As the world enters the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, Zim Now is taking a different path.
While global campaigns follow this year’s international theme, our newsroom is launching a Zimbabwe-first, brutally honest series shaped by what our own coverage, our own communities, and our own audiences tell us every day.
For years, we have reported on GBV from every angle—homes, workplaces, churches, schools, WhatsApp groups, rural communities, and online spaces. And one reality keeps confronting us:
This truth rarely fits neatly into global toolkits, donor statements, or internationally curated campaign themes—so it is often ignored.
This year, we are not forcing Zimbabwe’s stories into a prepackaged script written elsewhere.
We are speaking directly to the issues that our readers, our reporters, and our mothers, daughters, sisters, and social media communities confront daily.
The global theme is important—but it is not always complete.
Zimbabwe’s story is different. Our social dynamics are different.
Our triggers, our silences, our cultural pressures, and our coping mechanisms are different.
To be effective, discussion must be contextual. It must be local. It must be honest about the problems happening right in front of us—even when those problems make us uncomfortable.
And on this first day we look at the most uncomfortable truth, often swept under the rug:
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Women also harm, shame, bully, silence, and judge other women—and this too is gender-based violence.
From schoolgirls fighting as crowds that include other girls cheer them on, to wives advising each other to “endure for the marriage,” to women who trivialize abuse, to gossip-driven reputational destruction, to mothers who excuse their sons while demonizing their sons’ partners, to sisters who incite violence in their brothers’ relationships, to female church leaders who are part of the enabling culture—these are Zimbabwe’s own battlefields.
We cannot change what we cannot name.
The Campaign: 16 Uncomfortable Truths
Every day, from 25 November to 10 December, Zim Now will publish one “uncomfortable truth”—a real Zimbabwean pattern of harsh facts we need to confront as a society in a format that includes:
- A practical call to action
- A community-level solution
- An institutional change recommendation
We are not out to blame.
The aim is to empower women to reclaim the narrative, recognize internalized patterns, and rebuild healthier systems of support.
This campaign is about agency, not victimhood.
Zim Now’s Call
This year let’s talk honestly.
Let’s challenge the behaviors we normalize.
Together, let’s disrupt the cycle so that the next generations are free.
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