by STANLEY KWENDA
In 2008, Alice Kasirori* was raped by four men during the violent run-off in the presidential elections. Rape was the price she paid for her husband’s political activism and resulted in the pregnancy of her third child.
A mother of three, Kasirori lives in fear that her husband will discover her third child, a son, is not his.
“My son is a result of rape. I don’t know his father, because I was raped by four men in one night,” she said tearfully.
As she spoke, a helper from the Musasa Project, a Zimbabwe-based organisation helping victims of gender based violence, tried to console her.
“My husband does not know. I can’t tell him about it. I am sure he will kick me out of the house,” she said.
According to the Musasa project, Headlands – the area from which Kasirori hailed, located in the east of Zimbabwe – was the political battlefield which left many women scarred in similar emotional and physical ways.
Often, rape is systemically used to target male political activists through their wives.
The majority of men who had their wives raped in politically motivated circumstances usually divorced them once they got to know of it.
Their decisions are motivated by societal reactions to rape, where the woman is usually accused of having invited the act on herself.
In very few and rare cases does a man stand by his wife.
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