As many of you may know by now, yesterday President Obama presented the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award to Magodonga Mahlangu and the organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (or WOZA).
You can watch the video of Obama's speech here. It inspired me on many levels.
First of all, I wanted to learn more about Magodonga Mahlangu and WOZA. Here's some information from their web site (which is linked above).
WOZA, the acronym of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, is an Ndebele word meaning ‘come forward’. Now with a countrywide membership of over 70,000 women and men, WOZA was formed in 2003 as a women’s civic movement to:
* Provide women, from all walks of life, with a united voice to speak out on issues affecting their day-to-day lives.
* Empower female leadership that will lead community involvement in pressing for solutions to the current crisis.
* Encourage women to stand up for their rights and freedoms.
* Lobby and advocate on those issues affecting women and their families.
Based on the principles of strategic nonviolence, through our actions, WOZA creates space to allow Zimbabweans to articulate issues they may be too fearful to raise alone. WOZA has conducted hundreds of protests since 2003 and over 3,000 women and men have spent time in police custody, many more than once and most for 48 hours or more. These frontline human rights defenders are willing to suffer beatings and unbearable conditions in prison cells to exercise their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms.
WOZA was formed to be a litmus test proving that the power of love can conquer the love of power. ‘Tough Love’ is our secret weapon of mass mobilisation. ‘Tough Love’ is the disciplining love of a parent; women practice it to press for and to bring dignity back to Zimbabweans. Tough Love is a ‘people power’ tool that any community can use to press for better governance and social justice, especially for Zimbabweans. Political leaders in Zimbabwe need some discipline; who better to dish it out than mothers!
And secondly, I found Obama's speech to be one of the most inspiring I've heard him give. For me, its not only an affirmation of WOZA, but a challenge to us.
By her example, Magodonga has shown the women of WOZA and the people of Zimbabwe that they can undermine their oppressors' power with their own power -- that they can sap a dictator's strength with their own. Her courage has inspired others to summon theirs. And the organization's name, WOZA -- which means "come forward" -- has become its impact -- its impact has been even more as people know of the violence that they face, and more people have come forward to join them.
More people have come to realize what Magodonga and the women of WOZA have known all along: that the only real way to teach love and non-violence is by example. Even when that means sitting down while being arrested, both as a sign that they refuse to retaliate, absorbing each blow without striking back -- and a warning that, come what may, they're not going anywhere.<...>
When asked how they can endure so much violence -- and what keeps them going in the face of such overwhelming odds -- the women of WOZA reply, simply: "each other."
And that may be Magodonga's greatest achievement -- that she has given the women of Zimbabwe each other. That she has given people who long for peace and justice each other. That she has given them a voice they can only have collectively -- and a strength that they can only have together.
They are a force to be reckoned with. Because history tells us, truth has a life of its own once it's told. Love can transform a nation once it's taught. Courage can be contagious; righteousness can spread; and there is much wisdom in the old proverb: that God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.
In the end, history has a clear direction -- and it is not the way of those who arrest women and babies for singing in the streets. It's not the way of those who starve and silence their own people, and cling to power by threat of force.
It is the way of the maid walking home in Montgomery; the young woman marching silently in the streets of Tehran; the leader imprisoned in her own home for her commitment to democracy.
It is the way of young people in Cape Town who braved the wrath of their government to hear a young senator from New York speak about the ripples of hope one righteous act can create.
And it is the way that Magadonga Mahlangu and Jenni Williams and the women and men who take to the streets of Harare and Bulawayo and Victoria Falls because they love their country and love their children and know that something better is possible.
Bobby Kennedy once said, "All great questions must be raised by great voices, and the greatest voice is the voice of the people -- speaking out -- in prose, or painting or poetry or music; speaking out -- in homes and halls, streets and farms, courts and cafes -- let that voice speak and the stillness you hear will be the gratitude of mankind."