Stephen Fry to host money-raiser for sanitary products for Zimbabwean women

Howard Lake | 12 May 2006 | Newswire

On the 26th May 2006 at London’s 20th Century Theatre, Anna Chancellor and Niamh Cusack present A Night to Remember” an eclectic and entertaining evening of comedy, music, dance and poetry. The aim: to raise awareness and urgent funds to benefit the women of Zimbabwe through a UK based campaign Dignity! Period run by Action for Southern Africa.
The 20th Century Theatre, an unusual Victorian jewel set in the heart of Notting Hill, will be bathed in a moonlit glow and bedecked with flowers, for an exceptional cabaret evening.
This delicious evening will be co-hosted by Stephen Fry and Julia Morris. Performers will include: singer/songwriter Julia Biel, poets Patience Agbabi, Wendy Cope, Jean Binta Breeze and Selina Saliva, singer Doreen Thobekile, composer/musician Barry Adamson, Jock Scott, actors Patrick Barlow, Diana Quick, Prunella Scales, Chipo Chung, Niamh Cusack and singer Jean Claude.
This unique event will raise funds to provide desperately needed sanitary products for the women of Zimbabwe. Not an easy topic to discuss – but vital! The manufacturing companies of these products were forced to leave Zimbabwe in 1999 – and the knock-on effect has had dire consequences. Millions of women have had no choice but to resort to desperate measures, including the use of newspapers and unsanitary rags. Strict water rationing in Zimbabwe means that sanitising the cloth they use is often impossible. Their predicament is not only humiliating but also dangerous. Women are contracting serious infections and subsequent abuse from their husbands who, through a lack of education, assume that the infections are sexually transmitted.
The price of a month’s imported supply now costs roughly £9, and the average monthly wage for an employed woman is just £12. Unemployment however is about 80%, and inflation at over 900%
Every thousand pounds raised by the Dignity! Period campaign will pay for 25,000 sanitary products. Currently the campaign is targeting a million women, rising eventually to 3 million.
For the past five and a half years an incredibly brave and determined individual, Thabitha Khumalo the General Secretary of the Women’s Advisory Council of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), has been battling for the basic right of the women of her country to have affordable access to adequate sanitary products. In October 2005 working with ACTSA (UK based Action for Southern Africa), they created the solidarity campaign, which aims to return the women of Zimbabwe their dignity Dignity! Period.
In a political and economic climate where fundamental human rights have been eroded and where the people’s will to fight the bullying corruption of the Mugabe dictatorship is consistently being beaten down and undermined, Thabitha believes that that this seeming trivial problem will ultimately affect everyone in Zimbabwe.
Thabitha argues that if Zimbabwe’s women and girls take a week per month off work or school, ultimately there will be social and economic consequences – decreased productivity levels and a loss of education.
To have sanitary products is a right every woman should have. Women are multi-talented; they are brilliant leaders and excellent organisers, but society in Zimbabwe does not give women equal status to men. Women are not treated as peers and yet women provide a national duty to their country, they give birth to children who may one day be the next president and they should be afforded equal respect.”
When Thabitha endeavored to speak of this topic in Parliament, she was openly laughed at and derided. Thabitha has been imprisoned many times for standing up for her beliefs. She has been beaten, tortured, kidnapped, humiliated, sexually abused and yet her will remains undiminished.
Thabitha Khumalo believes that this health crisis is symbolic: that if the campaigners win the right to distribute and continue to provide these goods for the women of Zimbabwe (60% of the 13 million population) they will return to the women the courage and conviction to fight for the other rights that have been denied them, their husbands and their children.
There is light at the end of the tunnel! Yesterday the Dignity! Period. campaign succeeded in delivering one million sanitary products donated by South Africans to ZCTU officials who are to methodically distribute them free of charge to women in Zimbabwe. The products will be handed out and signed for in holding camps, schools, through trade unions and in churches.
This, however, is just the beginning. The donations must keep coming. The money we raise now will help to perpetuate this pioneering strategy providing transport and distribution of the goods. The second and more critical long-term plan is to support and sustain the one small sanitary products manufacturing factory that remains in Zimbabwe. Providing funds will enable this company to grow local cotton. There will no longer be the need to import from materials South Africa. The company can be cost effective and self-sustaining.
A Night to Remember will be entertaining and important. An amazing group of motivated and fascinating artists will come together to make a difference. Please join us.
This campaign is currently supported by: Henry Olonga, Gillian Anderson, Kate Hoey MP, Meg Munn MP, Judi Dench, Jo Brand, Patricia Potter, Elizabeth Estenson, Sinead Cusack, Kim Tiddy, Anna Chancellor, Jeremy Irons and Zoë Wanamaker.
• To book tickets for A Night to Remember ring: Tel: +44 (0)20 8991 2502
• To find out more about the campaign ring ACTSA t: +44 (0)20 7833 3133
email: ca*******@ac***.org website: www.actsa.org
ACTSA (the successor to the UK Anti Apartheid Movement) is a UK registered NGO currently working on the crisis in Zimbabwe, as well as on HIV/AIDS with a particular focus on women and children, on Africa Matters – a project in conjunction with the union AMICUS to build solidarity links with UK trade unions and Trade unions in Southern Africa, and on campaigns addressing trade justice, gender and corporate accountability of multi-national companies.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.