Fighting for justice and finding solace in cyber space

23 November, 2005: Earlier this month, the Gender and Media Southern African Network (GEMSA) faced a tragedy of untold proportions. We lost two close colleagues in a road accident:  deputy chair of the Network and head of the Zambian Institute of Mass Communication (ZAMCOM), Emmanuel Kasongo, as well as the treasurer of ZAMWATCH, Chileshe Kalasa.

 

As is so often the case, in our darkest hour we discovered our innermost resolve. We also found a new use of the Internet- providing comfort and solace.

 

As the Sixteen Days of Activism to end gender violence gets under way on 25 November, our resolve and the new skills we have learned will be turned to another cause: redrawing the map of Southern Africa through cyber dialogues in six languages.

 

These daily lunch time chats on the many facets of gender violence will send out the message that just as gender violence knows no boundaries, the solutions require that we take a united stand; women and men; boys and girls; urban and rural across race, class and ethnic divides – as well as across artificial colonial boundaries.  

 

Since May, Gender Links, a member of the network that serves as an umbrella for those who seek to “make every voice count, and count that it does” has been conducting IT training with the 218 members of GEMSA in ten countries across Southern Africa.

 

Under the banner “Making IT work for gender justice”, and determined to appropriate a space that has often been used to denigrate women, even traffic them, GEMSA found another application of the Internet when news of the Zambian tragedy stuck.

 

Within hours of receiving the news, sending out a message through the list serve and establishing an electronic bulletin board for messages of condolence, over 100 had been received. They came from as far as field as India, where a colleague we have never met wrote: “I don’t know either of these two people, but I have some idea what you are going through.”

 

GEMSA is different from many other gender organisations in that over a third of its members are men. Among the most touching messages came from GEMSA Secretary Tom Mapesela, who recounted the last phone conversation he had with Emmanuel in which their families made plans to exchange visits.

 

“But I know Emmanuel, we will keep closer contact, I will never forget you, and I will always cherish the good times we had together, the good and kind words we shared together…Rest my brother, rest,” Tom wrote in his moving obituary.

 

I remember shedding a tear, and then feeling a glow inside that through GEMSA, and now the Internet, men could express their unedited grief and raw emotions. Within minutes of Tom’s message going out, resonating messages of pain and comfort poured in from around the Network.

 

 

Now, in hundreds of daily events across Southern Africa that will peak with one hour cyber chats from 13.00 to 14.00 each day, GEMSA members will turn their pain and sorrow to the fight for gender justice that had been so much a part of the lives of our late colleagues.

 

Advocates of gender justice in Swaziland, southern Zimbabwe, and large parts of South Africa will be able to talk to each other in the sister languages of isiZulu, siSwati and siNdebele. Chatters in Lesotho will be able to link up with Sotho speakers in South Africa.

 

Namibians will have the choice of joining the English chat room (the official language in Namibia) or the Afrikaans chat room (the language still spoken language by many Namibians) being run out of Cape Town. North Eastern Zambians can join the Chichewa chat room being anchored by the Malawi Institute of Journalism, while Zimbabweans in the country and in the Diaspora will have a Shona chat room.

 

Mauritians and Seychellois will be able to chat away in Creole, while East Africans and Northern Mozambicans can unite in their lingua franca, kiSwahili.  

 

On the international days of the campaign, 25 November 2005 (International Day of No Violence Against Women), On these two days, and the other three international days of the campaign (World Aids Day on 1 December; International Day for the Disabled on 3 December and the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre on 6 December) 10 December (Human Rights Day) all regional participants will join in one chat room in English.

 

The action points will be used to monitor progress in the year ahead. For it is only when we move from words to action that we can truly honour the memory of the GEMSA foot soldiers who have moved on to their place of rest as well as make IT work for gender justice.