Female bodies, agency, real and symbolic violence during the coronavirus pandemic: The experiences of women politicians and activists in Zimbabwe

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abstract In May 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Joana Mamombe, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova, all members of the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance, participated in a demonstration to draw attention to escalating poverty among vulnerable communities during the COVID-19-induced lockdown. Immediately after the demonstration they were allegedly abducted, tortured and sexually violated by State security agents. In response to these allegations, the State accused the women of taking part in an ‘illegal’ demonstration. The experiences of these three women are an appropriate entry-point for discussion of the vile – in the sense of the objectionable – treatment of women in the national politics of Zimbabwe. In this article it is noted that the coronavirus crisis experienced in Zimbabwe is inextricably linked with the country’s political crisis, which continues unabated. For instance, the Government’s heavy-handedness in enforcing COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, especially in the early days of the pandemic (March/April 2020), appears to have had a clear agenda: to limit democratic space and participation by crushing all forms of dissent. The overarching argument made in this article is that citizens’ experiences of the convergent political and coronavirus crises in Zimbabwe are deeply gendered. In particular, I draw on the experiences of women in politics and civil society in Zimbabwe in order to allow for deeper understandings of women’s agency during the coronavirus pandemic, and of the extremely gendered use of violence by the State to contain what it essentially views as political ‘dissent’. I discuss women’s participation in the aforementioned protests as emblematic of a vocal public presence which, however, exposes their bodies to real and symbolic gendered State violence.