Perceptions of Heroism: A Comparison of Women’s Roles within the National Liberation Struggles of Eritrea and Zimbabwe

Perceptions of Heroism: A Comparison of Women’s Roles within the National Liberation Struggles of Eritrea and Zimbabwe

by Olivia Woldemikael

Introduction

The foundations of a nation have been interpreted metaphorically and theoretically as the large-scale reproduction of the social relationships within a representative microcosm, the most common one being the family (Anderson 1983; Tetreault 1994). The process of nation building is therefore conceptualized as the formation of social hierarchies, which mirror the power dynamics within these smaller groups. Scholar Mary Ann Tetreault understands “the family and the state [as] interdependent social forms…organized along parallel lines.”1 Women’s submission to the authority of their husbands and their restriction to the private sphere is translated in a national context to a lack of political representation and an exclusion from the economy. The nation has alternatively been construed by Diana Taylor as a ‘fraternity,’ in which the nation consists of a group of empowered men who exclude women as the eternal outsiders.2 Conflict may challenge or reinforce these public/private and insider/outsider dichotomies. In the case of states emerging from national struggle, the hierarchy within the military is often construed as the largest determinant of the new social order. In most martial organizations, men are the archetypal soldiers/warriors who fight to protect the vulnerable women and children at home. Their participation in violence legitimizes male guardianship of the nation. In all of these conceptions of the nation, the guarantee of citizenship relies on participation within the space of a family, a community, or an institution. Within the liberation struggles of Eritrea and Zimbabwe, the interaction of these three spaces redefined the gender roles of women in the guerrilla camps and in post-war society. To explore the various ways in which gender was constructed and reconstructed in these societies, this paper primarily draws on interviews with women fighters, images, film, primary literature, as well as journal articles and longer works of research.

Argument

Both the Eritrean War of Independence (1961-1991) and the Zimbabwe War of Liberation (also known as the Second Chimurenga) (1966-1979) are two particular struggles, in which women were actively recruited into the fighting forces and participated in armed combat. In both wars, the high percentage of women’s involvement signified their admittance into new spaces that challenged and expanded their traditionally determined gender roles. For many women, this access to agency and power within the patriarchal context of a military hierarchy represented an opportunity to claim power within the new nation. This apparent marriage of nationalism to women’s liberation created a strong rupture from their highly gender-divided traditional societies and promised extremely progressive postwar reform. The realization of gender equality for female combatants in both countries, however, proved to be a more complex and nuanced process than the sudden, radical reform first presented by the militarization of women. This paper examines the complicated manner in which women’s identities and gender roles were constructed and perceived within two revolutionary groups—Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and Zimbabwe National African Union (ZANU) and its associated guerilla force, Zimbabwe National African Liberation Army (ZANLA).

While both Eritrean and Zimbabwean women experienced an expansion of gender roles, the associated elevation in status was much more pronounced for Eritrean women. Correspondingly, women in Eritrea gained greater social and political liberties, as well as greater recognition for their contributions than women in Zimbabwe. This paper explores the various levels of perception of women’s participation within EPLF and ZANLA by statements made in official discourse, through media, fiction, as well as by the women themselves. In doing so, this paper seeks to capture the various constructions and reconstructions of gender at the guerilla camps and in post-war society. I argue that the greatest distinction between the widespread gender equality within the EPLF and the strict gender divisions within ZANLA arose primarily from Eritrean women’s incorporation into the fighter identity. I further contend that the access to this sphere was primarily granted through social perception.

Overview of the War of Independence in Eritrea (1961-1991)

The history of the war begins with Eritrea’s colonial past. From 1890-1941, Eritrea was Italian colony and from 1941-1951, a British Protectorate. In trying to dispose of the former Italian colonial order, the UN sponsored a federation between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1952. Although there had been mounting tension between the two nations, it was not until Emperor Haile annexed Eritrea, in 1962 (annulling the ten-year federation) that the conflict developed into a war. For the next three decades, Eritrea fought for its independence from Ethiopia in a long and costly struggle. During the first decade of the war, the nationalist cause was championed by the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF)—a guerrilla force, which consisted primarily of Muslims from the rural West and North. Since Eritrea has equal number of Muslims and Christians, Muslims feared the concentrated power of Ethiopia’s Christians would jeopardize their political representation. For this reason, the main concern of the ELF’s was independence from Ethiopia. The organization, in Roy Pateman’s words did not “concern itself unduly with social change” (Pateman 18: 1990). As the more educated urban-dwellers and Christians joined the struggle, the ELF became internally divided along ideological lines. Tensions rose between the newcomers and the founding group, which resulted in the emergence of a new and independent movement, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) in the 1970’s (Bernal 2000; Pateman 1990). Unlike the ELF, the EPLF sought to fundamentally transform Eritrean society and restructure the nation through socialism and elimination of class inequality (NUEW 1991; Silkin 1983). An Eritrean brand of socialism was implemented at the base camp and liberated areas, which included literacy campaigns, political education, in addition to progressive social reform (such as the elimination of female genital cutting). Part of the EPLF’s political agenda and war strategy included the heavy recruitment of women, beginning in 1973, as well as the promotion of gender equality.

Overview of the Zimbabwe War of Liberation (1966-1979)

From 1890-1965, Zimbabwe was a British colony governed by a white settler minority. From the late fifties until the start of the war, tension had been mounting between African nationalist groups and the European population (O’ Gorman 2011: 56). Early nationalist movements that formed, such as the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress and the National Democratic Party, were crushed by the colonial regime. By 1963, however, the two primary liberation fronts had crystallized—Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which can be thought of as analogous to the ELF and Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which can be thought of as analogous to the EPLF. Like EPLF, ZANU was the larger and more socially progressive liberation movement. In 1965, the settler state of Rhodesia governed by Prime Minister, Ian Smith, declared its independence from Britain. One year later, ZANU and the Rhodesian forces clashed in the Battle of Sinoia, marking the start of the liberation war (O’Gorman 2011: 56, Bhebe 1995: 26). Though ZANU was not as radically socialist as the EPLF, it actively recruited women into its military branch, Zimbabwe National Liberation Army, (ZANLA). Further, ZANU which was the larger and more important organization in the struggle had a higher amount of female soldiers than ZIPRA, as well as championed women’s rights. Therefore, this paper will primarily discuss female combatants in ZANU as it will primarily discuss the female combatants in EPLF.

Women’s Participation in EPLF

The EPLF began actively recruiting women to join the struggle in the early 1970’s. Over the course of the following two decades, women became heavily involved and fully incorporated within all spheres of the EPLF. They filled a diverse range of positions with the organization—from cooks and cleaners to fighters and commanders. The only true institutionalized gender division during the first six months of service in which men and women received separate training (Pateman 1990: 125). In an interview with my aunt, former guerrilla fighter war veteran Abeba, she stressed the absence of gender bias in EPLF practices. She proudly informed me, “women participated in all the areas in the liberation movement, even as tank drivers, and night guards.” Abeba further noted that even the hardest tasks, such as carrying water from a distance were given with no accommodation for gender. There was so little fear of transgression that the night watch was just as often two men as it was two women or a man and a woman. The National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW), a women’s advocacy group that formed within the EPLF, corroborates Abeba’s statements in their official policy. Their pamphlet reads, in the guerrilla front “each person is given a task best suited to his or her abilities; one can see men cooking, sewing...just as one can see women…working as carpenters or mechanics” (NUEW1981: 14). The emphasis on men in domestic tasks further underlines the convergence of the traditionally male and female spheres, not merely the incorporation of women into the male sphere.

In her analysis, Sondra Hale further emphasizes the warm and egalitarian nature of gender relations within the EPLF. She observes, “women and men lived communally with little or no privacy. They shared in all of the domestic tasks and enjoyed a large measure of camaraderie” (Hale 2000: 354). What Hale and Abeba imply is that at the guerrilla camps, there was no separation between male and female spaces. Furthermore, women were not only treated as equals, but also included within the EPLF in nearly equivalent numbers. Sondra Hale reports that women made up “40 percent of the fighters and 30 percent of the combat force by the 1980’s…80 percent of the dentists, some 30 percent of the transportation electricians; and 43 percent of the barefoot doctors” (Hale 2000: 5). These figures reveal women’s level of structural integration into all spheres of the EPLF—the auxiliary, the military, the mechanical, etc. In this way, women were not only incorporated into one domain of the EPLF, but into the various hierarchies within the organization as well. There could be no distinction made between men and women based on occupation alone.

Women’s integration within the EPLF was due in part to the party’s strong socialist ideology. The EPLF sought more than just liberation; they aimed to “transform Eritrean society” (Pateman 2000: 120). Their objective was to dismantle the Ethiopian feudal system, as well as establish gender (and general) equality. At the base and in liberated areas, the EPLF instituted education and literacy programs, as well as progressive social reforms for women, including “the promulgation of progressive marriage and family laws, and the development of a women's organization” (Silkin 1983: 2). Some of these reforms included the power for women to divorce their husbands, property rights for women, and the de-stigmatization of extra-marital sex (Silkin 1983; Bernal 2000). For the traditional Eritrean society where practices of genital cutting were widespread and women had little say in choice of marriage partner, these reforms were incredibly modernizing.

In addition to the structural integration and social elevation of women fighters, female combatants experienced a physical integration as well. In a metaphoric parallel to their social transformation, women fighters physically transformed their appearance so that it was indistinguishable from that of men. One journalist noted, “the slenderness of their [female soldiers] figures and the thick, bushy hairstyles, similar to those sported by their men comrades, make it difficult to distinguish between girls and boys” (Curnow 2000: 38). The most significant aspect of this shift in appearance from female to male is what it reveals about shifts in the treatment and status of men. The lack of male and female space within the EPLF and the incorporation of women within the EPLF were perhaps not a transcendence of a gender binary, but a homogenization of them. The process of militarization could therefore be interpreted as one that subsumes gender identity under fighter identity.

Women’s Participation in ZANLA

Unlike the unqualified inclusion and acknowledgement of women within EPLF, the number of women who were in ZANLA represents a politicized debate. The highest estimate is found in Naomi Nhiwatiwa’s assertion that 1/3 of ZANLA was female, which would equal around 6,600 fighters (Nhiwatiwa 1982: 249). Julia Zvogbo, on the other end of the spectrum estimates that there were only between 1,5000-2,000 trained women in total (Lyons 2004: 159). This ambiguity first points to inadequate documentation and record keeping within ZANU. More significantly, the uncertainty in number of women equally creates a space for the retroactive glorification of women participation in war, as well as the exclusion of women from participation in war. Furthermore, this debate about numbers centers around women’s active contribution to the nation-building process and their claim to power in the new nation. It is therefore, not the exact numerical value of women who fired guns during the war, which is important by the political and social perception of women as fighters. For this reason, the widely acknowledged participation of Eritrean women in the national struggle compared to the highly disputed involvement of Zimbabwean women reflects a key difference in women’s entitlement to power within these two countries.

Though Zimbabwean women certainly participated in all spheres of ZANLA, women were only recognized for certain roles they filled within the organization. Those most commonly emphasized by scholars are that of chimbwidos, or porters and messengers (Nhongo 2000; Lyons 2004; O’Gorman 2011; Staunton 1990). According to one of the first scholars allowed access to the ZANU archives, Gavi Nhongo-Simbane,  “ZANLA deliberately recruited women, but not for combat duties. ZANLA leaders allocated women roles as cooks, nurses and above all, as porters and carriers” (Nhongo 2000: xx). She later elaborates, “Although some women were…fighting as armed guerrillas, they never constituted more than a small component” (Nhongo 2000: xxi). Similarly, Lyons enumerates the more common occupations of ZANLA women who supported the struggle—“teachers, nurses, mothers, and chimbwidos” (Lyons 2004: 161). Another perspective on women’s participation is given by Ranchod-Nilsson’s discussion of the often-overlooked role of women in rural areas. She asserts that they supported the guerrilla soldiers in less recognized, but equally as important ways such as carrying food, sadza, disguised as a baby out to the guerrillas, as well as lending them clothes for disguise (Tetreault 1994: 75). Though all of these various occupations were crucial to the functioning of the guerrilla camps, they retain distinctly a civilian characteristic. Furthermore, the restriction of women to these tasks inherently feminized them. Therefore, women’s exclusion from the position of armed combatant divided the military base into strict spheres of gender associated with labor.

Separate male and female occupations not only generated a social gender divide, but fostered a spatial division as well. The tasks of women were primarily restricted to the base camps or to relatively low-risk zones at the frontlines. They participated in ZANLA to the extent that they participated in the home—cooking, cleaning, and carrying—though under drastically different conditions. Still, the gendered division of labor allowed for the exclusion of women from the male warrior sphere quite literally. Nhongo maintains that as soon as “there was the slightest indication that the enemy’s offensive in an area was gaining momentum, ZANLA responded by withdrawing women” (Nhongo 2000: 82). Therefore, even at the front, women were actively confined to the (relatively) private sphere that was physically distinct from public sphere male warriors had access to—the zone of combat. ZANLA, in essence, reproduced the same cultural norms of civil society at their base camps and the frontlines. In contrast to EPLF’s exploitation of the physical distance between traditional society and the guerrilla movement to create alternate social norms, ZANLA attempted to diminish the effects of the spatial and social separation of these two realms. This confinement to traditional gender roles rendered the ZANLA female fighter unable to gain access to the highly masculinized warrior identity unlike her EPLF counterpart.

Another aspect of women’s exclusion from the fighter identity was the emphasis placed on the women’s roles as mothers. In ZANU literature and other Zimbabwean publications the term “mothers of the revolution” appears frequently. For example, the title of a Zimbabwe Review article reads “Women are Breast Feeding the Revolution” (cited in Lyons 2004: 141). Another piece of propaganda features a photo woman carrying a large sack depicts the words “Where are our mothers? We fought for our freedom, together we can reclaim it.” Breast-feeding and the idea of the mother evoke a compliant passivity that reduces women to their biological role as child-bearer. This choice of language denies women the possibility of recognition for the active, as well as violent nature of their participation in the war. It conflates all their wartime tasks and occupations with their place as a nurturer in traditional society. The rhetoric of motherhood and the evocation of breast-feeding appear strongly incongruent with the variety of positions women held at the front, the base, and at home.

The dissonance is even more pronounced in a collection of interviews with women, many of whom were leaders in their area and chimbwidos. The work is titled Mothers of the Revolution. The interviews, however, reveal that women were involved in the struggle in a wide variety of ways that extended far beyond the associated duties of motherhood. In one woman’s interview she claims, “The war would have not been won without the women” (Staunton 1990: 72). Many of the other women interviewed make similar assertions. Even within the confining framework of the book, these women deny that their only contribution was to birth and care for the guerrilla fighters. This same woman underlines the importance of the ‘domestic’-seeming roles of many women filled to the success of the war. “The comrades would have not been able to shoot a gun if they hadn’t been fed” she states, “We cooked for them, washed their clothes, and even protected them, because it was we who gave them information about the security forces” (Staunton 2000: 72). This woman thus rejects the idea that these tasks associated with ‘motherhood’ were in some required or merely inactive choices. She refuses to be confined to the restrictive identity of mother, which negates any female agency. This rhetorical project, however, represents a similar one to the denial of women’s involvement in direct combat. It is a further manipulation of social perception that worked to reinforce the gender distinctions between the public and the domestic sphere even in base camps and at the front.

Key Differences

Several interrelated factors explain why more women were recruited to the EPLF, as well why these same women attained a higher level of gender equality than in ZANLA. One important (if not obvious factor) Sondra Hale notes is the “length and intensity of the [Eritrean] struggle” (Hale 353: 1996). As a country with a population of 5 million compared to Ethiopia’s 80 million, Eritrea needed to recruit as many fighters as possible to sustain the nearly 30-year war. Furthermore, the unusually long duration of the war reinforced the division between the warriors and the civilians through temporal and spatial isolation. By the end of the war, a combatant may have lived in a sphere utterly removed from domestic life anywhere from 1-30 years. One of my uncles, for example, joined the front when he was 15 and spent the next 15 years in battle. It therefore cannot be overlooked that an entire generation in Eritrea grew up at the guerrilla front. The effects of the physical distance of the front from civil society were compounded by the ideological separation from traditional society. The EPLF’s radical socialist ideals fostered the creation of a completely autonomous sphere with distinct social norms. The guerrilla camps’ utter detachment from civil society transformed the base into a prolonged social experiment, which flourished under the extremity of war conditions.

Another important aspect that distinguishes the women fighters in Zimbabwe from those in Eritrea was status-related recognition. The acknowledgement of Eritrean women as armed combatants allowed them to be perceived as active warriors instead of limiting them to the sphere of domestic mothering. These female fighters were able to transcend gender divides through this acceptance. Women in ZANLA, however, remained restricted to the feminine and private sphere. Mary Ann Tetreault emphasizes the significance of direct combat in nationalist struggles in her assertion that “the legitimacy of group demands after a revolution” are determined at least in part by “what the group is perceived to have earned by the blood of its members” (Tetreault 1994: 19). Tanya Lyon glosses this concept as one of equality of citizenship though ‘blood payments’—a term which I will borrow (Lyons 2000).  These blood payments represent the sacrifice combatants in a revolutionary struggle ‘paid,’ which allows them to figuratively buy their way into the emergent power structures. Blood payments purposefully exclude civilians in their demand for an active participation in violence. They rank loss of flesh or other physical causalities at the war front higher than the trauma and atrocities committed against civilians. In this way, the blood payment serves as an initiation into citizenship—something all Eritrean guerrillas fighters (male and female shared) that distinguished them from civilians of both genders.

The active inclusion of Eritrean women as warriors allowed them to share in these bonds of blood payments that enabled them (at least the front) to maintain a similar status as male fighters. In Zimbabwe, the restriction of women to roles of messengers, cooks, and more ‘domestic’ support positions in official policy denied them the ability to make these same blood payments. From interviews with women in ZANLA and even public discussions with Teurai Ropa, it is clear that many women were involved in direct combat (Lyons 2004; Lyons 1996; O’ Gorman 2011). Though they were not recruited to fight against the enemy, women’s residence at guerrilla bases and their transportation of weapons made them as much a target as any man. One former combatant tells of her own experience in direct combat, “Near the border, we were carrying the materials and the commander said, there is the enemy in our front, you can defend yourself…. I am the one who was shooting! I am the one, [although] I didn't say I am the one who made more killings” (Lyons 1996: 3). This female fighter’s statement encompasses the experience of many women who were compelled to take up arms in defense. In this way, ZANLA women fighters’ use of guns and involvement in the violence of war allowed them to temporarily access the sphere of fighter through their deeds. The language of defense, however, permanently restricted their actions as exceptional instances of acceptable retaliation. They were therefore denied social recognition as a group for their participation in the warrior sphere. Thus, it is not access to weapons or use of violence that distinguishes the warrior from auxiliary support, but an individual or a group’s perceived agency.

In Zimbabwe, the perception of women and the majority of their involvement would classify them as what D’Amico’s calls ‘servicewomen.’ She asserts that these women who morally support male soldiers and refrain from combat roles “reinforce the ‘differentness of gender’” through “the specific training given to men and women, and the particular tasks they are assigned” (D’Amico 1991: 378). By participating in the highly gendered structure of the military, ZANLA women legitimized the male fighter identity and the highly masculine structure of the military. Further, these women proved their female gender identity to be more rigid than that of the male. During war, Zimbabwean men were able to transcend their role as civilians and commit legitimized violence in the exceptional circumstance of war. The Zimbabwean women, on the other hand, increased the inflexibility of gender roles through their inability to attain this same transcendence in spite of the exceptional circumstances.

Representations of Women Fighters

Since the most pronounced difference in the levels of gender equality attained by women in the EPLF and ZANLA resulted not from sheer number of participants, but from perception of women as fighters, it is important to consider how women were portrayed in the media, as well as in the guerilla camps. In both ZANU and EPLF propaganda, women were prominently featured in or mimicking combat. In one particular EPLF poster, a muscular woman with a short afro and military attire is drawn holding a grenade (Connell 1991). Her taut body is poised in an active contrapposto about to launch the grenade; her face is strained in angry grimace, as if yelling. This piece of propaganda challenges the viewers’ expectations by portraying a visceral violence in her face and body that is normally associated with men. Another EPLF image is a photograph of two uniform-clad women raising their guns in a victorious salute (Connell 1991). while yet another depicts a young woman in traditional dress carrying a gun slung across her shoulder in a pose reminiscent of carrying a baby (Khaleeli 2010). These first two images play with the expected gender of their subjects by inserting a woman into the typically masculine role of fighter. The image of the traditionally dressed woman is aimed at shocking the viewer even more by its disruption of the cultural binary of mother and warrior. In a more explicit manner than the other media, this photo exploits our assumptions that femininity is associated with passivity, the domestic, the protected by its emphasis on woman’s sexuality and roles as mothers. It stands in contrast to many of the other photos of EPLF female combatants in which EPLF fighters of both genders, the women are almost indistinguishable from men in their haircut, uniform, and weaponry.

There also seemed to be a high volume of women photographed compared to men. This discrepancy underlines a cultural and global understanding of a certain discomfort and disturbance from our everyday reality. Just as seeing men in drag performing an exaggerated femininity unsettle us, these images of ‘masculinized’ women purposefully challenge our conception of gender. By adopting symbols associated with masculinity—guns and uniforms—and posing in typically masculine displays of power (such as raising a gun), the photographs paradoxically prevail in calling a greater attention to women’s sexuality than they succeed in dismissing it. They further represent the incorporation of women into a patriarchal sphere in which women ‘perform’ male gender in order to gain acceptance into the fraternity of the military and to a greater extent, the nation. This problematic rendering of women suggests a possible explanation for why equality at the battlefront was not matched by equality in civilian life—militarized women assumed male identities as individuals, instead of gaining acceptance as a community of women.

In ZANU media, propaganda and photography, the message they seek to communicate and their portrayal of women is similar to the EPLF. In one article of the ZANU publication, Zimbabwe News, Teurai Ropa4 is photographed in military attire with her legs splayed open in a masculine display of confidence and a gun casually falling across her torso (ZANU 1987: 23). In another Zimbabwe News article, a young girl is shown holding a gun almost the size of her body over her head (ZANU 1987: 23). Similar to the EPLF photos, these photos, on the surface, both glorify women’s involvement, as well as encourage women to join the struggle. On a deeper level, the photo of Teurai Ropa further emphasizes female sexuality through its contrast with the blatant, overstated masculinity of the subject. The image of the young girl, similar to the traditional Eritrean women, challenges the victimhood and submissiveness associated with children (especially girls) through her demonstration of violence and power.

On the whole, the similar portrayal of women in ZANU, which included significantly less women than EPLF, as well as gave less recognition to these women, seems to be contradictory to their official rhetoric. During the war, Teurai Ropa is quoted in a speech saying “on the military side, women were going into combat at the front in large numbers” (Lyons 2004: 167). She later retracted her statement explaining “it was expedient to promote the idea [of female involvement] to Western solidarity groups” (Lyons 2004: 167). Nhongo confirms this interpretation: “as ZANU gradually achieved recognition as an authentic liberation movement, its members started receiving invitations from sympathetic countries…ZANU exploited such occasions to spread the story of its success with gender reform” (Nhongo 2000: 2). She further elaborates that women in the camps were not aware of their portrayal since “in the camps…distribution of Zimbabwe News was limited” (Nhongo 2000: 4). Therefore, the presentation of women and the high level of integration depicted in the media are not indicative of women’s actual experience in ZANU or the EPLF.

Media produced by these two organizations instead reflects more significantly how they wanted to be regarded and by what audience than to their actual practices. As Lyons notes the ZANU propaganda featured “women in combat poses rather than actually in combat” (Lyons 2004: 162). In the same way, propaganda and photographs reveal the desired appearance of ZANU and the EPLF rather than the reality of the how these two organizations functioned. It was furthermore a tactic to attract women to join the liberation front. The propaganda also exploited the sensationalism and image of progress inclusion of women fighters presented to garner international support. Media portrayals of Zimbabwean and Eritrean women, therefore, were entirely contained to a separate realm of social perception that had little impact on women’s experiences within the guerrilla movements. They instead demonstrated both guerrilla fronts’ willingness to advocate for progressive ideals that would earn them sympathy and support from the global community without having to put them into practice. Promotion of gender equality could therefore be construed as a strategy to legitimize the causes of the EPLF and ZANU.

Eritrea After the War

Within the EPLF base camp and liberated areas, the EPLF’s brand of socialism extended a multitude of freedoms and rights to women that they were traditionally denied—choice of marriage partner, ability to own land, de-stigmatization of sex before marriage, abolition of genital cutting, etc. The acceptance of these policies was due in no small part to the active women’s organization, NUEW and the revolutionary leaders’ dedication to engendering a true cultural revolution as part of their national independence. The reality even directly after the war, however, did not reflect revolutionary change in regards to gender. In Sondra Hale’s analysis, 5 women out of a 74 member assembly were elected in the Gash-Barka region of Eritrea, 19 out of a 67 person assembly were elected in Anseba, 23 women out of 73 in Debub, and in the general election only 4 women ran for assembly out of 318 people (Hale 2001: 359). Besides political underrepresentation, women were confined to their traditional roles in society and submission to patriarchal authority within the family and the nation.

A possible explanation for why women’s expansion of their gender role within the military did not extend to the sphere of the nation can be understood by looking at the structure of the military. The military generally is an institution that has a strongly patriarchal hierarchy, as well as promotes brutality, violence, severity, strength—qualities all associated with an excess of archetypal masculinity (Weber 2011). While all those enlisted underwent a physical and psychological transformation to conform to the identity of the fighter, this image was much more easily transposable to civilian life for men. For women in Eritrea, the strong contrast made it difficult to sustain in a traditional society. A female Eritrean war veteran eloquently phrases this inconsistency, “Upon re-entering [civil] society, we find that we are liberated but not free. In the field [the military struggle] we were not liberated, but [we were] free” (Hale 2001: 349). Her use of liberated refers only to the national struggle for independence or liberation from Ethiopia, while freedom refers to the expansion of gender roles and rights gained during the war. Her language, however, posits the cause of women’s equality in opposition to the national liberation cause. This subtle wording captures the relationship of the women’s liberation movement and the Eritrean people’s liberation movement. Women’s equality was an intermediate objective to advance the larger political agenda—independence and therefore its continuation depended on an indefinite period of battle. Once the war was over, the freedom of women was abandoned for the higher goal of liberation for all people.

In my interview with Abeba, she echoes this sentiment. “The goal was to have Eritrea independent, and this one goal has to work out for the both [men and women]. This objective was very important to both women and men.” In her statement, Abeba underlines the hierarchy of objectives within the EPLF’s multifaceted approach to revolution. Liberation from Ethiopia was clearly the highest and most important aim of the EPLF. Zerai, another woman fighter, frames the issue with the social program of the EPLF in this way, “according to the EPLF, to end women's oppression the creation of socialist Eritrea was a precondition" (Zerai 1994:6). EPLF’s hierarchy of objectives—independence before political socialism before social equality—meant that the achievement of equal rights for women ranked low in the order of priority.

While Zerai frames the EPLF’s goals generously, Victoria Bernal questions the authenticity of the EPLF’s dedication to changing the status of women. She understands the NEUW and the liberation of women fighters as a means to an end for the “male-led, male-dominated EPLF which took up certain issues concerning the status of women and mobilized women to achieve its predetermined goal of national independence” (Bernal 2000: 66). Bernal accuses the EPLF of emphasizing causes important to women to further its own agenda. By offering the opportunity to achieve a higher social status to their fighters, the EPLF could attract a large number of soldiers. This tactic may sound disingenuous, but it directly parallels the guarantee of free education granted by the US government to World War II veterans. It is not surprising, only disappointing that equality for women would be used in this way, too.

In addition to the EPLF’s utilization of women’s issues, the isolation of the military sphere decreased the longevity of women’s transformed status. During the war, the guerrilla front’s social and physical distance from civil society created the perfect conditions for radical social reform. Within this socialist and egalitarian sphere, women were given access to power and agency in new ways. This military bubble, however, was largely an exceptional space. I noticed that even in my aunt Abeba’s unconscious language, she refers to the guerrilla base camps and front as a “society by [themselves],” or a “confined society,” while the civilians constituted “the other society.” Abeba’s words affirm exactly what D’Amico and Tetreault imply—the most significant boundary in military environments are not the common divisions of quotidian life, such as class or gender; it is the binary of the civilian and the soldier. This separation, which during the war reinforced the alternate norms of the military sphere, at the same time prevented these norms from translating into rights within civil society.

Women in Postwar Zimbabwe

In Eritrea, the involvement of women in the struggle and their political organization was more pronounced (at least during the war). In the case of Zimbabwe, however, at no point in time was the full extent of women’s participation in the liberation struggle recognized, nor were gender norms ever significantly altered. The postwar experience of women in Zimbabwe also differed from that of Eritrean women. Eritrean news reports emphasize women’s contributions in war and women’s rights were written into the new constitution (Bernal 2000: 75). Similarly, organizations like NEUW worked to incorporate (with arguably limited success) women into the emerging power structures. Abeba, along with other female Eritrean fighters continue to be widely acknowledged as national heroes. Their heroism is recognized and is continually acknowledged years after the war. This is evidenced, for example, by erecting “memorial paintings in various corners of the country so as to popularize the role of Eritrean women in various domains” (Shabait 2013). Memorial paintings are little recompense for Eritrean women’s omission from the government and positions of power. They are however, a striking contrast to the Zimbabwean government’s denial that women were involved in direct combat.

In Zimbabwe, women were largely denied the status of war veteran and hero because of their exclusion from the fighter realm. One woman interviewee recognizes the hypocrisy in the distinction between combatants and chimbwidos, asking “How could I be called a 'terrorist' then and today I can't be called a hero with my fellow comrades?” (Lyons 1996: 22). This woman notes that women were exempt from attacks, wounding, or death at the camps, even if they were not ‘recruited for combat.’  They were neither exempt from vilification by the Rhodesians nor privileged to kinder treatment by them. Through their direct involvement, women were therefore able to transcend gender divides in their characterization as the enemy. This same participation, however, did not gain them recognition of their agency by their own country. Another woman expresses her frustration at being denied hero status and benefits in similar terms. She asks, “since I was chimbwido, I did do a lot of important things during the war and I thought I would receive more than what I am seeing today” (Staunton 1990: 59). In Mothers of the Revolution, the sentiment of women being forgotten is echoed many times throughout. One woman Tanya Lyons interviewed asserts, “Yes I am a hero…when I die [the government] will pay for my funeral” to which Lyons adds “but that’s all, there will be no public acknowledgement of her efforts” (Lyons 1996: 23).

The complexities of female heroism in Zimbabwe that are largely ignored at a national level are instead explored thoroughly in the fictional. In the creative sphere, women express their disillusionment after the war, as well as reflect on lesser talked about realities. The film, Flame, for example, tells the story of a strong-willed female fighter, Flame. In the base camp, she champions women’s causes to the male authorities, as well as bombs a Rhodesian jeep on her own initiative. Though Flame’s actions declare her to be a defiant woman warrior, her motivations throughout the film are archetypically ‘female.’ She states that one of her main reasons for joining the rebel force was to rejoin her love interest, male fighter. Flame is also extremely sexualized through male recognition of her beauty and the pride she takes in her feminine appearance. Flame further comes to love and form a relationship with an official who used higher military status to rape her. The contradiction in the character of Flame represents a larger contradiction of the gender identity of women in ZANU. The film ends with Flame watching a national hero celebration with a former fighter friend of hers, bitter at their exclusion from the ceremony but privately acknowledging their own heroism amongst friends. Similar to some of the women interviewed, Flame feels pride at her achievement in spite of her marginalization.

In the fictional account of “Justice and Mercy,” Sarah Maitland explores these two concepts Justice and Mercy symbolically through the naming of her two main characters—Justice and Mercy. Justice is the blind child of a War of Liberation veteran, Neme. Neme expresses her discontent at being a “[Hero] of the Nation,” a “redundant hero” in a post-war society in which “there are no jobs…for a woman trained in the handling of high explosives, who has commanded others to kill, who has killed her herself, who has a disease and a blind child” (Maitland 1993: 145). Neme emphasizes the experience of being forgotten and left out of a new social order, which she helped to create. Her child, Justice, symbolizes the fairness in treatment of women after the war—“a child of sorrows...frail, tough, enduring, a child destined for the rise and fall of many in that land and beyond its borders” (Maitland 1993: 145). In this fictional context, Maitland explores the discontent of many and the incomplete victories won for women like Neme.

Conclusion

Both the nationalist liberation movements of Eritrea and Zimbabwe allowed women to participate in the traditionally masculine sphere of the military. Their involvement gave them access to power through the traditional symbols and behaviors of fighters—the use of weapons, display of uniforms, and use of violence. For female fighters in the EPLF, these exertions of power allowed them to penetrate the highly masculinized fighter identity within the social conscious. It allowed them to transcend the gender confines of traditional society in a way that ZANLA fighters were never given recognition for. In the end, however, women’s expansion of gender roles and opportunity for empowerment fostered by the extremity of war were diminished upon demobilization in the traditional societies of both Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

The end of the war, however, does not constitute the end of the movement for women’s equality. While the government may have marginalized the contributions of women in Zimbabwe and Eritrea, women themselves reclaim their heroism. Abeba, though cognizant of shortcomings of Eritrean traditional society ended her discussion with me, saying “Overall, a lot of things have improved. For a country to move forward, education is the most important thing. Since 1991, number of girls education, has risen. I think a lot of work has still to be done though.” The same feeling is held by a number of women interviewed from Zimbabwe. One states “I do not think the war would have been won without the women. It was a very big role that they played…now women have to liberate themselves” (Staunton 1990: 66). The spirit of women’s empowerment is further celebrated in the closing scenes in Flame in which women acknowledge their own victories. Through speech, education, and the world of fiction and media, these women continue to explore and negotiate their place in postwar society. Therefore the denial of equal representation of women within the Eritrean government and the exclusion of Zimbabwean women from hero status do not represent a failure for or on the part of women. Instead, these two case studies reveal that there is no shortcut to social reform. The historical and cultural roles of women are not reshaped through one exceptional demonstration of ability, but have to be won and worked through at the level of the local, as well as the military and political.

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