women in Swaziland.

Swaziland women have always worked hard, raising children by themselves and going to work in the most difficult jobs such as selling vegetables, growing crops like cotton and going across the border to sell handicrafts or buy wares to sell. I commend this hard work because it has seen most of our children through school. We need to support women by helping them to organize and have a structure through which they can request more help from government, NGOs and overseas donors.

We need to work together to understand what exactly to focus our struggle for the emancipation of women on. The ability to lead is there as we see in such women as Ntombi Nkosi, and Siphiwe Hlophe who have gone out to take care of our orphans and spoken out against the injustices that take place in the country. I want to keep us focused on learning more from women who are dreamers like these so that we can imagine how to get an organization going.

How can we start a grassroots women’s organization and make it work? At the moment, with the problems of HIV/AIDS, we need to focus on this problem because as the people who give birth to people, we cannot let the future generation go without education, food and clothes. These basic needs need to be met, and this has to happen soon. We need to rope in men who are there to help, by getting them to educate other men about looking after the future of society, and that this begins with the children. Many men are involved in these issues. We just need to change the idea that the problem of the children is a problem for women only. Our men are capable of doing better than they are doing now. They need to pay child support. Government also needs to be strict about this.

Anybody who wants to think with me on these issues is free to begin writing and share ideas on how this can be done. I am open to whatever ideas we may come up with. I would like Swazi women who are progressive to consider joing us and starting an organization and coming together and creating a space where we can put ideas together on how to structure such an organization.

It is important to focus on doing our best, being motivated and staying positive when we go out to serve people. We need to be clear on giving to our people because they are working hard. It means anybody who wishes to come on board has to agree to be hard working and do practical things to help. If you have ideas on how this can be done, let us hear your ideas. I await your aspirations for the future of a Swaziland Women’s Organization.