We wuz there!

Beijing. Or as it is pronounced back home, Bhezhing! We wuz there. September 1995. It was a beautiful summer. It rained endlessly some days. But mostly it was nice and sunny. For more than two weeks, thousands of women filled the streets of that populous nation. You would think we would have been invisible. Yet how could big women like some of us not be visible? Everywhere we went, we caused a stir. Some of the women and dozens of children, (plus a few boldly lascivious men), came up to touch our hair. Our beautifully, braided, plaited, curled, straightened, dreadlocked, African hair. Some went further, feeling our bodies. They were fascinated by our ample butts. Little kids dug their curious fingers just to make sure the butts were real. Were they soft? Hard? Mushy? They giggled with delight when we shrieked in horror, or anger, or just scaring them away. Clearly they had never seen such. And in such large numbers too.
The taxi drivers jostled to take us to our various destinations. We were a curiousity. I could imagine the stories told back home to fellow drinkers, wives, nay the whole village/compound, "I touched one. She felt so soft. I swear she was THIS HUGE! And that hair, it was done in very complicated plaits like? Or was it for real? I don't know. It was very....different. I wish I had a camera. I swear, it looked like she was carrying tiny little snakes all over her head...like this...and that going like that...". Trying on clothes in the markets was a giggle fest for Chinese women and ourselves. "ha ha madam, no, no, madam, not size, not size you. Not size you, please madam..stop! Stop! Arms flying about, horror, hands acrosss shocked mouths that I thought I could even fit in those seemingly voluminous dressing gown. I gave up after a while. The women happy that no stitches had been ripped, they would give me little silk scarves to placate me. Giggle. Giggle.

The whole country must have dined on stories of these colourfully wonderful women from all over the world who had taken over the city of Beijing for the 4th world conference on women. I can happily say, to paraphrase that stuff which we used to write on tree trunks, "we wuz there". It was an amazing experience. That would be the understatement of the century. Amazing just doesn't begin to describe how it was. In Shona we say, being told how it was is like having somoeone describe something that is on your back, (note this saying was crafted in the days before mirrors so take that into context), i.e. something that you can't possibly see or imagine.
Any women's rights activist worth her salt had to be in Beijing. Pretenders too. Curious on-lookers. Plus the development tourists.
Just as curious as the Chinese were about us, we were curious about China. My friend Lisa's mum arrived in Beijing from Santa Fe, and immediately declared in her gruffy American accent, "this is what in the United States they call a foreign country!"
For a start Chinese food didn't taste like....Chinese food! Years later I have learnt that the so called Chinese food we eat outside of China, or Thai out of Thailand is made for Anglo-Saxon palates, and is not the real deal. After a week, my friend Nomsa and I started craving fast food, chips, chicken, beef. We happily found what was probably then the only MacDonalds'. The next day we jumped for joy when we happened upon Hard Rock cafe. We even bought the t-shirts emblazoned Hard-Rock Cafe Beijing.I just couldn't take chances with all those snakes in cages in front of fine restaurants. I was not an adventurous eater. Eating something with yellow plain curry used to be my idea of high risk.

We even took the time out to go pay homage to the body of Chairman Mao. Silly us, nobody had warned us that this is not a feat to be attempted on a Saturday. Nor had we read the literature. By the time we made it to the square, (9.30 am and this was the crack of dawn for Nomsa and I), the line of visitors was snaking round three or four blocks. We gave up instantly. Getting a taxi back to our hotel was another nightmare. Taxi drivers had been given their proper drill on how to handle these foreign visitors. After answering half a dozen questions from a rather important marshall of sorts with a walkie talkie, we were shoved into a taxi and the driver was told to take us straight to our hotel. Reqeusts to be dropped off at the silk market were met with a deaf stare from the driver, who suddenly lost his ability to communicate in English. The whoe city was teeming with intelligence officers it was like being on the set of a spy thriller. I caught one reading through my notebooks in my room. At breakfast or lunch they came ever so close to collect your plate, lingered just a little bit longer, just to catch some more of that "plot" on sexual and reproductive rights. Talk about power and control.

We were not in Beijing for the sights though. We were there to get a new international consensus, a program of action for women's human rights world wide. And we got it. Signed, sealed delivered, the famous Beijing declaration and platform for action. Some of us had worked for this since the early 90s, through the many other UN conferences preceding Beijing; Vienna, Copenhagen, Cairo, Dakar. To look back it sounds rather stupid that the women's movements were mobilized under a very simple slogan, Women's rights are human rights. Well aren't they? I hear my 25 year old daughter ask? Aren't women just human like everyone else so what is special about women's rights being human rights?
To think that 15 years ago, not every government in the world thought that women's rights were human rights sounds unbelieveable today. But it wasn't. Even today, the practice is still very much the opposite. Women are still not regarded as human beings in their own right in many families, communities, countries, etc in the world today. I always tell how in my father's language (Shona), you will hear someone say, "toda vanhu chaivo", i.e. we want real people, people. In my mother's language, Ndebele, they will say, "sitsho abantu khanye, khanye, abantu abazwayo, haikona abafazi". Bad translation - real feeling and thinking persons not women! You can still hear that in 2010. This very 21st century.

But I digress. We got the Beijing platform for action. It was not just the document that we came away with. We came away with dignity, pride, and as we say in my language (you have by now figured the languages my parents and I speak are different right?), with our chests in the air. There is no translation for that. Beijing became a synonymn for something powerful, something to be feared. It became a swear word for bad women like me. Women who knew their place in society and were going to occupy it with no qualms at all. In popular parlance though Beijing was something/someone real men and "good women" must stay away from. In meetings, churches, workshops, public transport, on the radio and tv talk shows we were publicly castigaed as "vakadzi veBeijing". The women of Beijing is a bad literal translation.

In 1999 I met a cute young Zimbabwean boy and started dating him in Johannesburg.
The fellow liked me a great deal and started introducing me to his friends. One fine Saturday afternoon as we drove down Jan Smuts Avenue with one such friend, me sitting in the back, the two of them in front, the friend asked, "you keep calling your girlfriend EJ what is her real name?" "Ah sorry, its Everjoice" boyfriend declared very proudly with a wink at me in the rear view mirror. The friend who was driving suddenly screeched the car to a stomach churning halt. Looked back at me with his bloodshot hungover eyes, and screamed, "Everjoice, Everjoice Win? That Everjoice? The Beijing woman?"
My poor IT expert lad, who I eventually gathered did not read current affairs and could not tell his Beijing from Biarritz asked in a puzzled tone, "Beijing woman? What is that? What does it mean?". The friend started up the car, shaking his head, worried, upset. Needless to say after this, where the hare went is where the dog went too. Mr IT vanished into the bowels of Egoli. His loss.

Older men were no exception. My father, to this day, when he and I quarell over some thing, (normally power and control in the family), he will glare at me and say, "remember this is my house. My family. This is not Beijing". This is meant to silence me instantly. In mixed organisations, when men want to silence a woman who is speaking her mind or questioning something, calling her a "Beijing" is meant to be the highest form of insult. Enough to silence a scaredy cat forever.

I will forever remember the Beijing process...not conference, process, as that which awakaned me to the diversity of women. We landed in Beijing in all our diversities.For me personally the learning was what we would call Fast Track - in Zimbabwe. I had been born and raised to think there was only one type of woman in the world. Heterosexual, married, divorced, widowed, single, but invariably with children. Reproduction the final badge of belonging. It was through the 1990s that I came to meet and know lesbian women, (I am still "discovering" others, trans, bi, inter....I am a Methodist villager, please understand), many of whom have become great friends and co-Beijingers. I will never forget the furore that was raised back in Zimbabwe by media reports that "lesbians will also be in Beijing". This was just before Mugabe made his dreadful comment about homosexual men being worse than dogs (this was to come in 1997 at the Zimbabwe International Book-fair, and of that lots later in another blog).
The media head honchos were incensed. So were some of the "nice and decent" women who worked in NGOs as well these media houses. One was dispatched by our public broadcaster to specifically take pictures of this abberation. On the first day of the NGO forum she came rushing at me breathlesslelly, "so are they here? Those lesbians? Have they arrived? Have you seen them? But you people how could you allow them to come here?" She fired dozens of questions, her lovely big eyes bigger than ever.
All I managed to say was, "I haven't seen a crate being off-loaded from any of the airlines marked LESBIANS. But as soon as I see it being off-loaded I will come find you".
The said woman has since become a journalist with an international broadcaster and lives in the United States. It was some of these hated women who have been the staunchest human rights defenders and who supported those fighting oppression in Zimbabwe, including defending the rights of journalists like hereself. I wonder if her views have changed since? Maybe I will ask. Heteronormativity is a huge mountain to climb, (there is a new word for you. We say learning does not end).

To think that barely 15 years ago, violence against women was not recognized as a human rights issue somehow feels so unthinkable today. In Vienna 1993, at the World conference on human rights where women's movements put the issue on the conference agenda and got it squarely in the declaration some African governments could barely conceal their anger that we had brought this issue to as one put it, "an important and serious meeting of governments, not a family gathering". A Minister from Uganda tried to make jokes about it to my colleague Florence, but deep down he was enraged. You have to say this in your best Ugandan English for full effect.
"Now you, you Mrs Florence (put the L), are you people mad? Mad? You people. You want the UN to discuss how and when I beat one of my wives? If I slap her, she must run to the police? And to the UN? To say the honourable so and so beat me? And then?
This is not serious business for governments surely? Please you women. Let us enjoy our lives. Don't spoil things for us. Go home now".
The fellow was laughing, but quite seriously glowering at us. Threatening in his tone even.
But there the language was adopted in the Vienna Declaration and in Beijing too! I should find that Minister one of these days to check how his blood pressure is doing.
15 years later, at least a dozen countries on the continent of Africa have at least one piece of legislation on violence against women. Some have two or three. Millions of women have been educated about these laws by women's organisations, (remember the Musasa project's one hour domestic violence program presented by the fanstastic Rudo Kwaramba on ZTV anyone?). Ah the Beijing women not only came back from China with a piece of paper, they invaded living rooms. At prime time too. Squirm, squirm.

I am so happy to claim my little badge of honour as a Beijing woman, (my dislike of cheap easily torn Chinese goods flooding markets in Southern Africa and putting millions of factory women workers out of jobs not withstanding). The Beijing conference was not just a big conference. It was a watershed. It was that moment where one says I felt and SAW the earth move. For real, not the other times we fake it. The many jibes and nasty name calling aimed at those of us who went and or subscribed to Beijing, are a sign of our success, as so many feminists have declared. The attempts to scare others, women, men and girls, from us, by this name calling have not been largely successful. Young women like my daughter who was recently sexually harassed in the hotel she works have Beijing to thank for giving them a language in which to describe what happened, why it is wrong, and it is Beijing that in many cases gave them laws and policies that they can wave in front of the harassers' noses and demand redress.

It was the processes around Beijing that showed the world there was something a global feminist movement. A movement with a voice, power, with leaders, with resources, and networks. It was we the women of Beijing who got all the sticks and stones thrown at us, but who have remained a resource for other women, with our organisations, our shelters for abused women, our legal advice centers, our research centers, we have put other women in decicion making positions. Ordinarily it is the women who believe in what Beijing means who are simple friends, neighbours, and co-workers at the other end of the phone line/email/fence/who can support other women when they want to claim their rights.

Today as I walk around anywhere in the world, I do so with great pride and as we say in Shona, Nemutsindo...I have no idea how to translate that, something like, the earth shakes. Not due to my plus size, but due to the fact that I am, and therefore I can. Beijing gave me that mutsindo and I carry myself with equal erm, weight..

The last two weeks, I was at the UN Commission on The Status of Women meeting in New York, seeking to re-live the spirit of Beijing 1995. It was rather difficult to do that in freezing temperatures that enveloped the city of New York as we arrived for the NGO forum. Heavy snow fell on the night of February 25th and by the 26th the city and its environs were snowed under. It took me an hour and a half to land, 2 hours to get my luggage out, and another hour and half to get from JFK to New Jersey. It was truly hard to re-live the moment and muster the excitement.

After a few mugs of coffee and the famous New York bagels though we thawed and got going. Just seeing all those women I have journeyed with since that time was enough to lift my flagging spirits. We reminisced about those glorious 1990s. What the series of UN conferences had meant. Not just as meetings, but as spaces to connect, energize one another, find one another in all our finest diversities, and most importantly lay claim to our space on this planet. Some of us are older, wiser, grayer, but hands down, we all looked fabulous! We have become better dressers and make up artists as we grow wiser.
As more women came into New York so did the temperatures rise and the sun peeked through for our benefit. It was wonderful to see lots and lots of young(ish), looking women, clearly better dressed than us all old foggies put together (who said feminism isn't sexy)? They were excited, energetic, with serious attitude, impatient at the slow pace of registration at the UN, kicking up snow dust. They spoke very loudly too about their impatience at the pace of fundamental transformation in the world. The revolution is very safe hands with this group in charge. What with their blogs, their tweeting, and face-booking, ah, a far cry from those days of snail mail, and sending packages by courier to only one office in Cameroon where everyone had to collect from. Or waiting till you met someone who knew someone who could carry their ticket to Gabon. This is a new world.

The diversities got more diverse by 2010. A young sex worker from Uganda (I promised I have nothing against Ugandans!),shocked her Minister who had declared there were no sex workers in Uganda walking the streets and they arrest them. She stood up. Impeccably dressed. Not a hair out of place, and declared "Minister I am so happy to meet you here at the United Nations. But we must talk when we are back home". If the earth could open up..?
The woman had come with a whole group of organised sex workers from many parts of the continent.
As for those lesbians the journalist wanted to see in Beijing, she would have been spoilt for choice. All kinds of sexualities were there. Everywhere.
Education has a lot to learn, goes that old saying.

As to the contents of the Beijing plus 15 meeting let me leave that for another day. For now, I am just so glad to say, We wuz there in 1995. We wuz there again in 2010. And by Jane or Jove, we shall still be there when the 5th World Conference rolls into town. It better be Beijing in summer again, please,just for good measure, and to irritate those who haven't gotten the message.If you are a woman of whatever variety, and missed 1995, help me in campaigning for Beijing Cut 2. This is my new project. Only one condition, you have to believe deep down in your heart that ALL women are entitled to enjoyment of their human rights. And be prepared to fight for that.