HER Zimbabwe will tomorrow hold a conversation at the Bulawayo Club which will focus on the centralisation of activities in Harare to the detriment of the rest of the country. BATANAI MUTASA OWN CORRESPONDENT
Running under the theme “The Hararefication of Zimbabwe: Are we listening to other parts of the country?” the discussion will be led by presentations from arts promoter Raisedon Baya, disability activist Soneni Gwizi, historian Pathisa Nyathi and journalist Lifaqane Nare.
“The conversation is happening as a result of a few observations we have recently made around how certain issues are handled,” Her Zimbabwe founder, Fungai Machirori, said.
“We have national newspapers reporting information in the vernacular, without regard for translations for those that might not speak that particular language.”
She gave another example where lists of influential Zimbabweans are compiled and hardly feature people living outside Harare.
“The question, then, is has Zimbabwe been collapsed into Harare?” she asked.
“What we aim to achieve is to understand how people living outside Harare perceive these issues and how they can be rectified.”
There have been a number of outcries emanating from the concentration of policy-makers and business leaders in Harare.
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Recently, some non-governmental organisations received public condemnation after they erected a billboard with wrong Ndebele spellings.
Despite issues like devolution being included in the new Constitution, the government seems reluctant to implement them, further entrenching centralisation.
Her Zimbabwe operates from Harare and Machirori acknowledged the fact that the organisation could not be fully aware of the issues in question.
“We are also conscious of the privilege of operating from the capital city and what opportunities that provides, which people perhaps take for granted,” she said.
“This applies to people in capital cities across the world, really.
“We want to know and understand what and who we are omitting, and how to rectify this.”
The organisation is an initiative founded in 2012 to harness the potential of digital media, sharing and telling women’s stories and nurturing young women’s digital activism.
Her Zimbabwe’s primary target audience is Zimbabwean women aged between 20 and 35.
The group also targets men as a secondary audience since women’s issues cannot be separated from those of men with whom they co-exist
