The Front Line Runs Through Every Woman

Women and local resistance in the Zimbabwe liberation war

Eleanor O’Gorman

How do we understand women’s experiences of Zimbabwe’s liberation war?

The history of that war has been written in terms of peasant mobilisation and resistance. Women’s voices within this history have been muted or absent. Feminist history and research has also sought to understand the relationship of women and war through the roles women take up and the culture of militarism. However, it is the testimonies and voices of women themselves that need to be heard to better understand what life was like in the war.

• How did women experience guerrilla war in rural Zimbabwe?

Women in Chiweshe, Zimbabwe, experienced war as a matter of everyday survival and resistance as they navigated volatile relations with state soldiers and guards, roaming bands of guerrillas and with their own neighbours,families and communities. Their experience was all the more unique as they were herded into Protected Villages that were a counterinsurgency measure by the Rhodesian Front government to prevent contact with the revolutionary groups. The battleground is revealed to be such that the ‘front line runs through every woman’.

• Why are women’s voices of the liberation war relevant today for Zimbabwe and for the UN?

A more local, rural and personal understanding of the liberation war in Zimbabwe reveals experiences of war that speak directly to current international efforts to address women, peace and security, notably through UN Security Council Resolution (1325). It also speaks to the ways in which women experience the insecurity and political violence that have become hallmarks of governance in present day Zimbabwe.


ISBN9 781847 010407

215 x 140 mm, pp. 192,