“As a woman of Zimbabwe, I personally wanted a Constitution that is fit for me,” said Zimbabwe’s Deputy Minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development and Member of Parliament, Jessie Majome, who participated in Zimbabwe’s Constitution-making process as part of the Select Committee of Parliament that facilitated the process.
In an overwhelming endorsement, 95 per cent of Zimbabweans (3,079,966) voted yes to a draft Constitution in a referendum on 16 March – a vote 10 years in the making. As the results were announced, congratulations messages circulated through telephone calls, e-mails, and SMS exchanges among Zimbabwean women, who were actively involved. Since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, women have lobbied arduously to be treated as equal citizens with equal entitlements before the law.